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While the science suggests that nature is good for us, that it calms our nervous systems, lowers our blood pressure, and makes us healthier, the truth is nature probably doesn’t do that for everyone.
There is a real thing about fear in nature. Fairy tales tell us to fear the dark forest through which we cannot see. Our minds tell us that what we can’t predict is dangerous. And there’s some truth to that. Nature is also an open slate for our projections. Nature won’t resist them. So, it’s possible to spend time in nature and see the things we are most afraid of, things that seem brutal, dominating, and cruel. If that’s what we see in nature we may be deeply afraid of being further brutalized by spending time outdoors. It’s true that some people will not feel comforted by nature. But there is an opportunity here. That is, no matter how you feel about what you notice in the natural world, how does that reflect what you are thinking? That is, you might see something in nature that makes you feel… yes, good, grounded, relaxed, etc… and/or agitated, worried, vigilant? I remember walking in the forest near my house for exercise sometimes with the thought that I would receive this gentleness and blessing of the forest while I walked. But when I was on the trail, I also noticed that I was worried and anxious… less about animals like coyote or mountain lion… and more about people. Men in particular. The fear that I might be attacked around any corner was deeply and persistently present. It gave me the opportunity to feel and understand all of the fears I had in my life that were keeping me in a situation that I didn’t like. My walks in the forest were metaphors for my life at large and allowed me to the opportunity to see and become aware of my own fears. There were a few ways I came to find more comfort and blessing in the forest, but the most important part was to be reflective so that I could base my excursions into the forest on something that was true to my current moment, rather than keeping away from the things that could potentially comfort me. That is, once I recognized how I was projecting my fear of the unknown on the forest, I could decide more clearly if I felt it was truly unsafe, or if my visit to the forest with self-awareness was actually going to be therapeutic. I wish I could tell you a story of grace and redemption in the forest. I wish I could say that while my early personal and social life was so hard, nature saved me, gave me a sense of belonging, and made me feel that things were going to be OK. But that’s not really what happened. I grew up in the suburbs. My dad liked the outdoors, but it always involved an activity or sport like snow skiing, water skiing, or gardening. My parents weren’t the wilderness types. We didn’t camp to immerse ourselves in nature, we did it to be near a lake for skiing, or to go hiking with a goal. It wasn’t about pleasure or relaxation. So, honestly I didn’t really feel comforted by nature when I was a kid. I was lucky enough to live near the ocean for part of my childhood, and I knew that was compelling and lovely. I fell in love with individual oak trees when I lived in Southern California. I dreamed of coral reefs and ocean animals, but didn’t know a lot about either. It was that compulsion toward a nature I did not know that lead me to studying the ocean. I didn’t know how to just be with it, in order to have a relationship I thought I had to study it. So I did. And I got a couple of really gorgeous jobs that took me to remote islands for months at a time. Some of that was a struggle. It was good to be away from so many people (usually the island crews were small… 2-5 people). And, I had experience living with little, so not having electricity or running water didn’t feel particularly alarming, even though I’d never really lived that particular kind of minimalism before. The hard part was finding out what nature is really like. The hard part was living on an island with seabirds for whom it’s commonplace to lay several eggs, and for the first to hatch to kill the others as they break through their eggs. It isn’t always quick or efficient. It can feel brutal and cruel. I’ve also listened to mother elephant seals cry out for their dead or missing pups, and I’ve seen the carcasses of seabird chicks decay around piles of plastic they were fed unknowingly by their parents. It’s hard to be in the world… for sure. And that’s always going to be true. There’s no enlightenment in nature, unless you define transcendence to mean learning to be with things as they are. Sometimes we hear people say “there is only the here and now”, but that’s only kind of true. I mean, it is true that we can only act now… we can’t go back to the past and change things. We are not only embedded in the right here right now, we bring with us the patterns, biases, and understandings of the past. We are not free from our own histories. So, how does nature help us? It doesn’t help us by being perfect and showing us how to “do it right”. It doesn’t help us because it’s inherently good or romantic. It helps because nature is somewhere safe where we can project our stuff. The natural