Freedom and wholeness

 

Trees,

When we moved to a small cottage on the BC west coast, I found it to be surrounded by trees. These weren't just any trees - they were the firs, the cedars, the hemlocks of a rain forest. The trees were massive at 100s of feet high, tapering from enormous moss covered trunks. And this was my home - literally for three years.

I was 5-8 at the time. It was a difficult time of life. The trees would get me through it. They were my escape. They were, my life. I would climb and climb and climb. I would find my favourite massive branch and literally sit back on the bow with legs dangling and breathe in the damp smell of the forest. I contemplated a lot about my limited knowledge thus far of life. The worst part of my day was when my mother stood below yelling at me to get down for a bite to eat.

//She didn't seem to care that I was 200 feet - a 6 year old - in the air. My safety didn't seem to matter to her - a fact I was very aware off. Yet, anytime my brother made an attempt up a tree she nearly keeled over crying in fright for him to come back down. That would be a theme//

We would move - which became a regular pattern. A beautiful - and haunted - old house. It had trees. There were some fruit trees. But it was the four massive fir trees that stood closely together on one corner of the property. We were on a hill; and, climbing 100ft in the air, I could see the volcano of Mount Baker across the Fraser valley. I was very troubled there too, in my haunted house, in my tree where I took refuge. 

//Of note I wasn't entirely alone. I developed the first two friendships of my life. They wouldn't last. The friendships would be ripped away from me. Rabbie would be sent to live for a few months to his extended family in the Punjab. He would come back after being indoctrinated. We had been close, very close. I would say that despite our young age of nine it was a romantic relationship. We held hands. We promised ourselves to one another forever. He was a joy I had never experienced before in my life. But he came back not allowed to talk to girls anymore. I cried when his granma pulled him away from me and smack him across the face for daring to touch my hand. Melanie would be quite similar to me. I would learn as an adult of the abuses she endured. Her sister was handicapped and she would tell me her mom was later diagnosed with a personality disorder. Tough (I think my mom was diagnosed, un-medicated bipolar). When we moved just a year later I lost touch with Rabbie. Only in adulthood would I track down Melanie. She faced hardship to a horrible degree. A very far right religion the family followed. She was forced at age 14 to marry a 60 year old man and join a militia group in Georgia. She would escape that life but it would take her two years to get back across the Canadian border by way of an underground railroad of those who would help her situation. She arrived at the Peace Arch at the border of British Columbia and Washington State with an undocumented baby, no documents of her own, and $20 American dollars. Ugh//

The forest across the street from our next house would be an escape too - when I had opportunity to do so.

At the age of 15 however, we would move yet again and there were no trees to be had except for a line of cedars in a hedge. Ugh. It was a very hard time physically and emotionally. I had no escape whatsoever.

Then came university, several abusive relationships and no trees and the hardest times of my life.

And then it happened...

I was able to pull myself out of the pattern. In the new year of 2010 I ran away from everything. I found myself and made myself a new home. I surrounded myself with art. For the first time I had friends to surround me too. While there were no trees on the property there were for others. But.... I could see trees and mountains in the not too far distance. And there.... I knew.... were trees.

I would visit those trees and spend as much time as I could in them, under them, with them.

The photo? Saltry Bay, Sunshine Coast,British Columbia 2021