Teardrops With The Trees

For the past few years I’ve been crying in public, a lot.

That spicket has significantly trickled the last few months, but it was a consistence storm. One of the most healing public cries was against, under and in the midst of trees.

I believe I did this because I often cried when I felt like I was dying, or wanted to die, and was attempting to infuse my soul with more life from my tree siblings.

I had often dismissed the magic of trees until getting into Reiki and having meditating near trees recommended. There is something purifying about being up against a trunk.

I started this practice years ago when I lived in Denver. There was a large tree right outside my apartment where on nice days I would take one of my chairs and just sit right next to it, absorbing the sunlight as I meditated. I found with this experience it was like meditating with other people in that it was a little bit easier to lift those mental weights, which I attribute to essentially meditating with this being that we call a tree.

When I moved to Oregon in 2016 that practice became less often but powerful when I do it either meditating or just sitting next to or against a tree in the park next to the house I’m living at, or a tree on my walk in the trail system.

I still don’t quite know what it is about trees that allows for this emotional healing and ability to cleanse my mind and my soul, often with bouts of tears as I grieve for the life I had, the life I feel I had lost, and for potential losses of those I care about in the future, as grief doesn’t necessarily happen on a linear scale.

I think part of the power of being in nature and sitting next to or with trees here in Oregon for me has been setting down roots in a place that has over time become home, and the only other state I’ve lived in other than Colorado. Trees are the greatest metaphors for being rooted, as they live for hundreds of years in the same spot, while I may only live for several years or decades here.

I am grateful for my tree friends sitting with me at some of my lowest points, energetically hugging me, and letting me know in their subtle ways, that everything would be all right, and that it’s okay to cry be vulnerable and heal in my own way.