HOPE
I was sitting
in my lounge chair with a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean.
One of the Books I took with me
to read on vacation was Jane Goodall's book on Hope. As I started reading a never seen before flock of NENE,the state bird of Hawaii, walked by. Jane's power was clear.
She believes, as do I, we must be very clear about all the bad stuff and be working on it to have HOPE. Hope does not come from a "happy go lucky" view. It comes from knowing the truth and grieving it and then getting through your grief to take action.
Jane always uses Narratives to
Illuminate this point. On pages 69-71 she talks about 2 Trees
that in the scheme of things should not be thriving but they are.
She calls them 2 sacred trees;
one is at the NYC 9-11 memorial and the other is in Nagasaki, Japan.
One rose from the devastation of the atom bomb we dropped on Nagasaki & Hiroshima.
Actually it is two camphor trees that are thriving. They have marks on their trunks from where they were marred but they still get leaves and continue to live & thrive.
The second is the Callery pear Tree that was discovered by a cleanup worker (Rebecca Clough) a month after the attack. It was crushed between 2 blocks of cement. Only a charred half a trunk and charred black roots that were broken plus one living branch existed when it was found.
It is now planted at the NYC 9-11 memorial and is full and leafy and thriving!
Logically neither of these trees should be here. They should have died a long time ago but they both are thriving.
Jane points out there is a resilience in nature we can learn from.
Some of you have shown the same resilience and ability to adapt as the 9-11 tree and the Nagasaki tree.
Some of you made sure you supported the folks who were having a hard time so they too would survive.
Have you noticed that every time you support another you get supported as well?
That is why we do so much work in connecting women to each other, because through relationship and shared intellect we can ALL survive!
So here's the question I'd like you to ponder, "Are you a tree that can survive trauma or not?"
So many of the Holocaust Survivors have already died some are still with us in their 90's. All of them were "Survival Trees" They experienced great trauma but still survived and thrived having families of their own.
Do you react with resilience, adaptability & hope or do you succumb?
So again I ask are you a tree that survives and thrives or not?
Susan
We welcome your comments