world isn’t going to react to how we see it or what we think of it. Nature is neutral to the workings of the human mind in that regard. What isn’t neutral is what we see back. What we see in nature is a reflection of what is already true in us. If I think back to my walking in the woods story, the forest reflected back to me that I was afraid of all the ways I couldn’t see how to move forward. I couldn’t see what the real threats were to my safety and well-being. I was afraid of so many things that were unnamed, and those things were keeping me to the path someone else created. That’s fine sometimes, it’s nice to travel in the footsteps of pioneers before us, and it’s not fine when it feels like it’s costing too much of your sense of self. And that’s where I was at the time. I knew I was not on my life path, I knew I wasn’t doing what my heart felt was mine to do in the world, but I was so afraid of all the things I was unsure of, that I couldn’t deviate. I wasn’t brave enough to make my own way. The forest was neutral on the whole thing. It turned out that by naming and facing all of the other stuff in my life, I realized the forest wasn’t unsafe. Not where I was walking. That forest loop held me as I transformed my relationship with the unknown. I walked there often. The way I’ve told this story looking back on it may make it seem like I knew what I was doing there… but at the time I really didn’t. It’s only in retrospect that I understand the overarching theme of what I was doing there. And even now, this is just my story. This is my experience with nature and the forest and learning to see my own reflection. But maybe this won’t be your story. I’m just making room here for us to be scared, joyful, open, clear, reflective, and true to ourselves. And things can always change in the future. Maybe now it is scary to be in the forest alone, maybe it won’t be later. Or maybe it always will be. It’s OK, however it is.
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When our struggles become overwhelming and push us into corners that we feel we can’t get get free from, then it can be helpful to turn to nature. People have divorced themselves from nature, we have language that describes nature as unalive, not feeling, simply a resource. And this implies that its value lies in what we can get from it (and particularly, how much money we can make from it). We don’t perceive ourselves as having to operate by the same patterns and principles as nature. But what if we did? Indigenous people and some lingering practices from inside of extractive cultures remind us that it wasn’t always like this. There are other ways to perceive our relationship with nature. Landscape of Mothers encourages us to explore this new but ancient way of relating to earth and her inhabitants. As we do this it is important that we reconnect with our own ancestral path, and that we do not use someone else’s way. Even if our lineage of nature relationship has been lost, we can claim a new relationship with earth that is mutual through research of our family line, and most importantly, through our own bones and our own experience. Landscape of Mothers is a framework for having our own experience of nature, that can be mutual, interactive, and contemplative.  But how does this happen? It happens because we intentionally step into a process with nature that facilitates a deeper relationship. Like any relationship it needs frequency, spaciousness, and reciprocity. So, we create a pattern out of those needs. We need to visit at a frequency appropriate to the kind of relationship we want to have. That is, if we want to go deep, it helps to visit more often. This is akin to how often we visit or interact with our friends. This is where we establish reliability and stability for all parties involved. It doesn't require perfection or rigidity, but a devotion and the creation of an ongoing conversation.  We also want to intentionally create spaciousness, and by that I mean flexibility to listen, to simply be together, and to allow the meeting to take up space in you. This is a practice of letting the relationship touch you in ways you don't expect, making room for what you can learn from the natural world. Quiet, curiosity, and slowness tend to this part of the relationship. In the reciprocity of the relationship we can access depth. Not only only are we spending time in nature getting to know it, we are letting it know us. You can see animals respond to your presence in the wild, but do you know that the trees and plants do too? It makes sense, that our life force energy sees, notices, and responds to one another. (See the book The Secret Life of Trees for some spectacular stories about this).  The parallel here is that if we want to change our family culture, we need somewhere new to build relationships that uphold the values and dynamics we wish to become more fluent with. Nature is a powerful place to begin this exploration because trees are non-judgmental as to where you are beginning from, and they release chemicals that interact with your nervous system that are calming. This is why it so often feels like a relief when you step into the forest. Let the blessing wash over you.
