Before embarking on my healing journey that the ANFT certified guiding course was a HUGE part of, I was running as fast as I could for years, always trying to stay ahead of myself and the sorrow that slowing down would invite. I was distracting myself with my busy life in order to stifle my yearnings and the inner calling I often felt but was such a pro at suppressing. I was afraid of the silence, did not feel safe in the truth, and was comfortable holding on to the state of numbness. I believed all there was to life was surviving it. After all, I was a Vermonter and that is what I’d been told we do, we survive.
As a little girl, I was abused and afraid, spending hours in the forest. I did not feel the world was a safe place and chose destructive behaviors as my coping mechanisms in order to take care of myself the best I knew how.
It was through my work with plants and being in nature that I discovered something new about myself, I had courage, Olympic-sized courage. I started exploring the new ideas and new thoughts that bubbled up for me in the silence of my walks. I learned to embrace the silence and trust the power greater than me that I connected to. I learned through silence comes inspiration. I spent a lifetime believing that I was not lovable, that I was insignificant and broken. This journey has helped me realize how limiting and untrue those beliefs were. I spent a lot of my energy and effort over the years trying to change everything on the outside and the circumstances that did not make me happy, these changes sometimes lasted only for a day, a week, even a month but the change never stuck around for long. It was not until making changes in the unseen world that my shift occurred. Through my shift, I was able to hear the inner voice with divine clarity telling me no one should grow up feeling like something is wrong with them or that they aren’t good enough…as I had.
To date, I have guided five walks in five different locations. I read somewhere that no two walks are the same and could not agree more. For my first facilitated walk I prepared the most perfect script, or so I thought, and discovered it useless after about two minutes in. I learned the meaning of flexibility – I had to be flexible for the diversity of each group and locations. The faces, settings, and individual experiences may change for each walk, but the duty of a guide does not, and I take that job seriously. Like geese that are incredibly gifted navigators and instinctively know the way across the long haul to warmer climates, so is the job of a guide. We move ahead with confidence and bravery and extend our hands to the next one in line offering love, compassion and support hoping to bring relief to people in pain through just holding space and opening doors to remembering. Being a guide has made me more confident, compassionate, and vulnerable. Every day even more healing comes for me when I allow the stillness to bring awareness of my own needs while mentally speaking my truth in the privacy of the not so private natural world.
Since committing to myself and this guiding journey, I have experienced many changes. Walking and sitting out in nature daily and my desire to be a great guide has led me through hours of research bringing me to new discoveries about myself and my soul’s longings. I found a new passion for taking care of Mother Earth and sharing that new-found love. I now enjoy growing plants, identifying plants and foraging, learning about sustainability and homesteading…the list goes on and on!
My Nature Therapy journey has also shown me that the grass is vividly green exactly where I am! It has brought about an awareness of the oneness of all things with a universal life force and a knowing that we all have a calling compelling us to move forward on our life journey. Nature reminds us to trust the simplicity of right action and placing one foot in front of the other, taking the path of least resistance, stepping into the flow. Deep in our hearts we know that each one of us has amazing potential for creating a happy and healthy life of fulfillment. If I could go back in time to talk to that frightened little girl I once was, I would tell her everything is going to be okay and how very loved and perfect she is. I would also tell her that she will get to run through the forest barefoot again chasing fairies and that she will help others discover healing there too.
“May the long-time sun
Shine upon you,
All love surround you,
And the pure light within you
Guide your way on.”
(Song written by: Mike Heron)
featured image credit: Ellen Snyder