for the trees

I've been struggling with what to do next in my life for the last 6 months, or more. And I think I just had a moment of clarity.

I've been waffling the last half a year. Struggling with the not knowing of what I need to do in my life next. I've finished learning from Wild Rose. And now here I am working in a nutrition store. Which is nice, but not quite why I wanted to learn this stuff. Honestly, not quite what I wanted to learn.

The question was really, where do I want to go in my life? What is my purpose? What do I need to contribute to this world? I thought I'd found it, thought I knew, way back when I first moved here. I'd found the stillness at my center and I knew where I needed to go with my life. First herbs, then horses. And some sort of vague notion about helping people connect with...hmm? not too clear on that.

Having finished wild rose, I had some decisions to make. Did I want to focus on getting married, starting a family? Did I want to jump right into finding horses? Did I want to instruct pole dance? Did I want to look into midwifery and doula-ing (a subject that has fascinated me lately)? So many options, and really, no true way to do all of them.
And in being in this city for almost 5 years now, I'd truly forgotten what made me come to calgary in the first place. There were a series of workshops I went to with my mom, and in the course of going through them with her, I found the small, still, silent place that is ME, when all else is said and done. The stillness there is where I find myself, my purpose, and the strength to follow it through fear and out the other side into doing what needs to be done. And in living here, away from the woods, away from the quiet places I love, I'd forgotten that place. I was trying to figure out what to plan for my future without ever consulting myself. No wonder I was struggling.

There came a moment in all my struggle where I just gave up. Struggling was useless and I wasn't going to do it. I'd just stay there in that miserable place until something told me it was time to move again. As soon as I did this, I got told to move (lol). And then I started remembering. And I've been slowly waking up this spring, as the wind blows winter's stagnation away.

So my moment came today, and it was sparked by the writings of a man who explained exactly what I know to be wrong with the world. People don't seem to care about nature. And the incomprehensible thing to me was why don't they? I was lucky growing up. I had an abundance of contact with wild places. My grandparents farm, the trails around the creek in Thunder Bay, and then the land and trees where we lived on Vancouver Island. I found nature there so easily. I really had no idea what it was like to live apart from the land. And now that I've been doing it for 5 years, I realize how easy it is to disconnect from that part of yourself. It's uncomfortable to try to connect to the land when the land is uncomfortable - restricted by concrete and pollution and the busy back and forth of city life. There's no time for the stillness in my core, and I bet that if i hadn't grown up in the woods in BC I wouldn't even notice.

So here's my moment. People don't care because they are tourists in nature. They don't know it, and so it doesn't matter what state it's in. Or what state we're in, because really, we're also tourists in our own bodies too. My purpose is to teach people to reconnect. To know nature, and through the stillness there, to find themselves. I can remember being in that workshop with my mom, and standing at the top rung, trying to find the ability in myself to take that final step onto the platform. And I found I couldn't do it for myself. The thing that got me up that step was this:

"for the trees"

I had no way to define that then. No way to really take it out into the world and use it. Not then. But now, knowing what I know about the disconnect of living without an easy way to get to a green space, maybe I do. Because I need to wake up, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.