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Letting It Be

9/27/2015

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I am letting Healing Outdoors be for a while until I know what steps to take next to grow this project. I have emails from several people around the world who are interested in creating similar projects where they live, asking for my advice.  I  would absolutely love to be in a position to give advice and collaborate among all of us and do something truly powerful.  I just don't know given my time and resources, how I can commit to coordinating this and have had little success signing up people for walks to allow me to practice nature connection exercises I have learned. 

Grateful to anyone who has followed along or checked out the site and received any sense of nature connection that moves me so deeply.  Grateful to all who have resonated with some piece of the vision:  Caregiver support and nature connection for the disconnected.  I hope and trust anyone who is attracted to this kind of inspiration continues to seek it for themselves.  To make a difference in your own stress reduction and gain perspective from reminding yourself of your place in the scheme of the natural world.   

When my daughter was very ill for several years, time in nature was my solace and life raft.  Healing Outdoors was my vision to share this with others facing a similar journey. The further along my journey of recovery from posttraumatic stress (or posttraumatic growth), I have come to understand certain aspects of my personality, my strengths, and my less-than strengths.  


I would like to wish that I am meant for a leadership role, or that I have the understanding of a psychologist or a nature-based healer to act as a bridge between nature and people and help others in some way.  I simply don't know yet whether any of this is true.  Certainly I have helped myself by doing the activities I do. 

I have studied and/or observed models of nature-mind "bridges" and have read widely in the field of ecopsychology.   A frustration in my ecopsychology courses was being the only student without an active counseling practice to gather people to try activities with and hence gain experience doing what I'd like to do.  I have no psychology degree and am certified only by life experience.  I have come to realize:
  • My connection to the natural world is deeply personal and may not apply to everyone.  
  • I would love to practice facilitating people experiencing space/time in nature for themselves but I am not an "expert."
  • I have no desire to charge large sums of money to lead groups of people to their birthright. 
  • I would thrive in a job that takes me outdoors. 
  • I am a greater support person and/or independent worker than a leader.
I will continue to make nature connection a part of my daily practice of being human.  I was accepted to an Environmental Conservation degree program this year but was unable to financially make it work.  I keep my eyes out for further training opportunities wherever they may present themselves and focusing my energies on all good that arises.  Every moment, every day, every year. 

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Tree Conversation

9/10/2015

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Picture
Picture
Conversation with a tree?  Yes.  Spending time with my favorite mossy maple at the Whidbey Institute, I listened for 30 minutes and wrote down tree wisdom.  Whether we choose to believe this wisdom is our own imagination or transmitted from a tree into human language is irrelevant to the relevance of the understanding we glean. 

You appear to be three trees merged above ground or one tree divided three ways growing toward the sun and rain.  You have stood a long time.  Many mushrooms ring your base and tiny umbrellas sprout from your mossy skin.  You thrive here drinking in swampy goodness collected from the skies. 

I love the shape of your leaves, like human hands spread out, receptive to gifts from above.

Q:  What do you have to tell me about how to be in this life when I feel I'm living the wrong one? 

A:  I stand tall because I understand how to work with Earth, bend with air, let limbs and leaves go when necessary.  The network you can't see below ground bathes my roots, supports my existence.  I stand tall and stand witness.  I shelter any being who comes to rest with me. 

I split three ways to serve more beings, feed my core, gather more sunbeams. 

Might you never forget to stand your ground even as you sit in front of your computer screen moving your branches across the alphabet lightning quick.  Your scrabbling at the keys sounds like brown squirrels squabbling.  

Remember to stand, even as you must sit.  Remember the power inside your core even as your ears ring from listening.  Remember to replenish from your roots, your connection to Earth.  

These rememberings will not fail you.  

Money does not matter to Earth, except what is destroyed in its name.  How is it you spend so much energy tending to it? 

Don't forget to stretch your limbs upward like my leafy palms and celebrate the wind. 
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    Author

    Erin Waterman

    Favorite Wisdom:  
     
    "In nature nothing exists alone."
                                 
                        ~ Rachel Carson
           

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