That, perhaps, is the difference between a crisis and a chrysalis. One keeps us frozen in fear. The other slowly reshapes us.
Technically, I’m not even fully in my midlife years yet.
And yet my body arrived early to the party.
A complete hysterectomy fast-tracked me into conversations I thought I still had years to prepare for.
Ironically, some circles don’t allow me in to the conversation because I’m “far too young” to know what menopause is.
It seems my reproductive system retired before society was emotionally prepared to handle it. Medically, I pass the test but I always get ID’d at the door.
I was medically launched into menopause with all the glamorous perks.
Hot flashes. Joint pain. An increasingly fragile relationship with sleep. And the deeply humbling realization that apparently your underarms and mid range can become flabby despite hours of working out at the gym.
(Nothing prepares you for sneezing incorrectly in your 40s.)
My body has adopted the classic expired warranty strategy, catastrophic synchronized failure. I’ve entered the ‘everything squeaks, leaks, or spasms unexpectedly’ chapter of ownership. My body has moved beyond ‘minor repairs’ and into ‘have you considered replacing the whole unit?’ territory.
Which is why a phrase I recently heard on the podcast Hello Menopause! grabbed my attention.
“Midlife chrysalis.”
Not midlife crisis. Midlife chrysalis.
The episode featured Chip Conley talking about reinvention, and I chose to listen to this episode because crisis sounds like collapse. Losing control. Becoming less.
Like panic bangs and plans to live “off-grid” and taking up emotional support hobbies. Sourdough starter anyone?
But chrysalis?
That sounds like transformation.
Messy. Strange. Hidden. Uncomfortable. Necessary.
A chrysalis says. You are not falling apart. You are simply changing form.
I think many of us who have experienced chronic illness, disability, grief, loss, burnout, etc. arrive at this transformation long before the culture expects us to.
Some of us are forced into reinvention before we even finish becoming who we thought we would be.
The Crisis
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.
Sometimes crayon. When I need a little more whimsy in my days.
There were years where survival became the main objective. Years where my nervous system felt like a shaken vending machine full of stress hormones. Years where I thought resilience meant pushing harder instead of listening deeper.
And then came the hysterectomy.
One of those dividing-line experiences where life becomes Before and After.
Before, I still secretly believed if I tried hard enough I might someday return to the old version of myself.
After, I slowly began realizing there may not be a way back. Emotional landslides and experiential cave-ins had blocked that passage way.
Forward and through became my only options. Through self-realizations. Humbling concessions. Constant negotiations between mind and body.
And maybe that is where the chrysalis begins.
The Chrysalis
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
A chrysalis does not look impressive from the outside.
It looks still. Inactive. Even broken down.
But inside? An extraordinary reorganization is happening.
And I think that’s what midlife (or medically-induced midlife-adjacent existentialism) can become.
Not a crisis to survive. But a transformation to participate in. Whole-heartedly.
Chip Conley talked about how the first half of life is often about accumulation.
We gather. Relationships. Responsibilities. Possessions. Roles. Expectations. Obligations. Dreams that once fit.
And eventually we become emotionally overstuffed.
He described midlife as “a great midlife edit.”
As I listened I considered the fact that chronic illness forces the edit whether you volunteer readily or not.
You simply cannot carry everything forever when your body already feels like it’s carrying a weighted backpack full of loose cutlery.
At some point you must ask important questions.
What still fits?
What actually matters?
What has become lukewarm in my life?
Do you know what a lukewarm life looks like? One of the lines from the podcast,
Pouring out part of your tea allows you to pour some hot new tea into the cup.
Because some things are not meant to last forever. Not every friendship. Not every role. Not every expectation you once had for yourself.
And maybe releasing those things is not failure. Maybe it’s pruning.
The forest understands this better than we do.
The Forest
One of the reasons forest therapy has become so meaningful to me is because the forest never panics about transformation.
Forest therapy has taught me that stillness is not the same thing as stagnation. Sometimes what appears dormant is actually becoming. I wrote more about that in this post, Nourish Your Nervous System: Forest Therapy Insights
Deadfall becomes nourishment. Burned places grow new life. Trees release entire branches to survive harsh seasons. These changes that seem negative are essential to a healthy forest.
Humans also require those experiences that appear negative and are actually essential for a healthy life.
In the forest, decay and renewal, soft and hard, smooth and sharp are all happening simultaneously.
And honestly, that feels like midlife too.
Especially for those of us living in bodies that have known pain.
We have experienced days where tears of pain rolled down the left cheek while tears of joy rolled down the right.
We know how to hold grief and gratitude at the same time.
That depth changes a person.
We know what it is to laugh in waiting rooms. To find beauty in tiny victories. To feel gratitude and grief sharing the same chair.
I have learned that emotional pain cannot simply be numbed away the same way physical pain can. There is no ibuprofen for identity loss. No heating pad for disappointment. No prescription for becoming someone new.
And while suffering itself is not noble, I do think deep experiences deepen people.
My chronic comrades know this.
Pain can also make people bitter, stuck, isolated, hardened.
That, perhaps, is the difference between a crisis and a chrysalis. One keeps us frozen in fear. The other slowly reshapes us.
If we allow ourselves to learn from it. We can become more compassionate. Tender. Wise. Present. Better able to sit beside someone else’s suffering without looking away.
As they said in the podcast,
Our painful life lessons are the raw material for our future wisdom.
I believe that in my soul.
The Offering
Sometimes our culture subtly teaches that the people worth listening to are the successful ones. The polished ones. The credentialed ones. The endlessly productive ones
What can we do about this imbalance? If you ever deem somebody less than you… ask yourself what they can teach you.
Because some of the wisest people I know have had their lives interrupted.
Some had to abandon dreams they loved. Some never got the education they were capable of and deserved. Some are rebuilding lives with parts and pieces they never would have chosen.
And still. They carry wisdom.
Do not think less of yourself because your life required adaptation. You are not behind because your path bent unexpectedly.
Some of us have earned emotional depth the hard way.
And if you cannot live the exact life you once pictured?
Find something to run toward anyway.
Even if your pace looks different now. Even if you have to limp toward it some days. Even if your dream has changed shape entirely.
A chrysalis does not become what it originally was.
That is the whole point!
A Forest Therapy Invitation: Chrysalis Walk
The next time you’re in a forest, park, or tree-lined path, try this:
Walk slowly and notice signs of transition.
What is decomposing?
What is emerging?
What is shedding?
What is adapting?
What still carries beauty despite visible damage?
Then ask yourself:
What version of myself am I grieving?
What no longer fits?
What wants to emerge now?
What if this season is transformation instead of failure?
You do not need immediate answers.
The forest is always becoming new. Slowly. Over time.
The Question
One question from the podcast we can all ask ourselves,
Ten years from now, what will I regret if I don’t learn or do now?
Conley called anticipated regret a form of wisdom. Chronic illness teaches you that later is not guaranteed. Perfect timing is imaginary. And someday can become never surprisingly fast.
So maybe this chapter is not about trying to reclaim who we once were.
Maybe it is about becoming more fully ourselves.
Hot flashes. Heating pads. Existential growth. And all.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
A forest therapy reflection on burnout, surrender, and learning to live gently inside your own life.
There was a period of time where my nervous system was running entirely on stress and outrage. I was carrying so much tension I could feel it humming beneath my skin. I wore it like an armour.
I was teaching piano almost full time. Helping my children survive school systems that did not know how to support kids with ADHD. Trying to advocate for a child who had endured years of bullying only to be treated like he was the problem once he finally reacted.
There were meetings. Emails. Phone calls. Policies. Assessments. Endless explanations.
And somewhere in there, I was also managing a farm, a household, meal planning, grocery shopping, appointments, chronic pain, surgeries, inflammation, and a body that kept submitting maintenance requests I could no longer ignore. Sound familiar?
Outer chaos eventually becomes inner weather.
Then there was the car.
Oh, the car.
Marketed as “off-road capable,” apparently as long as your idea of off-roading was driving over a decorative gravel patch at a golf resort once annually.
