My bare feet remember how prickly oak leaves feel to walk on, but my eyes perceive fluffy Persian cat fur softness in the stately and serene specimen of Oak tree at the bottom of the ravine.
From my vantage point, squatting on a grassy knoll that is rabbit’s territory, the oak looks as if it would feel so good to embrace if I had similar leaf-fur. We’d be like two cozy oak cats snuzzling together or maybe like two fluffy bunnies.
This largest of the oaks before me is solid, symmetrical and silent. All the others down there are dancing in the buffeting bluster.
I sit between, hopefully not on bunny poops, feeling the wind whip my hair while the sun warms my black coat on this just post-rain chilly-wind afternoon in the hills above Petaluma. I have found this quiet place to let my tears flow into Mother Earth. I am sad and I don’t want to be among people right now.
Observing the trees, I realize the very hill I’m sitting on blocks the wind from hitting directly that majestic, magnificent oak. Similarly, the whole pastoral scene blocks the winds of grief that currently threaten to blow me away - or at least make me dance to their tune. Resisting these winds is futile and exhausting. I’m learning to bend rather than snap. Allowing my feelings to arise and flow in such a beautiful and nurturing surround, is sweet, easier than being with people and fitting.
My mama Barbara loved the out-of-doors. She taught me botanical Latin for all the plant brothers she knew by name. We earthlings have a large family of brother, sister and cousin trees, bushes, grasses and flowers. I’m happy to know many of them by name - even though, when I was in Junior High School I couldn’t STAND that my mother’s language was so flowery compared to that of other mothers. The fact that she was so smart and educated was a source of embarrassment because it made her different. Goddess forbid I should be different from all the Cindys and Susies and Tammys in my school. In fact, that’s why I changed my name from Melinda to “Mindy” from seventh through twelfth grade - to fit in.
No longer worried about being different, I now use my birth name and celebrate the knowledge my mama passed on to me. I miss her. It’s OK to feel the sorrowful tears falling onto the ground-cover whose name I do not know.
After several minutes of full-on shoulder-shaking sobs, I feel relieved, lighter and grateful.
In the ravine the big tree ruffles. As if embarrassed by being caught off-guard by a cross wind, it quickly stills again.
We nod to one another in recognition. I feel gratitude for the silence. Gratitude for the wind song. Gratitude for my tree brother.
Along comes a rabbit criss-crossing the hill. Perhaps she’s skittish of the big black-coated blob hunkered down in her dining room.
Along comes a deer. With the most ungainly and graceless plop she curls her legs under her and sits down so that only her head and back are visible above the deeper grass in the ravine.
Rabbit and deer pay me no mind.
This is what I long for. Being part of the flow - not impeding or deterring it - but rather just IN the flow of life all around me.
The timing of this worksop I’m assisting in Petaluma is awkward in that it came up so quickly after Barbara’s memorial service. I miss my family. I miss my Mark. I miss home. The blessing is that IONS, where the workshop is being held, is such a beautiful place. I’m leaning into the natural world and it holds me. Room mate Shel has been a wonderful holder of space for me too. One morning, driving the 45 minute distance from her friend’s house where we’re staying to the workshop space, I cried at virtually every thing I saw... sheep, wild turkeys, mama cows with their calves, and raptors riding the currents. We laughed a lot between the waves of my sobbing.
Like Arnold Lobel’s book Owl At Home I am as content with my portion of Tear Water Tea as Owl was. Even if it is a little salty, tear water tea is always very good.
I gather myself and bid goodbye to the deer, the oak and the hill and find my way back to being with people again and to the work I came here to support - students of Somatic Experiencing learning to facilitate their clients’ renegotiation of traumas.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if all earth’s children had access to her wild beauty, clean water and learning how to resolve their difficulties? We might feel as rooted as the oak in the ravine - able to bend in the breeze without losing ground.
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