What the Redwood Taught Me
There is a garden I love to go to, where I visit a majestic Redwood tree whose poetry always speaks to me.
Not that only she exudes poetry there. Every tiny plant and flower does too, as do the songs of the many frogs as they meditate on the water lilies, and the many other trees and dragonflies...
But during my visits beside my beautiful, strong Queen Mother Redwood, she taught me to trust myself—to trust what is inside me, and to trust that it will lead to where I'll go.
Just as all the information and potential of what she would become was already within her when she was only a tiny seed beneath the earth, before she was even a little plant, long before she became the magnificent giant tree she is today.
And then I noticed the wounds.
The deep grooves and markings on her trunk were visible right before my eyes. They remained as scars upon her bark, felt beneath my fingers, telling their own story.
Yet she kept growing past her wounds, allowing them to become part of her becoming, transforming them into the living essence of who she is today. They are each a part of her story.
She reminded me that we, too, are invited to grow through and beyond the wounds of our lives, each leaving its mark and carrying its own teaching—to allow what has marked us to shape us as we keep growing, expanding, and becoming who we already carry the potential to be—the original spark placed in our souls from the very beginning.
Just as all the information and potential of the giant tree was already held within her when she was only a tiny seed, something of our own becoming is already within us.
It lives in the inner vision of our hearts—in desires unique to our own souls, reaching into our awareness like echoes from our future selves, wanting to sing themselves into being, if we allow them to...
We are not here to become someone else, but to grow more deeply into our truest essence—
rooted in Mother Earth,
reaching upward toward Father Sky.
Allow the wounds of life to mark you as you alchemize their unique teachings, extract their wisdom, and grow through what they have revealed, moving beyond them into the person of your becoming—
grounded in roots reaching deeply into Mother Earth,
and branches reaching toward Father Sky.