Self-Care for Trees and Humans
By Robyn Marie Bors Veraart
Alunisu 2024
When Plum trees get to a certain age, their tops tend to die while the bottom branches begin a new phase of growth in which they look as if they are reaching straight up to the sky in supplication for more life. I was struck by the Regenerative Process of “Pruning,” which, being the caretakers for several small orchards, we engage with on a yearly basis. This year the word “Pruning” allowed me to see the meaning behind the meaning, which I thought I already knew well enough; “pruning” means to lop off the dead parts of a tree to encourage new growth. All good and well. It’s just that, this year, the Plum Trees had finally reached that moment in their lives when the origin of that word could be better understood by me.
I like to take time in the winter to take inventory of my life. I spend time contemplating my relationships. Including my ancestors. All the people I’ve known during my lifetime. All the animals. All the plants. Water. Where I am. The village. The culture. My body. My hemispheres – Right and Left sides of my brain. Air – my breath. My feet. The apples I eat. Everything and Everyone is part of this “taking inventory.” The pruning in he orchards lends me a useful metaphor for this inner process I engage with regularly and has given me the courage to lop off several “tops” when needed.
The word “Pruning” comes directly from the name of the Plum trees in Latin (Prunum). In Romanian, one of the languages of the village where I live in Transylvania, the Plum Trees are called “Prune.” Marvelous for me is how the English language has captured (and I use that term consciously, since English is one of the main colonising languages) the essence of this phase of a Plum Tree’s life cycle and injected it into the language as the way to cut away what is no longer needed or serving new growth.
I could radically overhaul my entire life situation if I needed to. I have done it before; it is what brought me to a village of 100 souls here from one of the large cities in the United States. It was not meant to be a permanent move, and yet, I did take root here. Like a cutting from a willow branch, I had the flexibility and just enough life left in me at age 38 to re-ground myself, and in a more consciously chosen and determined way than I ever had in the country where I was born. After a decade, I could even feel the support of an older ancestral root system supporting me. And now I am thriving. In the midst of all these changes, some of my relationships have come to thrive along with me, and others have become brittle and are not giving pleasure, nor support.
My goal is to cut my own expectations of ever engaging in a life-enriching way with the ones that have become unsupportive. That does not mean that I will not be open to any overtures from anyone, it does mean that I will not keep trying where trying has brought only pain for so long that the branches have dried up wonderfully for starting other fires. When I look at the ratio of what is life-serving – including connections with people I have known for many decades – to what has dried up and shrivelled, I am satisfied that my overall health remains intact and my branches are reaching for the light. I am filled with gratitude that I do not wish to pull myself up by the roots again.
We got some new tools this year which helped us to care for the trees in a way that we sense they feel lighter and happier. A saw attached to a long handle helped Lars to cut even the highest branches. We got together as a family on the sunny days and made piles of the dead branches; to sort them out into compost or kindling and then haul them to their respected and respective places. The trees allow more light to come into the gardens and the ground. The plants will respond in kind. It is a virtuous cycle.
Certain of my relationships – with people or with organisations – have ended. As deliberately and with as much transparency as I could manage with the nonviolence principle of choosing to speak what is most likely to be taken in and found useful. When I know that other people have built thick walls around them, I will not go in and try to rip them down. I guess that I used to do more of that, so this is a piece of myself that I am also cutting ties with. This makes me feel softer. More patient. I think of the immortal words of Leonard Cohen “All hearts to love will come…” I think that this is a law and surely it is written elsewhere, but I hear it most clearly through his voice. And I choose to both expand and limit my heart’s circulation such that those all along its course are fed whole-heartedly. And when anyone comes asking, my heart remains open.
I do believe that the trees feel the same.
May we all live full-heartedly.
May we prune and grow with great care.
Write a comment: