Do you go on intuitive walks? Where you set an intention and then follow your intuitive urges and see what happens? This is one of mine…
My intention: to find a place where I love and accept myself totally. The walk took 44 minutes but I didn’t set a time limit. So much happened. Outside my block of flats I found a Cherry blossom sprig on the grass and felt an urge to pick it up. I followed my inner compass to a road where a line of Cherry trees grow (I wondered if it had come from there). They are covered in Ivy – kind of being throttled by it, yet still blossoming, but not as much as usual. I was reminded of my internalised mother, who is throttling me at the moment as I feel stressed moving into a new version of myself. I am receiving a lot of love from people in my life and that is resetting my nervous system, which sparks off old coping mechanisms of embodied self-criticism in the form of headaches. I am appreciating the protective, albeit misguided, nature of this coping mechanism.
Continuing my walk, I came across an uprooted shrub and I felt shock and sadness. It reflects my sense of trying to settle back into my home after 3 years of living in my van up North to complete my Master’s, where I slept at the sides of canals and regularly immersed in other-than-human nature with limited time in the greyness of towns / cities. I think it may also reflect how a lot of people on this planet might be feeling right now, with the craziness of war and unprocessed trauma being exacted on innocent people. Of course, it also reflects how we’re living our daily lives and how that is choking the planet, although if we make ourselves extinct, she will recover and thrive.
I moved on and, wandering slowly, noticed how life grows in so many places it’s not ‘supposed’ to – every nook and crack is home for a seed to grow.
Nearing home and I see a piece of Ivy laying on the pavement. It seems symbolic, although of what I’m unsure. I lay the Cherry blossom I’ve been holding next to it and leave it there. Two, separate, no longer entangled, yet held in the same place and I feel an internal shift.
I follow an urge to go to the Level (a park near my home in Brighton) and walk near the trees. As I reach the North East corner, my heart swells and I suddenly feel a sense of everything being okay, even in the messy, grittiness. As I leave the Level a song comes to me and despite, my chesty cough, I hum it, sending my gratitude through it to the Earth.
I arrive at my block of flats and the Caretaker is there, chatting with a man I don’t know. When he asks how I am, I tell them I’m poorly (I have a cold). They ask about my symptoms and we briefly chat before he makes a joke about man ‘flu being 10 times worse than childbirth. I shake my head and say I’m sure the population would be less if men gave birth. He talks about disease and war adjusting population size and then asks, “But why do we have war? Is it just in us to be this way?” I say, “No, it’s because of unprocessed trauma passed down through the generations.” He says, surprisingly, “Thank you. I’ll think about that today.”
I omitted to say that we don’t have rituals for people to act out war or initiation ceremonies and such; but it didn’t occur to me at the time, and that’s okay.