Self-Healing In The Arc Of Tree Bark
My childhood was splattered with nature adventures and endearing chats with animals and trees. I’d climb trees, talk to trees, heal trees, talk “with” salamanders, hear the whispers of bugs and birds, and levitate in the realms of wonder sparked by being outside all day. I'd channel my Higher Self in the woods without even knowing I was, I'd feel connected to spirit in all forms, I'd experience prophetic psychic premonitions, I'd journey into multidimensional realms, and everything was clear in my body and beliefs. I wrote what I saw, heard and felt, and I thrived in the spiritual awakening.
Inspired by my observations of how nature healed, I believed in my body as a portal through which healing innately occurred as well and how the healing could be amplified simply by believing. How did a tree thrive despite the patch of bark a woodpecker pecked off? How did a salamander’s injured tail know how to regenerate? How did barn swallow parents embody resilience in the aftermath of two of their young chicks falling to their death from the nest? How did the deer who’d been hit by a car stand up, limp away, know to lick the gaping wound in intervals, and endure in that moment as well as years later with three fully functional legs?
Healing is our blueprint soul self’s breath. Healing knows. And so it is a divine truth that nature knows. The wilderness of our multidimensional self knows. Each cell and each epiphany knows. And what I have discovered again and again from my healing experiences is that the language of the spirit empowers healing. It empowers the knowing. It is instinct that we know. It is instinct that we heal. The power of our words, both said, scribed, and silent, is medicine. Words are vibrational entities with poignant purpose. They heal us because they are the empowerers of energetic alignment in cell and spirit. Just as symptoms occur to show us imbalances in our multidimensional self, words follow in the footsteps of those symptoms to heal us. This is the language of spirit. And what magnifies the healing even more is writing in the midst of trees.
Trees are the sentinels of our spiritual growth on Mother Earth. Trees provide us with the pages in our journal upon which we pour from our heart in writing the words that compose the language of spirit unique to each of us.
And so, it is the sacred medley of trees, writing, and healing that empowers us to cultivate our gifts with spiritual grace so we can be fully present on the planet.
Here are some examples of how I’ve empowered my own healing throughout 52 years.
Mind
Ruminations of various forms of abuse
Of trauma
Of guilt and shame
Of the failure to listen to my highly-tuned intuition
And I learned to meditate
And imagine trees wrapping their branches around me
And imagine me wrapping my arms around trees
And I write poems about the trees
Tributes to the whirling thoughts and emotions
Stirring and striking at my conscience and heart
Incessant torment eased
By the wisdom and spirit
Of the ancient angels adorning the thickets
Of forest and fragility
And I ask the big banyan,
“Upward I gaze at you, and how may I gaze upward in life too?”
The silence of roots and the arc of bark responds,
“Root to rise.”
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Heart Murmur
Born with a beat to my own drum
Doctors mark the chart
Label
Reinforce
Concern, concern, concern
Born with a beat to my own drum
I hug a birch tree
The relatives of the ones I climbed as a child
With the murmur pulsing
Pumping, thumping
I honor the rhythm my heart chose for itself
Knowing the cadence of music ebbs and flows
And I write that in my journal
And in my conscience
And in my heart
Sudden
The ebb and flow
Initiates a new beat
Murmur-less
And my heart is just fine
As fine as it was with the murmur
Because that’s music
That’s the lyric
The first line
The last line
And all the lines in between
That says
“Born with a beat to my own drum.”
I write it repeatedly
The song that never ends
The song that fades the hollowness of murmurs
Murmuring then mum
Words silencing the silence
Words wholing the hole in the heart
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Asthma
Baby
Lying on my back in a hospital crib
I’m cold
Wires connecting me to machines
I can’t roll over
I’m stuck
I see a light through the tears
No one is there
I’m alone without warmth and breath
I’m suffocating
Then
Inhalers in my overalls
That I wear every day
Just in case I have an attack
Lots of attacks
Lots of anxiety
Spraying into my lungs
For temporary ease
Then
I am 36 and inhalers adorn
All corners of my life
The latest and the best, they say
I enroll in a Yoga Teacher Training
I have options for my Thesis
I’m sick of the lung dope
Chronic bronchitis
Chronic discomfort
Chronic burning in chest and choice
Thesis choice
I choose Alternative Asthma Therapies
Inversions for blood flow
Holding breath on exhale for CO2 elevation
Art therapy
My lungs as wings
Wordplay for wellness
Sudden
My lungs laugh at dire drugs
Sudden
Radical intolerance of reliance
Sudden
Breath flows
I refuse to take my inhaler
On a bike ride
I have an attack
I pedal home breathless
I use yoga blocks to support
My headstand
That I hold for 45-minutes
I hold my exhales
I wordplay rhyme
I’m hung here for lungs to clear
I’m a willow tree, branches sweep away fear
I repeat
I’m hung here for lungs to clear
I’m a willow tree, branches sweep away fear
I cough out the bronchial gunk
I come down from the pose hold
And hold my journal
And write the rhyme
Again and again
The mantra, the medicine, the magic
I never have an attack after that
Ever
Inhalers tossed
Co-dependence lost
Internal validation born
The power of words, new cells adorn
All of me
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Jaw
Car out of control
Hit telephone pole
Whiplash
Face had pushed steering wheel under dashboard
ER determines broken jaw and nose
No surgery
“You’ll heal on your own.”
