I love trees.
I love when they tower over me in shadows and green.
I love the denseness, the smooth moss that grows over the scarred bark.
I love the way the sun can glint and make a single leaf sparkle.
I love to hear the birds I cannot see, to listen to their song and chatter of joy.
I love being covered.
Hidden.
Cocooned.
Listening only to my footsteps on dirt, crunching through pebbles.
My breath.
Labored
but alive.
I have a picture of a tree hanging on the wall in my bathroom.
It is black and white.
There is not room for color in this photo.
Only stillness.
Only a message.
Only the stand.
You can see that the tree was traumatized when it was very small.
Something happened.
Something pushed it off its course, and instead of growing up ....
it leans to the side.
It leans to the side, barely keeping itself off the ground, barely keeping itself from giving up.
It leans.
I wonder what happened to you Tree?
Did someone cut you? Did someone come and try to rip you apart?
Maybe you were in the way, Tree.
Maybe you were in the way when another was cut and torn and as it rolled down, thumping and skidding on dead leaves and broken branches, maybe it hit you. Maybe it didn't mean to, Tree. You were just there.
And so small.
Barely seen.
Maybe it couldn't stop itself, Tree. Maybe it tried.
Maybe it cried, Tree, when it knocked you and hurt you, not knowing if you would survive.
Maybe it whispered, in the black and white forest, "I'm so sorry."
Maybe it said a prayer as it slid past you, farther to the bottom, "please be ok."
Maybe it knew in the center of its marrow, in the sap running out, that you would.
I see you, Tree.
I see you leaning.
I see you holding on.
And then, there you are, Tree, reaching up ...
reaching up to the sky,
reaching for the sun.
You are so beautiful, Tree.
Stretching up, in all your pain and all your sorrow.
Determined.
Strong.
Tree.
You grew!
You didn't stay low to the ground.
You grew.
Straight up to the sky
blooming
with leaves.
And, I know, with color.
This tree hangs in my bathroom.
A reminder.
I gave this tree to my mother.
It hangs in her room.
A reminder.
The courage to grow despite wounds.
XOXO
NOTE: I first saw this tree at a conference, a conference for survivors of abuse, a conference I did not want to go to but am so grateful I did. I sat in a room, full of women and a smattering of men, all of us crying, shaking our leaves for the damage done, and then straightening with the strength of what we knew.
We had survived.
We had grown.
Despite wounds.
Sallie Culbreth wrote a poem about this same tree, called The Courage Tree. It is beautiful. It is what she sees when she looks at this tree.
I am writing what I see.
Photogragh by Dave Dietrich Young.
