Recovery Writers Prompt—Trees and your Higher Power
What can trees tell me about recovery? First, trees are part of nature, a place where many in recovery find their Higher Power. The Redwood trees in Muir Woods, California, also embody the power of “holding on,” as they survive on little water and build a complex interconnected root system to support their height. I use trees as a metaphor for the Higher Power of my community in recovery. They quite literally “hold me up,” often in ways I don’t see.
When I visited, I saw a group of Redwoods in Muir Woods called The Cathedral Grove, a cluster of redwoods in a circular pattern, formed when a main trunk was damaged and a number of new shoots grew up around it. As these trees are 600 – 800 years old, this cathedral is ancient. In 1945, leaders of 41 nations gathered in the cathedral grove in a memorial to Franklin Roosevelt, founder of the United Nations. The photograph of these men from many lands, seated on folding chairs beneath one of the most magnificent of nature’s monuments, is both inspiriting and sobering.
I use this metaphor in a poem I wrote, juxtaposing the grandeur and power of the trees with my daughter’s eating disorder, over which I was powerless..
Valley of Shadows
The winding road descends from sun-struck hills to reach Muir Woods, where redwoods rise three hundred feet enveloped in thick fog.
Dwarfed by massive trunks of battered bark, my daughter’s legs are twigs. She thinks she’ll reach perfection if she starves herself.
These trees survive the summer’s drought on filigrees of fog that drift in from the sea, catch on their needles, condense,
fall to the forest floor. They grow in circles, shelter shoots that sprout from trunks. Their roots entwine with those nearby to hold each other up.
She is beyond the reach of roots, the comfort of the scent of loam, of sea spray, new growth, and decay.
Yet when I reach down with my hand, she takes it as she did when she was six, when I knew all the ways to keep her safe.
Connection to Recovery:
The image of the trees holding themselves up, with their
roots in a circle, reminds me that in recovery I am not alone.
I have others to help hold me up. It also reminds me that
I need to be those roots for other people in recovery,
working slowly, sometimes unseen, in order to keep
holding them up. My daughter did eventually recovery,
with the aid of many other helpers, who acted as redwoods
to hold both of us
PROMPT:
1.Write about the life force of nature and its resilience.
Use any part of nature that appeals to you.
How do you connect to that power?
2.Imagine that an object in nature is a source of wisdom.
Let it speak to you about any problem you can’t seem to solve.
