Tree Healing

This is going to sound crazy.

Allow me to get a bit woo woo for a moment.

At the risk of sounding completely unprofessional and having people decide not to work with / hire me, I have a story to tell.

But first, a little backstory.

I’d had an incredibly smooth pre-Christmas season. No stress. None of the things one tyicallly complains about. Everything- smooth. Within two weeks I had planned on hosting three events, and I had everything under control.

But, as has been par for the course for the last four months, disaster struck.

My daughter had norovirus at exactly 2 am Christmas morning. I know this because I too was up at 2 am Christmas morning, listening to her, checking in on her, trying to go back to sleep but feeling guilty… it was going to be a long day. That same day I was supposed to host a retro-themed Christmas dinner. Well. That got cancelled. Sorry to all.

As much as I hate having to ruin people’s Christmas dinner, what I hate more is vomiting.

Yes- I’m a holistic practitioner, and I have an irrational fear of vomit. Yours. Mine. Ours. All of it. Can’t clean it. Can’t smell it. Can’t see it. I’ll vomit. Even my own. Nope. Can’t.

Having been a mom of three kids, I’m sure I have had to work through this, but I have to admit - I have very little recollection of that. I think I must have trained my little ones from an early age to limit my exposure or something. Im not quite sure. Regardless, the stomach bug was in my house, and I knew there was little chance of me escaping unscathed from one of my most dreaded parts of life.

That night I suspected if it was going to get me, it would be this night. However I woke up the next morning feeling right as the rain. Not sick. Score.

That day I figured I was in the clear, and I was getting antsy. I had spent the entirety of Christmas Day in my pajamas taking care of Heidi and trying to make Christmas as normal as possible, while spending a lot of time on my couch watching Little Women (1949 edition, obv) and It’s a Wonderful Life. But the day AFTER Christmas I was restless.

So I decided it was time to get some homesteading work done helping my husband pull in and split some wood.

Then, it happened.

Around midday my stomach began to cramp. Bad cramps. Fist to the gut cramps. Those cramps. It's coming.

I was in my coveralls out in the woods, and as I doubled over in pain I noticed a little tag hanging from a bare branch, not unlike all the other dormant branches in the woods, which read Serviceberry.

Aw snap! I totally forgot about this! I love when Past Amy hooks up Future Amy like that. This reminded me that this one little crooked tree was the only Serviceberry I had found on my property. It hit home because I had just begun reading The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and these are not a plant I'm familiar with.

Had I not bent over in discomfort I wouldn’t have seen my little metal tag. My momentary giddiness soon fled as another wave of stomach contortion took over, and I braced myself on the cherry tree beside me. This is it. It’s here.

For some reason I felt the need to stay outside. I decided if I was going to get sick, for now, anyway, I’d rather lay on the carpet of oak leaves than on my bathroom floor.

Before I hunkered down, I decided to try to make the most of whatever time I had left outside by visiting my Grandmother Trees. There are these two ginormous Tulip Poplars in our woods, and I always find them a source of comfort. I walked down to my Grandmothers. The path always leads me to the big one first, like taking turns saying hello. Always in that order.

I rested my forehead against my favorite- the first one. Placing my palms against her rough bark, allowing my fingertips to find ridges and deep folds, I begged God to not let me throw up.

I realize how ridiculous this sounds for a 42 year-old woman to be that terrified of the stomach bug. Yes- it’s not that big a deal. It is for me.

Wrapping my arms around the mighty girth of her trunk- my arm span nowhere near half her circumference, I pleaded again. I smooshed my nose against her bark and breathed in deep. PLEASE heal me.

Making my way over to her sister, I again wrapped my arms around her trunk.

For the record, I’ve never done this before. This is not a normal occurrence for me. I just really really didn't want to be sick for the next eight hours.

I continued my lazy walk through the woods, looking for mushrooms, clearing paths, the usual mindless meanderings. And eventually I realized- no more cramps.

Weird. Probably a fluke. So I kept walking.

There’s a lot you can explore and work on with a few acres of forest. I spent three more hours doing so, feeling totally healthy again.

Yeah- it’s weird. I can’t put a finger on what made a difference. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe it was taking my mind off of it by distracting myself in the woods.

I’d like to think there was something else going on. That maybe the Earth had a hand in my healing. That listening to my gut (haha) and staying out in the woods on a cold and dreary day in December to immerse myself in the soil and the trees was part of the healing.

Maybe God heard my prayers in a way that doesn’t typically happen for most of us? In the end, whether I give the credit to Mother Nature or to Father God, to me it’s all the same. And either way, my healing took place in those woods.

The power of trees.