When we seek belonging, nature responds
Tears spilling down my cheeks, I slip on my sandals and slowly move down the winding lanes of the orchard valley that was my home. (Is my home? What is home? Where do I belong?) My feet carry me to the marshes growing from the creek that winds through the orchards and behind my childhood home and along the road. Between houses newly planted, I slip down into the tall weeds and crouch amidst the tall purple thistles and wild wheat and yellow snapdragons, lingering until my legs grow numb and tingle painfully. My eyes and my heart soak in the remaining patches of what once was nature’s sanctuary for my aching child heart.
I used to come here when I was sad and alone and rejected. I come here again, so many years later. So much has changed, and yet, some things never do.
What is it about place that anchors us in belonging? My eyes thirstily consume the cattails and wild roses and bachelor buttons I’ve known since my pigtail days, as though clawing for a handhold to stop my spirit’s inner free-fall.
When we seek belonging, nature responds.
Nature connects us to our felt sense, a wordless space where emotions move through like water. It is a balm of healing. When we are in green or blue spaces, we breathe a bit more deeply. We exhale into an expansive space that has room to contain all that we release. We come home to self.
Research shows that time in nature is intrinsically healing, reducing depression and anxiety1. It enhances our senses, our cognition, our attention, our problem-solving, our social skills, and most importantly, our sense of peace2. Our psychology drives us to nature because it is a return to source.
Nature grounds us. Whether we recognize it or not, the flora and fauna that fill our senses connect us to a greater home than the fragile and fleeting ones we emerge from or construct for ourselves. I came back to the nature that once sheltered or at least soothed me from the pain of rejection, but in a deeper sense, I came back to the nature that tells me I belong.
I belong to the earth.
When others scorn my belonging, nature receives me. Nature reminds that we are part of this beautiful organism that pulses with life, the life that beats through our bodies, the life that we contribute to and our bodies at their end will continue to sustain as new forms emerge from our own ashes. Nature is our first and most inclusive mother, our nurse, our guide, and our home.
When you are feeling broken, resist the urge to curl into a ball and burrow in bed and instead, lovingly carry the pieces of yourself outside. Find a patch of grass or escape to a mountain, creek, forest, or lake. Root down and feel the earth beneath you: this magnificent marble that sustains you with nutrients, atmosphere, rain, and sun. That sustains us all. From which we emerge and to which we will return. And in so sustaining each of us, recognize that we all are connected. We are all one with the earth and therefore, we are one with each other.
Nature is not just place or therapy, though it is both; it is us, and we are it, and we are one – even when others forget.