When our Saskatchewan roads started dismantling it piece by piece, we were informed it wasn’t actually built for daily gravel roads. Then every winter the same part broke because it apparently also wasn’t designed for… winter?
I remember thinking, Well neither am I, but you don’t see me breaking down.
(foreshadowing 😳)
This felt a little too intentional of a design flaw for something sold in Saskatchewan.
At the time, I was angry at everything.
The educational system. The medical system. The government. Corporations. World events. Every injustice. Every failure. Every person who made life harder than it needed to be.
And underneath all of it was one desperate belief:
If I fight hard enough, maybe I can force the world to become safe.
So I fought.
And every phone call tightened my muscles more. Every conflict wound my nervous system tighter. Every injustice became another brick in the emotional dam I was trying to hold together.
Even now, writing about it, I can feel traces of that tension in my body.
My nerves were tight. My jaw was tight. My shoulders were tight. My thoughts were tight.
My energy felt dark and electric and sharp. Warnings were everywhere:
Do Not Touch: Load Bearing Delusions Ahead.
Eventually, the dam broke.
Not in some poetic, graceful collapse. More like a nervous system mutiny. Everything in my body was operating like an emergency broadcast system.
Everything I had stuffed down flooded upward at once: bad information, bad coping, bad core beliefs, fear, grief, anger, exhaustion.
It was physically excruciating. I’d been on my last straw for like 300 straws, and finally I ran out of straws.
After the initial effects subsided, I remember lying in bed unable to function. A puddle of a human being. All the fight inside me still existed but now it lived in a body that couldn’t move and a brain that couldn’t think.
I didn’t know it at the time but this would become my new beginning.
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
One of the greatest gifts forest therapy gave me was this:
Nature does not spend its energy resisting its own seasons.
The forest does not panic because decay exists beside growth.
Yet so many women live as though rest is failure.
We push through pain. Push through exhaustion. Push through grief. Push through our intuition. Push through limits our bodies are desperately trying to communicate.
We fight every battle. Carry every burden. Solve every crisis.
And then we wonder why we are chronically exhausted, inflamed, anxious, disconnected, and burned out.
I see it everywhere.
Women who are always tired. Always hurting. Always “fine.” Always one more obligation away from collapse.
Forest therapy taught me something radical.
Stillness is not laziness. Stillness is regulation.
Outer stillness creates the conditions for inner calm.
Not because the world becomes peaceful. But because you stop feeding every storm.
A Forest Therapy Practice: The Sit Spot
One of the simplest and most powerful forest therapy practices is called a sit spot.
You choose one place outdoors and return to it regularly.
That’s it.
No performance. No hiking goals. No fitness tracker congratulating you for elevated heart rates. No optimizing your experience into a competitive sport.
Your only job is to sit and notice.
(The chickadees remain unimpressed by productivity culture)
How To Practice
Find a place outdoors where you feel safe and comfortable.
A forest trail. A park bench. A tree in your yard.
Then:
Sit quietly for 10–20 minutes.
Notice what moves and what remains still.
Listen farther away than you normally do.
Feel where your body touches the earth or chair.
Allow your nervous system to settle before asking anything of yourself.
You do not need to “achieve” calm.
The forest does not demand that from you.
It simply offers regulation through rhythm, repetition, sensory softness, and presence.
Over time, your body begins remembering something it forgot. It does not have to remain in survival mode forever.
From Fighting Everything To Tending Something
It has taken me years to pare down my list of fights to zero.
Not because I stopped caring.
But because I realized anger was consuming the very life I was trying to protect.
Now, instead of fighting constantly, I create spaces of calm.
I meditate. I practice energy work. I use affirmations. I spend time in the forest like it is medicine because for me, it is.
Despite the chaos that can still exist around me, I guard my energy carefully.
From this space, I choose where I can genuinely be of service.
I try to listen when my body whispers instead of waiting until it screams through symptoms. I create rituals that bring me back to myself when I wander too far into fear or overwhelm. I practice gratitude daily because gratitude softens the nervous system’s constant scanning for danger.
