Trees

I've been meaning to write about trees for a long time. Trees- wonderful, resilient wisdom bearing trees. They grow and thrive and reach for the light, their leaves drinking in the sun through tiny little straws; their roots digging deep into moist soils, ever gaining strength. I mean, how beautiful is that?! The growth of trees!! As they reach in both directions for the things they need to live they grow tall and they grow strong. They bear fruit.

And nobody ever comes to an old magnificent tree and proclaims, "This tree looks too old! Lets shave off some of its rings! Make it shorter! It needs to look younger again!" It's obvious the damage that would do and also how bizarre and foolish it would be. So we don't do that, do we? No, we marvel and reverence the aging tree.

Yet we don't give ourselves so much grace. Instead we inject, nip, and tuck. Try and scrub away the weathered years. What value have we placed on our youth, exactly? When we were naive, emotionally out of control, and unsure of life? Why is that our ideal point of preservation?  How amazing would it be to live in a society where we placed such a high value on aging? No more shaving off our rings and bark, no more cutting ourselves down, just reaching and stretching ever more towards light.

Sometimes trees don't have the water that they need in their soil. So instead they break through asphalt or twist themselves into old water pipes and get knotted into balls.  Have you ever felt like a tree? Have you ever been stretching out your roots for love and acceptance yet unable to find any so you started searching for it in the wrong places? I have.

For a long time I've always imagined myself as a palm tree. Slender, warm, a companion to the sea. But God has not planted me in tropical sands. And I've been thinking about deciduous trees and my desire to be more like them. Because I'm not an evergreen, that's for sure. I'm far too codependent on the seasons. And so there are many lessons for me to learn in the way these trees connect with the earth as it ebbs and flows though light and darkness.

I want to listen to the seasons like a tree. I want to do what the sun so gently beckons me to do. To be awake and alive in the summer; then to harvest my emotions and energies in the fall, to let things fall... drift and sway to the earth, preparing to rest. Because when the cold comes and the sun turns from its warm kinship to a mere acquaintance, the earth whispers and motions for us to sloooow down, to rest up, and to enjoy the long nights and the silent snow. For soon enough colors will explode from the fingertips of branches, rebirth comes, the sun comes back and we wake up again.

For many many years now I have lived with great and heavy anxiety about all things WINTER. A deep fear would shadow over my senses as the leaves would drop from the trees like blood. I've cried as the sun turns a cold shoulder and tucks into bed before dinner has even begun. Everything felt so lifeless and grey. And it felt like it lasted forever. Why does January seem to have 84 days in it? I've come to let this fear and hatred take me over and wrap me up in icy misery.

This winter is the first time I've fully bowed down to the deciduous ways. It's been a mental process and a combination of things aligning at the right time but it seems to be working. I surrendered. I am taking life so much more slowly and I've been okay with it. I wear comfy clothes, sit by the fire, diffuse oils, soak in hot baths, fill bowls with bright oranges and apples, and stay indoors. Those things are different than what a literal tree would be doing right now but I think they equate to the same idea of leaning into the season. (and also a full adaption to the Danish ways of hygge, which, along with everyone else, I've also been heavily inspired by.) 

All of this in conjunction with my new warm house full of natural light, calming medication for postpartum depression, a new baby centering my desires more on staying home, and hormones that oddly give me heat flashes, I have been enjoying the most pleasant winter of my life! I've been thinking really NORMAL things like "I guess if I get cold I can just put more clothes on." and "Isn't this fire cozy with that snow outside?" I don't think I realized just how MUCH fear I was living with. But now I feel more connected to the earth and it's orbit. Winter, dare I say, feels natural and right, a part of the grand cycle of life.

There are deep reasons and memories that have aided all my winter blues, but yet- My anxiety about winter is... gone. Something that was so in-bedded in my core seems to have vaporized, or maybe, perhaps, it's let go and fallen away like crisp leaves. 

 *I took these photos in 2010 as a gift I was making for Buck

that had an entirely different meaning and purpose. Yet it's like

they were made for this post, right? :)

-And if anyone wants to talke even more about the analogies of trees,

I have even more thoughts! haha