Episode 1 - Into The Forest
I live the day, sometimes it takes a morning, other times, one text— and I can be lost. I can lose my way in what appears mundane like: “shoot, I forgot to read the Covid protocol and I brought my daughter undressed to hockey practice” tangled up with that sabatuer within: “it’s true, you will never be organized enough, thorough enough, good enough to get these Covid protocol right never mind the other stuff you are getting wrong like texting your mother at the appropriate times so she can be happy” to “K, Bonnie, you know better than that, you can’t make another human being happy.” In the words of poet Martha Postlewaite, “I get lost in the dense forest of my life”.
That’s me. I do get lost and I’m guessing I’m not alone here. We all get lost. In the midst of life’s pulls and pushes, lists and demands, mixed in with our active inner voices, we get lost from ourselves and in doing so we lose our ability to be with others. I want this podcast to explore how we find ourselves, how do we discover those clearings, that spaciousness within to be our deepest complete selves.
Martha Postlewaite writes of this exploration in her poem Clearings:
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.
I was recently rejected, in one of those out of the blue, unexpected punch in the stomach kinds of ways, one of those rejections you don’t share with many, that you get in the mail, and it can stay tucked inside the envelope, and only you need to know. But oh my, what a horrible feeling…. the bramble in my inner forest got so thick and uncomfortable, I could no longer see the sky, nevermind the path
While in the thicket of that emotional bramble (that lasted almost 6 months…especially at 3 in the morning), I trudged through the tangled branches, whacking away at the voices, especially the ones that said I wasn’t enough.
When I look back, though, at what I was whacking at: I was getting rid of the extraneous stuff, the expectations of who I should be in this world that I am not while laying out before me the stepping stones of what I am. Then taking firm steps on those stones with, yes, this is who I am.
Something fierce came of that work. A clearing. And when I stood in that clearing, I made a commitment to this podcast that came out of a solid claim, a solid step: I write to speak.
When in the forest, we get an opportunity to claim the events of our life. We get to thwack away to know who we are as much as we get to know who we are not and with that knowing, we get to be fierce.
Something fierce came out of my 6 months of work. In that wide open space, that clearing, I stood alone and exposed to myself. In that space, I made a commitment: I will find more homes where I write to speak, and in those homes, meaningful conversations will become, and in those conversations that ebb and flow alongside silence, all of us — dear Katharine, our dear listeners, and me….we’ll be invited to tend to the forest of our lives, anticipating, again and again, those clearings where we can discover our voice, our place in the world.
And so, a Circle of three begins.
As you reflect, we invite you to consider the following questions:
How would you tell the story of an ‘in the forest’ moment in your life? How do you recognize that you are there?
In that inner forest, how do you feel? What messages are you receiving there?
How do you experience the process of “whacking or shedding the extraneous stuff’ in your story? What muscles are you strengthening? How does this serve you?
A Deeper Invitation
Go into the forest. Go off the path. Sit amongst the trees and the bramble. Listen. What does the forest have to teach you?
Episode 1 Resources
Eternal Echoes - John O’Donahue
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/01/11/eternal-echoes-john-odonohue-belonging/