And when concerns arise, I do my best to voice them clearly and compassionately.
Then I let them go.
Not because they do not matter. But because I matter too.
Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities. Always see them, for they’re always there.
Forest therapy helped me understand this deeply.
Possibility exists everywhere in nature.
A burned forest regenerates. A fallen tree becomes nourishment. A cracked open pinecone releases seeds. Life keeps finding ways forward.
And humans can too.
Not always by forcing harder. Sometimes by softening enough to notice another path entirely.
What Makes A Good Life
There’s a quote from Donald Miller that has stayed with me for years. In it, he imagines sitting with God under a tree outside heaven, remembering the story of his life together.
And what moves me most is this idea:
That God would have favourite parts of our story.
Not just the successful moments. But the moments we grew. The moments we softened. The moments we overcame. The moments we kept loving despite pain.
The moments we learned how to become fully human.
To me, this is what a good life looks like.
Not a perfectly optimized one. Not one where we won every fight. Not one where we proved ourselves endlessly useful.
But one we could sit down and talk about with tenderness.
A life where our soul is no longer thirsty.
A meaningful life is not built through perfection but presence.
People tell me it’s wonderful that I’ve turned my pain into something useful or helpful. And I appreciate the kindness in that.
But honestly, sometimes purpose looks less glamorous than people imagine.
Sometimes it’s simply this:
If you do it wrong, you know how to tell somebody else what to avoid. If I walk into an invisible wall, I’m going to let others know about it. This wall is invisible and solid!
If I can help someone avoid walking into walls or burning themselves to the ground trying to hold up the entire world, then my pain served a purpose.
If I can help another woman understand that rest is not weakness… that stillness is healing… that her nervous system deserves gentleness… that she is allowed to stop fighting every battle…
Then maybe this story matters.
An Invitation To The Forest
So if you are exhausted…
If your body hurts all the time… If your mind never stops spinning… If your nervous system is tight as a fence wire in January…
Come to the forest.
Not to fix yourself. Not to become more productive.
There’s a quiet crossroads that people with chronic pain arrive at again and again.
In the small, ordinary moments of a day.
When your body says no again. When plans have to be cancelled. When energy runs out before the day even begins.
And at that crossroads, there’s a choice. Not one I have always recognized. It begins with this question.
What will I do with this pain?
Not why do I have it? Not how do I fix it?
But… what can I make out of it? Today.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
— Albert Einstein
Pain, especially chronic pain, has a way of shrinking life if we let it.
It narrows what feels possible. It redraws the edges of our days.
And to be clear. This is not about pretending pain is a gift. It isn’t.
If it were, most of us would politely decline and slide it right back across the table. Thanks but no thanks.
It’s hard. It’s exhausting. It’s unfair.
You are not here to be the perfect, inspiring example of someone who is chronically ill and somehow always positive.
But there is a difference between:
pain that isolates and
pain that becomes a bridge
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls.
— Kahlil Gibran
Anyone that knows me knows how much I adore my grandkids.
We live in the same house, which means I get to be part of their everyday world. If it were up to my heart, I’d spend all my time with them.
But my energy doesn’t always agree with my heart.
Today, my grandson wants to go “hwimming.”
And I want to go with him.
But I already have one “big thing” on my list today. And my body has made it abundantly clear, there’s room for one big thing… or a few small ones.
Not both. Never both! My body is many things, but it is not a reasonable negotiator.
The frustrating part? This is actually an improvement from recent years.
And still… it stings.
ELPIS– Greek (n) A quiet, persistent hope, even in dark times. It is the last light that refuses to go out, the promise that tomorrow still holds room for healing.
This is the crossroads.
I can let that moment turn into frustration, guilt, or the quiet grief of what I wish I could do.
Or…
I can choose something else.
Maybe I sit with him while he plays. Maybe I listen to him sing from downstairs 🫠 ❤️ . Maybe I ask him to snuggle.
Maybe I let myself feel both things at once:
I wish I could go. And I’m still here.
Still loving him. Still part of his world. Still showing up. Just in a different way than I would choose, but a real one.