Pain and popping
TMJ
Wear splint at night
Journal about stardust healing my jaw
No pain
26 years later
Pain and popping
Dentist says, ‘You need surgery.”
Orthodontist says, “You need surgery.”
Surgeon says, “You report no pain, so I don’t recommend surgery.”
I journal about the car accident
Dear Jaw, what do you need from me?
Dear Jess, I need for you to accept me, for you to trust me.
“Your jaw wants to be exactly as it is. It chose this path.”
I surrender
I believe
I write and connect and believe
I accept and trust
No pain
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Leg Infection & Gut Biome
Bike crash
My left shin shredded in a blender
One slash is deep
I care for it
It gets infected regardless
ER visit
A doubledose of antibiotics
“Uncostumary,” says the doctor,
“But in order to avoid possible amputation and save your life …”
Drugs rot my gut biome
Sudden
Anxiety
Sudden
Depression
Sudden
Insomnia
Sudden
Dark thoughts
Life-ending
I call my parents
“Save me, please.”
Flat-lined soul tone.
Self-admitted to the psyche ward
Four nights of atrocious ensnarement
Leg throbs
Mind scared
Brick walls are the view out of my room’s window
Are the view out of my mind’s window
I write that I am not a victim
That my left shin is the rudder
That propelled death in my gut
That held the hand of this imprisonment
Where I have time to rewrite
The rewriting of my physiology
Where I have time to say no to the drugs
Offered for a quick fix
Where I have time to say yes to the hugs
Offered for a slow fix
I know
That I can heal myself
And I regenerate my leg and gut my way
A lilac tree seed roots in the largest scar
And sprouts and grows
Spiraling upward int0 my gut
It takes three years
To root and rise
To feel myself again
The story of it written
From the stars to my spirit to my stomach
The largest scar fades to nonexistent
The echo of it digested in the power of words
In the aroma of the lilac tree that blossomed yearround for me
That mirror the echo’s knowing
That healing happens
Sudden
Surrender
Sudden
Seeing and believing
The remedy stirring
In the sacred medley of words said, silent, and written
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Gut In The Aftermath
In the aftermath of the leg infection
I was plagued with recurring stomachaches
36 hours in bed at a time
Daggers to intestines
Incapacitated and delirious
And waiting
Time’s runt
No rhyme or reason
Except the rhyme that eases
“Soothe the smoothe move”
A bowel movement, a celebration
Amidst the shadow of wondering
When the next occurrence would strike
Empowered words on page
Assonance on my side
“It’s time to emerge and eradicate.”
Alliteration on my side
“It’s time to dispel the distress.”
And the fangs of it react to the frequency
And I’m on the floor,
In the tub,
In bed,
Wretched for days
Sudden
The worst of one
Wretched for weeks this time
I spew assonance and alliteration
I envision myself cradled in the crux
Of a great white pine tree
Where the sap drips and sticks to the darkness
That swallows me from the inside out
And the exorcism completes itself
And I’m free
Replenishment on my side
Stardust in the galaxy of my gut
Where it’s always been
Just beastly enshrouded for awhile
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Collarbones
I broke my right collarbone in a bike crash
And 22 years later
I broke my left collarbone in a bike crash
Oh, bikers and their collarbones
All the poems I’ve written
Commemorating the strength of bikers
And their collarbones
Bold breaks, both of them
Right healed … connected
Left healed … disconnected
But, the left one was connected in spirit
It told me in a poem at 3:00AM
So I wrote it down
Capturing its language of spirit
“Bones floating, but connected in spirit.”
Like the the limb of a tree
Struck by lightning, cast downward
To the ground, charred and limp
Yet, lying at the base of the tree
Still a part of the anatomy
Decomposition inspiration for new growth
In a new way
All in the body of the forest
All in the forest of the body
And so it is.
Like all of my wounds, my collarbones speak
And I’m their scribe
Scribing their healing vibing
Imbibing the energetic flow in the floating
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Miscarriages
Two in a row
In a marriage on the outs
I am alone with the imaginary belly
Both times
Revealing in dreams
The whispers of souls
I scramble in the dark upon waking
And find my journal
With fingertips
With frenzy
I write the whispers of their wisdom
“We arrived, we stayed, we left.
The cycle of life and death.
The anticipation of our manifestation
Arrived, stayed, and left.
The cycle of life and death.
Grateful for the whisp of time
Yet, time and circumstance is a mirage, so together still.
The cycle of life and death.”
And I fill the pages as full as I am.
As full as a bulbous rhododendron tree
Bulging and bodacious like me
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Rashes
Tragic experiences corroding in swells
Irritated emotions sticking in cells
So, acrostic remedies
Rough skin
A
Sign of inward
Healing outward
Ending
Symptoms when they’ve served their purpose
The letters climbing a redwood tree
Wild wordplay splashing like the sunrays
That sneak thorough the wild canopy
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
Head & Heart
Soul scribing for language of spirit revelations
Dear Spirit,
Do tell me what to know …
And logic surrenders to heart
Feelings surrender to head
In the middle they meet
Where clarity resides
Where ascension guides
The wonder to intuit all that is already known
In the wilderness of the self
In the wilderness of the aspen grove
Entangled resplendently in intention and faith
And I know all I need to know.
Healed.
I always was.
I always am.
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