What does it mean to have regard for someone? For yourself? The origin of the word regard is Old French and is made up of “re-“ which means back, and “garder” which means “to guard”. Regarder (the Old French verb) means “to watch”. So, regarding is watching or seeing in a way that is protective, that circles back to safety. The way I think of it, regard is about allowing someone to have their full humanity. That includes the imperfections, the suffering, the disagreement, the joy and their right to choose their perspective. It means that they are not disposable, that it is not OK to shame or punish them, to tell them what their experience is, and it means that banishment or exile is not on the table. Regard does not, however, require me to agree with them. Holding someone in their humanity means that our fundamental orientation is that they deserve respect and dignity. If I disagree with them I do not have the right to infringe on their humanity. If I feel hurt by them I still do not have the right to infringe on their humanity. Regard is being able to set boundaries or make agreements without denying the humanity of any of the people involved.  Regard is like love, in that it’s both a place we stand to see another person, and the way we behave toward them. Like love, if we don’t act in a way that lets the other person know how we feel, then they may not believe in our regard or love. Regard is both the things we hold to be true about someone from our vantage point, and our behavior that communicates our perspective to the other person. It is the acknowledgement of the person, and it is the circling back to the safety and validation of being held as a human worthy of respect. We can also have self-regard. This is the perspective that I hold for myself… one of self-compassion and acknowledgement of my own humanity. The associated behavior is treating myself with respect, honoring that I am having a (likely imperfect) human experience, but that I do not deserve to be shamed, abandoned, or punished… not even by myself. Self-regard holds me to treating myself respectfully, and it holds my inner dialogue to a standard of nourishment and protection rather than criticism and berating. The degrading voice in my head is not mine, it cannot coexist with self-regard. Ultimately, regard is embedded in a culture of shared humanity, care, and connection. It is also the bedrock of such a culture. Regard also feels like a lighthouse, a beacon, for how I want to be in the world. When I don’t know what to do, or how to handle a situation, I can ask myself what regard would look like if it were present… and I can do that. Oh this is so good... I love it when the days get a little shorter, encouraging me to my bed just a bit earlier. I thrive on getting good rest. I love how things slow down after a frantic summer of launching ourselves into travel, gatherings, adventures. I appreciate reclaiming my own inner pace... which is always so much slower than the pace at which the world moves. I stop pushing myself through all the excitement of summer (and honestly, I'm not really good at it... summer is not my most aligned season). Autumn makes the invitation to really settle in and notice the spectacular change of colors, the beauty of the seed pods, the way nature is preparing for her own down time. I feel like I see nature better when the light gets down to a certain angle, when it's not so intense. The play of shadows and light always gets my attention... it's so like life, isn't it? To have both things, right there together...  There's a practice I learned from a therapist years ago about finding your own innate pace... how you feel like moving through the world right here and now. If you are curious what your internal (or natural) pace is, you can get into a place where you have some freedom to move around... and just let yourself start to walk, crawl, roll, or sit in a chair and move your arms, face, roll your neck... it doesn't matter what part you move... what is important is paying attention to how fast, or slow, you want to move.
Let the impetus for movement come from within, from your bones, from your depths. Notice its quality, is it smooth, direct, sinuous, jerky? What does that suggest about what you might want in your current situations (if anything... it doesn't have to). Invite that movement into your repertoire as you move through your day. Today, I am noticing that I crave stillness and rest. I am off to lay down for 10 minutes before my next meeting. I am going to fully surrender to the pace of stillness. And for the rest of the day, I'm going to give myself a moment to take three slow breaths as I transition from one task to another (if I can remember... because that's always more difficult when I get into get-it-done mode). |
Author: Jill CliftonHi, I'm Jill, creator of Landscape of Mothers. I'm here to talk about breaking family patterns of harm so that we can parent our children in ways that support them becoming fully themselves. I'm happy to have you here! Archives
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