Into the woods
Mother yourself by creating webs of connection that weave a nest of holding and beauty around you.
Hello Lovelies,
On this Mother’s Day I have been thinking, not only of my journey of being a mother, the mothering I have had and the mothers I know, but also of the mothering I have received from this beautiful and ultimate mother; the earth.
We can easily forget in this fast paced consumeristic western world, of the connections and care we receive from the earth. I remember feeling it as a child, but as an adult I lost sight of it, it was only when I reached an incredibly difficult place that I started to remember what had always been beautiful, magical and real to me, as the memories of nature and the stories nature shows me came flooding back to me within the darkness, I have made it my mission to actively remember my connections to this earth, gathering stories and meaning from natures processes and beings. It has greatly helped me, and has felt as if I was weaving a nest around me that grounded mothered and nurtured me.
Connections to the more than human world, can heal us, hold us and ground us. You don’t have to look far in nature, to see that connection is an intrinsic and beautiful part of being a wild being.
We are learning more than ever about the interconnections and relationships that underpin life and hold it in place. Whether it is the mycelial network that weaves individual trees and plants into an underground community of communion, a wood wide web exchanging news, health and nutrition between beings, creating a family of support. Or the collaborative populations of microbes living in our guts and on our skin, supporting our immunity and health, making our bodies more like soil and our skin like a forest floor than we realise. Or the bears that leave salmon in the woods, restoring nitrogen to the forest floors, or the seed travelling to new lands within a birds body or a wolfs fur, then held by soil, worm, bacteria until they grow and offer their medicine to soil, insect and beast; life on earth is networked.
Inter species alliances, reciprocity and symbiotic relationships weave each being into place, their life and their bodies repeatedly felted within the earth, engendering stories of belonging into their very fibre.
Many earth based cultures around the world weave a child into nature when they are born and continue to as they grow, through story, introductions, song and teachings, helping the child’s connections to their wider earth community become strong threads that thicken into ropes, holding them when the winds blow strong.
In the west, many of us have largely forgotten the web in which we are sewn, forgetting how we are all dependent on other creatures for a good and healthy life. We often lack those who tell us stories of soil, seed, insect, worm, bird, water, root, fungi, mycelium, moss, plant, flower, furred ones and beetle. Having few or even no one who can tell us a purpose of an dandelion, birdsong, mycelium, beaver, mole and moss and how their work, the medicine they bring to the world, greatly in handed the lives we live. And so we can grow up losing sight of the magnificence of each being, the incredible wild web of connectivity and our belonging within it.
Children instinctively try to weave themselves into nature , no matter how small their patches of grass or limited contact with trees or green spaces. If we are lucky, we are born with those around us, who, like weavers, help to weave and entwine our roots to other roots, connecting and sewing us into belonging by telling us the stories of the land, by showing us the medicine of season, leaf, root, seed, fungi, flower, insect, soil and birdsong.
Each thread of connection, each story told, helping us feel a sense of belonging, support and care that comes from the natural world, reminding us, that we are part of, and held by, something far greater than us. And in remembering this, we are more likely to want to play our own part in this reciprocal web, to take our place as human animal and love, protect and honour the gift of our community.
Unfortunately, we have come to a time, where the stories have been limited, damaging even - Weeds in need of control rather than medicine plants, annoying insects rather than incredible alchemists and gardeners, dirt instead of soil……….
When times are hard, physically, emotionally and or mentally, I have found great unwavering support from remembering the ropes of connection I have to the world around me and that I am part of something beautiful and so much bigger than I.
And it may sound silly or strange, but it comforts me, it helps me to feel more stable and connects me back to magic, beauty, medicine and hope that is continuously unfolding and growing and alchemising all around me.
When I was doing a wilderness psychotherapy training, a teacher gave me a beautiful smooth rock that fitted in the palm of my right hand. It was black, with a white lightening line that travelled all around the rock. He told me that the rock was to remind my hand and my psyche when I held it, that I had the power to create my own path, that my life was created by my hand. The rock being many many many years older than I, was also to remind me that although I carve and forge my own path with strength, I am also a part of something greater and more ancient than me. And that as I carve this path, I must also remember how I am not only held in love, but how each decision i make needs to be made with my wild community in my heart.
My grannies were amazing at showing me the benefits of nature by planting seeds with me, of growing and eating plants, listening to trees, being in the woods and understanding nature as something beneficial and magical. They would tell me the stories of the land and show me a love of it that created connections for my body, heart and mind. Linking my soul with other souls. But apart from my grannies wisdom, the stories I found in modern life, were greatly lacking and disconnecting.
But it’s never too late to restore the old stories, to discover something far more beautiful, alive and magical, and in doing so, weaving ourselves back into belonging and wonderment. We can parent ourselves, and like a mother bird, weave nests from the stories dandelion seed, thistle fluff, wolf and fox fur, tree and plant medicine and listen to the tales of insect, worm, soil, fungi, plant and beast. Creating a blanket of holding that our psyche can wrap around us when times are hard.
Thank you for being here and wishing you well on this Sunday
Much love and wild nesting
Brigit xxx
TWO INTERESTING & INSPIRATIONAL PODCASTS….
This is wonderful. I have been saved by Mother Earth a million times...each day in fact but you put it so beautifully into words. I am in the US and had forgotten that this was Mothering Sunday but was out by the river near me which is exceedingly high today after a lot of spring rain. She is right with me and in me and beneath me...
This is beautiful. Feeling a connection to Mother Earth helps me feel in touch with my mother. A walk in the woods is like a hug from her.