The Acorn Inside Us
What the Acorn Knows: Trauma, Resilience, and the Future Rooted in Us
There are stories that are so old they live inside the body before they ever pass through the mouth. The story of the acorn is one of them. I feel it in my bones, in the way my ribs cradle breath as if they were branches still remembering the seed they once held. Each of us carries an acorn story, whether we know it or not. It is the inheritance pressed into us by those who came before, and it is the future waiting quietly for us to make space for its roots.
An acorn is a small thing, easily overlooked, easily crushed underfoot. And yet it contains the memory of oak forests, the echo of centuries, the fierce will of survival. It is never just a seed. It is a whole blueprint of becoming, a vessel of memory, medicine, and possibility pressed into a brown shell. Inside, it carries the shape of a tree not yet grown: the roots that will drink from deep waters, the branches that will spread into sky, the leaves that will turn light into nourishment. It holds within it the pattern of home and the promise of shade, the food of deer, jay, and child, the oxygen we breathe. Each acorn is not only itself, but also the story of the forest it comes from and the forest it will create.
An acorn remembers. Encoded within its tissues are the stories of its ancestors: how to withstand drought, how to survive insects that bore into its flesh, how to live through the clearings and cuttings of deforestation. It carries knowledge of protection, the lessons learnt by their ancestors, and just as deeply, the knowledge of reciprocity. It knows how to feed the soil with its own leaves, how to offer its body to fungi in exchange for water, how to grow not alone but in communion. Each acorn is a bundle of strategies, survival songs, and gestures of generosity, passed down by every oak that came before.
And so are we.