This probably seems trivial. It is. But a lifetime of lost trivial things somehow adds up over time. A succession of lost opportunities. Striking the same chord vibrating that heart string that is still inflamed from the previous strike.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
— Kahlil Gibran
Pain doesn’t just take.
Sometimes, quietly, over time, it teaches.
It teaches you how to notice what others miss. How to sit with someone without trying to fix them. How to love in ways that aren’t loud or impressive but steady and real.
How to recognize pain in others.
And some days, it teaches you how to lower your expectations to what is possible instead of what is perfect. The real over the ideal.
A forest therapy practice: “Follow What Still Moves”
On days when your body feels limited, this is an invitation to gently reconnect with possibility.
Step outside. Your yard, a park, or even just one tree.
Begin a slow, wandering walk. No destination.
Let your attention be drawn to movement:
leaves shifting
branches swaying
light flickering
birds moving through space
When something catches your eye, pause and gently mirror it:
shift your weight like the tree in the wind
slowly move your hand like a branch
turn your head to follow light or shadow
Rest whenever your body asks.
This isn’t about pushing through pain.
It’s about remembering,
Even when parts of you feel stuck… life is still moving.
In Saskatchewan right now, the wind still bites and snow still crunches under our boots.
The pale sky stretches wide over frozen lakes and ground.
And yet… we are talking about spring. Not because we see it. But because we remember it.
It has come every year before and we can trust it will come again.
This is one of the most asked questions about forest therapy:
Does this really help when life is hard? When pain is chronic? When nothing feels like it’s changing?
The answer is not dramatic. It is steady.
Forest therapy does not promise cure. It doesn’t offer “complete and totally done with it all 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 .”
That’s not our story.
What it offers is regulation. Relationship.
So I keep returning.
Research around nature exposure shows reduced cortisol, improved heart rate variability, and nervous system settling.
But beyond the science is something quieter. The forest does not rush spring and the body does not rush healing. They know the futility and energy waste that rushing introduce to otherwise perfect systems.
Both the forest and the body move in seasons. Why then do we want spring to hurry up? Why do we expect the body to heal in our prescribed way, on our expected timeline?
🌲 “Can forest therapy help chronic pain?”
As someone who lives with chronic pain, I don’t speak in absolutes.
I speak in terms of mountains. There are days the climb feels vertical. Flares. Illness. Falls. Each with its own devastating consequences.
And still. We climb.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
During the super cold winter of 2021, I learned that our first precious grandbaby was on his way. I wanted. Correction: I needed to be able to hold and snuggle that little one.
But I was so weak. I could barely lift a mug of tea without shaking from the effort. I walked from the bed to the bathroom. Sometimes to the car for an appointment.
The little munchkin, who I hadn’t even met yet, was cheering me on. I could sense it. So with a soup can, a baby blanket, and a prayer, I commenced my grandma- training.
A soup can because it weighed approximately a half pound. My ideal starting weight.
A baby blanket because of what this can of soup represented. He was going to grow over the following months into an actual grandbaby that I would wrap in this blanket. And carry him around to snuggle him. And to put him to sleep. To have deep conversations and sing the songs my mom and grandma sang to me.
And a prayer because that’s who I am.
That soup can, baby blanket and I started with 30 second walks 3x a day. Each walk induced waves of nausea followed by hours of cramping and exhaustion.
Each half pound and each 30 second increase was an excruciating miracle.
There were setbacks. Most evenings were agonizing. Some days I wondered if this was the correct place to put this much time and energy. It was all I could do to find time and energy to eat.
After months of focused grandma- training, I could walk outside! And something shifted. During a particularly stressful week and stubborn muscles, I walked down the lane and into the trees on our farm. I couldn’t go as far as I’d planned. I couldn’t “achieve” what I wanted. I leaned against a frozen trunk and felt foolish for even trying.
The cold, early spring air sharpened my senses. The snow muffled the world. The trees stood, scarred, weathered, unmoving.
Some trees have survived a hundred Saskatchewan winters. I considered how they are wise and do not apologize for seasons of dormancy.
