Heart Talk #004: Rewilding
My experience with the colors of grief.
I dwell. I wonder. I delight. I break. I bleed. I marvel. I heal. I grow. I let life live me. I (try to) make sense of it all & then I write.
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October 2022.
Paris, 5th arrisdonment.
“The sun won’t set any later than 6:00pm in NYC again until March 12th, 2023,” the New York Metro Weather Twitter account reminded me this week. I reminded the houseplants. They took it better than I did.
In fact, like much of what comes from nature, the plants have become my metaphor for the long winter’s season. A duration of time that requires durability and tenderness. It occurs every year, and every year I am met with a somewhat fraught and unsatisfying reckoning. The urge to do, to make, to output, to show up publicly as proof of said aforementioned output. This concept hangs over my head always, but holding myself to arbitrary metrics just simply isn’t conducive nor very kind!
I’ve no green thumb in actuality, nor any permanent residence with horticulture to see its success or failure through the winter months. Yet the humble houseplant has a gentle reminder: to survive, we must first die and trust that there is a season for everything. No matter what season we find ourselves in, I think that all humans have a common core: to be constructively good — for themselves or for their loved ones (and hopefully perhaps the greater community).
So what do we do with this yearning? What if we are in a season of depletion? What if we are in a season of grief? What if we are in a season of yellow? What if we are in a season of grey? What if we are in a season of becoming? What if we are in a season of too much? How does it all fit against the tapestry of modern-day life?
There was a season of life where I was buried in sadness, eager to heal, but seemingly sentenced to be lost forever.