traversing the tangle to love--a snowy morning's walk on the path of healing

Snow, soft and quiet,

Falling and forgiving the

Harshness in my heart.

What does this heart beat for but love?

On a difficult morning I am called by the whisper of the softly falling snow to the nearby woods. Come be with me awhile, it seems to say. Walk with me and let me soften the sharp edges of your heart.

Out in the brightness of a quintessential snowy winter's morn I pull up my hood to keep from being drenched but as I turn the corner and make my way up the neighborhood hill I realize that I am drenched already.

I'd left the house soaked to the bone in confusion and pain.

Learning of the death of our old family doctor whom we had through my late childhood, to my early twenties…a time of upheaval and many difficulties in my young life as an angst ridden teen...had thrown me for an early morning loop.

This doctor was not, in my experience, a kind man; decidedly unkind, to be clearer. I was never unafraid in his presence. He brought harm instead of healing, woundedness instead of comfort and was generally awful in all my years of interactions with him. But he was my family doctor so the person whom I went to in my hour of need.

Before I headed out into the morningtime's brisk air, I had the good fortune of a conversation with my parents regarding the news of this man’s death. I said that I found it difficult to not feel upset all over again when thinking back on that time my young life. I asked my parents what they thought it was about him or me that made our interactions always so miserable. My father said he was generally alright to him but it was some of the females in the family that felt the way I did.

Uncomfortable and uncared for beyond the most basic of care such as prescriptions and x-rays ordered. He appeared to suffer me with a considerable amount of disregard and heaping doses of disdain.

So too me with him.

I knew he had grown up in a prominent family, his arrogant indifference to my family and I unsurprising, but what was it that caused his downright nastiness to us? My dad told of knowing the man as a youngster, of how bullied he had been by other children in his youth. Older than my dad by several years, they grew up in the same town and went to the same school and church so he knew him well enough to know the nickname that was used to taunt the young boy.

A nickname to taunt…he was bullied as a child...how long did this haunt the man?

What are those pains in us that we cannot seem to grow beyond? The hurts inflicted that cause us to pass the hurt along?

These are all questions I brought on my trudge up the hill bundled in layers to ward off cold and snow. All bundled to protect myself.

All bundled. To protect.

I walked to the side of the trail entrance as the melt- freeze cycle meant that everywhere was icy and the ice was rendered invisible, covered with a gorgeous layer of fluffy, white snow in a perfection of treachery.

Hidden and a perfect treachery.

I wandered inward and found that since I had last walked this little section of the woods even more softwood trees had fallen down in the recent wind and rain and snow storms. Choosing carefully and then stepping lightly with my high soled boots, I made my way over a fallen tree.

This trail used to need so little of me…so easy and so close and present, it gave and gave and seemed to need nothing in return. As the years passed, its relative unwellness began to increasingly show itself. Windstorms taking down more and more of the trees. An imbalance of species leaving it more vulnerable to the ever increasing winds. And then the hurricane. Fiona.

I felt a familiar clenching in my chest as though I was keeping my heart encased in iron.

Hard and familiar. Protected from hurting. How much pain can one heart bear?

I walked the trail and thought of how I might soften like the snow. I thought of what in me I needed to leave behind. What old hurts untended bring harm through me to others. I wondered, could I be generous enough to extend forgiveness to an old, dead man whose woundedness brought woundedness to me and those I love? Could I be humble and welcoming enough to ask the same graciousness from others and might I offer it to myself?

I wandered through the quiet of the snowy, yet unbroken trail, watching my step as I trod over half- frozen footprints that other walkers left days ago, slipping my way down a slope until I came to the gravel road- the turnaround point I planned for on this outing.

Walking out of the wood I pulled my hood down. Without a breath of wind, a whimsy of snowflakes fell onto me with abandon from the overcast sky. I let them kiss my face with an equal abandon and it felt altogether marvelous. I fell into the simple yet generous embrace of presence free from thought.

Oh dear self, I feel that pain you're holding and I offer you healing and release.

Gazing down the gravel road to the fields not yet slaughtered into posh neighbourhoods, I stood and felt the gift of my own heart beating. A lovely little patter, pitter, patter…gentle, rhythmic and then, sudden as a snowshoe hare, sudden as if a little wind blew up, a wellspring rose within me.

Not of pain, or thoughts of old injuries but of love.

I was overcome with this burning little question that felt large enough in me to heal the whole suffering earth and maybe even my own broken self.

What does this heart beat for if not love?

What does this heart beat for if not love?

Over and over it played in my head…

What does this heart beat for if not love?

I clumsily added “and kindness”…and a few moments later…”and forgiveness of self and other” but those were all my “thinking” self intruding upon the wellspring query that I didn’t feel as though I had thought of myself, at all.

Small and wounded little Jill did not feel worthy of so large and loving a visitation as I had just had. I penetentially thought of all the different ways my own heart beats…in self- indulgence of old hurts…in vitriol and anger…in fear and in despair and I thought of how harming this is to me and those I love. I also thought of how in kindness to myself, through acknowledging and accepting that my wounds and traumas were not anything I sought, rather simply occurrences that too oft happen to those most sensitive among us, I felt forgiven. I felt an absolution. I felt loved.