It was around this time I stopped asking, “When will I be better?” And started asking, “How do I live well from this place?”
That question changed everything. And part of my answer was to focus on being a grandma. That little man I trained for months to be able to hold is going to be 4 this summer. And his equally enchanting sister will be 2. They have been the means of my greatest confrontations and of my greatest delights.
Almost like trying to enjoy your favourite therapy during a Saskatchewan winter. We take the intense highs with the intense lows.
🌲 “How do you practice forest therapy in winter?”
Winter forest therapy isn’t about long hikes. It’s about being present in the moment.
Notice how snow softens sound. Notice how your breath becomes visible. Notice how even in dormancy, life is stored beneath the bark and soil.
I have come to the realization that the forest in winter mirrors chronic pain. Nothing looks alive. Nothing appears to be blooming. But beneath the surface, systems are conserving and recalibrating.
Strength. Resilience. Wisdom.
Spring doesn’t shout when it arrives. It begins as a spark. An idea.
A drop. A thaw.
A beam of light catching ice and reflecting its warmth.
The same is true in us. Your good days are coming.
Sometimes we have to trust that promise for a long time before we see it.
Even if all you’ve seen is a spark.
That spark will become a light. That light will become a beam.
That beam becomes you, reflecting what you’ve learned onto someone else.
🌿 A Simple Winter Forest Therapy Practice
Trusting the Season (10–15 Minutes)
Step outside, even if just to your yard or a nearby tree line.
Stand still. Feel your feet grounded in frozen earth.
Place one hand over your heart. One over your belly.
Take three slow breaths. Watch the air leave your body.
Ask quietly: What season am I in?
Look for one sign of hidden life. Buds beneath bark, tracks in snow, sunlight on ice.
Whisper: Spring has come before. It will come again.
When ready, take that sentence home with you.
🌲 What Makes Forest Therapy Different From Hiking?
Hiking is about distance. Forest therapy is about experiencing relationships.
You don’t conquer the mountain. You learn from it.
And when you fall (as we all do) you get back up.
Keep climbing. Fall after fall. Flare after flare.
Keep reflecting hope and joy in the middle of the mess. It’s possible.
Anne Lamott defines hope not as naive optimism but as a stubborn choice to believe in goodness and possibilities, especially during dark, uncertain times.
🩶 If you’re reading this from under grey prairie skies, remember:
The trees are not worried about spring. They trust the tilt of the earth. They trust that light and warmth will return.
You can trust too. Your good days are coming. There are bright days ahead.
My bright days in this season, are when I get to be a grandma. If you want to see my grandparent life in reverse, view the following. It’s meant to be scrolled through to get the overall feel of the joy that was ahead of me. That I now get to experience.
Apologies. That was way too fun to go through old photos.
Even if you have to hold on to that promise longer than you wanted to. Hold it tight. The good days make it all worth it.
At this point in my story I can cart around that 2 year old and 4 year old at the same time. Grandma’s got guns. Just kidding. Training for my grandson got me to the point that I can run on a treadmill and ride a recumbent bike. He is my hero.
Keep getting back up. Show a willingness to bend and slow when your crucible is heavy. But keep climbing. Keep reflecting the beams of light.🌲✨
The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.
Ever notice how the word rich instantly makes people picture a yacht, a corner office, or at least a pantry where I have everything I need from chocolate to chia seeds?
Meanwhile, some of us are over here feeling wealthy because we found a position that doesn’t make our back yell at us.
Welcome to redefining abundance.
When you live with chronic issues, the cultural picture of “the good life” can feel like a club you don’t get invited to. My body has very strong opinions. And she will not yield. And yet, many people walking this road discover a strange, stubborn truth.
Richness is not a circumstance.
It’s a way of seeing.
Better Than Happy host Jody Moore distinguishes between two kinds of discomfort. One is fueled by resistance and the belief that life should be different. The other is accompanied by gratitude and a desire to create meaning from what is here.
In the latter, action becomes possible. In the former, people often remain stuck.
For those with chronic pain, discomfort is not optional. The choice lies in how we relate to it.
