I was listening to a podcast episode a friend shared called "How to Fall in Love with the Future," and the person being interviewed, Rob Hopkins, shared a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, "The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens." I was overcome with chills.
We are in this time of Spring now with the daphne and daffodills and cherry blossoms. But maybe we are also always in Spring, always planting consciously or unconsciously. When will those seeds sprout, if ever? What will have the space or time to blossom? To me, this is one of the great mysteries of life.
As I was contemplating what my March love letter might entail, how to talk about my journey towards this work and towards each body, each person I work with in my practice, I kept going back to the land, to the tree- THE tree.
You see, I have the opportunity to practice craniosacral therapy & energy work here in my neighborhood. I've had the privilege to live in the area for twenty years, fifteen of which have been down the street from my practice space. One of the first neighbors I met when moving into my house was a giant grandma Sequoia. I used to say hello to the tree on my daily walks through the neighborhood and her energy reminded me to be patient and grounded.
Five years ago she was mysteriously poisoned. Five deep wide holes drilled into her trunk. Yet she continued to fight even as her leaves turned brown and shed. She was fighting the poison and winning. By the following year she still had many green branches despite the poison drilled deep into her trunk. However the city deemed the tree to be dangerous and cut her down.
The sounds of her trunk falling shook my house, blocks away. I felt ashamed that I couldn't bring myself to be there as a witness. I closed all my windows and put on loud music to shut out the sounds of the chainsaws while I wept. No one really talks about the sky space trees inhabit. I look into this yard and there is a massive uncomfortable hole in the urban canopy.
How many creatures were displaced by the tree being cut down? How many birds used her branches to survey the land? How many squirrels jumped from roof, to tree, to roof? But just as not many talk about the sky part of trees, the below is also a mystery to us. If that tree was 100 years old and 80 feet tall, the roots must travel far and wide.
I realized that while the hole in the yard left by the ghost of the tree pains me, in fact when I root my feet down, connecting to the earth energy during my craniosacral sessions, I am able to connect to the roots of that same tree, to the mycelial networks created by the root tendrils rotting and becoming earth! What more beautiful way is there to connect with an ancestor who taught me so much?
I am so grateful for this location, for this opportunity to talk with the other-than-human world as well as with your body on the table. What a gift to have the privilege to respond to this calling. I look forward to the conversations we have together in practice together.
May the time we take to look inward and plant our seeds intentionally help us grow our capacity to show up for ourselves and our communities in these difficult times, standing together like grandma sequoias, protecting our neighborhoods far beneath our feet and way above our heads.
As always, once I write something I inevitably find other resonances as well. Here's a beautiful new poem by adrienne marie brown titled "a comrade spell for trees."