There is nothing, nothing more healing than the mother nature.

Many discovered this during our first universal and unifying lockdown, when we were forced to stay indoors, forced to go within.

Those shorter than usual sojourns into the great outdoors proved to be our saving grace and our protection against the downward spiral into insanity. 

How precious it was last spring to see those first burgeoning buds on the trees, green and bursting with hope, thousands upon thousands of them, promising an abundance we could scarcely imagine at the time. 

They continued to grow.We continued to grow. 

Out of this situation? 

We hope so. And when we look at mother nature, so steadfast and oblivious, we know so. 

What Happens When Mother Nature Reminds You Who You Truly Are

I have always known this. I am not going to say I told you so because I know you know it too. But I remember a time as a teenager when hope seemed fully extinguished.

I was dragging my highly sensitive self through a world that seemed intent on crushing my spirit, when on a certain Easter Sunday morning, I opened my bedroom curtains and the forgotten plant on my windowsill was bursting into flower.

It seemed to me like a miracle, a mini resurrection, and I cried tears of gratitude and joy. If this ignored and neglected plant had the means to spring back to life, surely I did too. So many possibilities were contained in that one little pot.

And stepping further back in time, a family trip to my father’s birthplace on the West coast of Ireland. Up until then I had been a city dweller, growing up in a block of flats in London.

I was stunned at the hills that the locals took for granted, yellow with gorse, purple with heather and festooned with white bog cotton.

Always In Awe with Mother Nature

Why wasn’t everybody stopping what they were doing and gaping in awe, as I was? And what about the river that ran through the village, traversed by an ancient, stone bridge? The way it babbled over the rocks, crystal clear and chiming like so many church bells. 

There is a photo of me sitting on that bridge, sporting a pudding bowl haircut and wearing a cardigan that my granny had knitted. I look supremely content. But still you cannot hear how loudly my soul is singing. 

It has never fully gone away, that feeling.

Yes, it has been obscured at times by clouds. Either real ones in the sky or the clouds of depression that felt so real but were later revealed to be no more than wisps of gaseous tear drops floating in the sky of my true self. 

Depression has been a recurring theme in this the great cosmic book of my life. The first chapter occurred at age fourteen when I was ripped up by the roots from my childhood home in England and awkwardly transplanted to my parents’ native Ireland, only to grow somewhat crookedly into adulthood.

There was nothing about this new soil that seemed the slightest bit native to me. Rather, it was alien terrain. I didn’t know what was happening to me, both inside and out, and it took years to identify the culprit, that same black cloud that has accompanied me throughout. 

So I took to walking.

Out of the cloying atmosphere of the family home and my parents’ toxic marriage. Down to the seafront, near to where I lived, identifying with the raucously screaming sea birds until the swishing of the water over the rocks finally calmed me down.

I had designated routes down to this watery haven. Certain trees and flowers that I would use as landmarks and touchstones, anchoring me to the earth that I sometimes did not want to be on.

Mother Nature Is Your Best Friend

I was friends with more trees than I was with people. And the black dog that sometimes accompanied me on those walks-a real black dog-not the depression kind-she was the most loyal companion of all. 

Flowers, trees and animals, they do not judge. Neither do they criticize or take advantage. They do not let you down, or glory in your pain, laughing at the wounds that they themselves have inflicted upon you.

They only delight with their colour and scent. Stir the senses with the rustling of their leaves, dappling the sunlight in order to enchant and delight. 

I felt it again years later, while going through my divorce, the way the trees rained down their love for me. I inhaled it all like a desperate drug addict. 

They were always there for me, they never went away. Different trees, different locations but the same green fuelled comfort. And they will be with me till my dying day.

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”~ Pablo Picasso

If all I have access to is a potted plant at my bedside, I will stare into its leafy centre and watch its miracle slowly unfold, like a life beginning and ending and constantly recurring. Back into the earth, back out of the earth, again and again. Mother nature’s constant cycles, the comforting rhythm of life, death and rebirth. 

We are part of it all, you know. Mother nature doesn’t let us forget our own true nature. Our true meaning. Our meaningfulness. 

You are meant to be here.

You are part of it all.

You have value.

You have worth.

You are goodness.

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