Gratitude does not deny suffering. It widens the field of attention so that suffering is not the only occupant.
There is the ache that says,
“Why me? This ruined everything.”
And there is the ache that whispers,
“Given that this is here, what life can I still grow?”
The first freezes us in place.
The second opens a path.
A rich life might include money. It might include health. It might include work you love or a family that grows together. Or it might be something far less Instagrammable and far more sustaining. Presence, meaning, connection, small mercies, deep seeing.
Gratitude has a way of turning what is here into enough, and from that soil, more becomes possible.
Not because your nerves suddenly behave.
But because your mind has room again.
As Meister Eckhart wrote,
If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Gratitude is not pretending pain is lovely.
It is noticing pain is not the only thing present.
Nature’s Secret Calculus
In the woods, a tree with a twist in its trunk is not considered a failure.
It is considered interesting. Strong. Adapted.
No straight lines required.
Chronic pain can feel like the bend you never asked for. But bends create habitats. They slow us down enough to notice moss, breath, companionship, the sacred ordinariness of being alive.
What if the detour is also the destination?
Chronicles of My Journey
Some days my life feels like a series of unfortunate events. Many of those events are inconsequential to the general population. But to my loose joints they are devastating.
Last August I was enjoying a beach day with friends. Enjoying isn’t a strong enough word. These are the days I live for.
In my rush to support my mom getting off the boat, I slipped. My leg hit twice. On the back of the boat. Then scraped down the ladder.
The pain sent me into waves of nausea. Darkness of passing out kept threatening. I refused to surrender because that seemed embarrassing in the moment.
I was rushed off the beach as my leg swelled into two big lumps. Once I got it raised, it started to stabilize and my senses returned. In the end we decided to wrap it and I got to stay at the beach. But my summer was over.
More devastating was what it did to my gym workouts. I try to get to the gym a few days a week to keep my muscles strong enough to hold me together.
I was finally to a place where I could hold most major joints in for a week or more. This incident set me back months.
The bruise went through the ankle bone and wrapped almost completely around my shin. My tan is hiding most of the damage.
I am pleased to say I am finally back to a place where I can run almost the distance and pace I had before the damage to my leg. But it took all of those 6 months. The rest of my body has yet to catch up.
These setbacks are frequent and challenging. But I am learning there is peace and hope available on all days. No matter what is happening or not happening. And the sunshine will return.
Finding Wealth in the Woods: A Forest Therapy Practice
Go somewhere with trees or sky.
Let your pace match what your body can honestly do today.
Arrive. Feel your feet. Or your walker. Or the place you are sitting. Let the earth hold some of your weight.
Notice three forms of wealth already present. Warmth on your face. Air entering lungs. A sound that is gentle.
Place a hand on your heart or thigh and ask, “Givenmylimits, what is still possible for me?” Don’t demand a big answer. Let something small come. A phone call. A rest. A moment of beauty.
Say, quietly, thank you.
That’s it. Tiny riches count. And this practice opens doors for more riches to enter your presence.
Navigating the Path Ahead: A Thoughtful Analogy
Imagine inheriting land you didn’t choose. Some of it is rocky. Some days it floods. You can spend years arguing with the map… or you can learn what grows there.
Blueberries love poor soil.
Certain pines only open after fire.
Some of the most resilient beauty requires harsh beginnings.
As Rainer Maria Rilke advised:
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Where Forest Therapy Carries Us
At the outset, when life no longer looks like it did, when identity is disrupted, the forest helps us find where we fit now. Not who we were. Not who others are. Who we are today.
In the middle, when the physical and mental anguish feels loud, nature gives our nervous system something steady to lean on. Wind continues. Chickadees continue. Light continues. We borrow their rhythm.
And at the end, or at least with distance, we often see that pain brought unexpected inheritances. Tenderness, clarity, reprioritized love, a fierce ability to notice what matters.
A different kind of fortune.
You may never get the yacht.
But you might receive awe. Intimacy. Meaning.
Moments of real rest inside the storm.
That is wealth no market can crash.
And forest therapy walks with you through the whole thing 🌲
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
SUNBEAM ACRES 