Oh dear self, I feel that pain you're holding and I offer you healing and release.

These woods have been a hard place to visit since the hurricane struck. The evidence of its ravaging, abundant and in truth, once the trails were physically reclaimed months after the hurricane, we found ourselves choosing the one little stretch of trail in which you can almost not notice the hurricane occurred. Admittedly we needed the breathing space as we were encumbered by personal trauma and grief.

But each time we have welcomed ourselves to walk through and notice and name the devastation on the most gutted sections of the woods, wondering what it means for the small woods here and for the larger warming world, it has brought us closer to acceptance.

I wondered how do we heal if we constantly deny, distract and turn away from our wounds and the woundedness of the earth? If we admit no fault?

How do we heal and let ourselves and others grow and change if we hold onto old images of how they were? How we are? Was my old doctor just a hurting little boy in need of caring?

I turned around and walked up the slope back into the woods. I walked a few feet and paused to feel some old man’s beard on a fallen treetop covered with powdery white snow. The crispness of the pale green lichen in my unmittened hand and the wet brightness of the snow, so cold it seared a little on my fingertips, was welcome. I stepped a few more feet in and drew my face to a forked branch of evergreen and let the tree coat my cheek with a generosity of snow so that as I walked away, the snow still on my face, I was filled with remembrances of myriad joy-filled hours of my childhood spent with my face in a snowbank breathing in the scent of snow, enshrouded in the silence that only snow can bring.

But most importantly, I thought of how utterly and beautifully possible this healing is.

I felt a familiar comfort that I previously did not think still possible in this little damaged trail. In my little hurting heart.

Instead of feeling like I was witnessing a desecration of purity before me, I felt a part of its sacred being and it was beautiful. All of it.

Further along, I thought of the ways we integrate emotional pain into our being and how so often we are left wounded with little direction on how to skillfully heal our hearts and injured minds. Of how unhealed hearts and minds bring harm to others. Of how universally human such responses to woundedness are. Of how traumatized people traumatize others. Of how wounded our world is and how much healing we all need. But most importantly, I thought of how utterly and beautifully possible this healing is.

A starting place might begin with welcoming ourselves to truly understanding that the power of acceptance only works if we first acknowledge that harm has occurred and this means telling our stories and believing others when they tell their stories. This goes especially for marginalized communities. It goes for the silent lived experiences of harmed land, soil and waters. It goes for the silent suffering of animals as well.

It means willingly looking into the belly of the harm. Means that we must face those harms that have occurred square on...face them square on... whether they are within our own personal lives or in the realm of the collective we altogether form. We must acknowledge, accept and we must move forward towards the way of healing.

I paused on the trail and looked into the tangle of tree trunks and limbs the little wood has been reduced to and thought of how we all are living the results of so many layered and collective harms. I thought of how we are being deconstructed and how this painful process reduces us all to a place where there is nothing left to do but bear witness and name the hurt and from that place to ask and/or give forgiveness and to begin again.

But to begin again with gentleness, with openness, with collaborative generosity, with curiosity and without the greed and ego feast that brought us to this place.

It means bringing unconditional love back into the world and the only way to do this is through cranking open our hearts to the radical uprising of love that's always possible (some call it grace) and all the courage and caring it offers us as pathways from harm to healing. In this way we can move from injury to reconciliation and find a new kind of equilibrium. One where kindness and caring are the foundation of all our interactions.

The ability of a human heart to injure and be injured is widely, horribly known but the power of the human heart to heal and be healed is even greater.

Sometimes it appears unexpectedly like a ruffed grouse roused from the tangle of undergrowth...a hidden place where you could not imagine something so lovely might appear from...arising all of a startling, beautiful sudden as it did today for me. My moment of grace came as a release that felt like such a gasp of welcome and of brightness. It came as freedom from needing to still harbour old hurts in my very human heart.

It felt like peace, it felt like oneness, it felt like joy!

In my state of incredible lightness, I walked out of the woods and met a man on the side street out walking his dog. We greeted each other and I spoke of the beauty of the softly falling snow. He said we needed it. I said how it forgave so much and brought such light to places that just yesterday were rather winter worn and ugly. He was receptive to my rambling musings. He had kind eyes and said his puppy was trying out new bright orange booties on all four paws. I said I'd noticed them straight away.

I didn't say how wonderfully kind forgiveness can be to hearts once ravaged by harm nor did I mention the beauty of falling back in love again. But I didn't need to. The evidence was plain.

Heading down the hill we walked along a little ways together, his gentleness carrying us in the still heavy snow. He asked if I'd just been in the woods on the trails. I said I had. We spoke of how the hidden ice can prove a treachery but that if you’re mindful and watch your step so much beauty is available when you walk the wooded trails. I wished him well and we parted ways.

Only forty five minutes and a kilometer or two of geographical distance had passed but I had traversed so much more time and space than that since leaving my house so encumbered by confusion and by pain and there I was, back home feeling light and ease and freedom. How was this possible?

If this can happen to me, dear friends, so much, so much is possible in the wide arms of love.

Thanks for reading!

Be well.

Jill