A Stump for Your Inner Child

There are some who say what we resist persists. But it’s not the whole truth. Every year my strongest milkweed are the ones that grow in the toughest places. Last year my strongest burst forth through cracks in the concrete. This one is coming from an area that is currently dry, the dirt hardened, surrounded by what by the remnants of what has already died. I don’t add fake mulch to my garden: I just use the twigs and leaves of what is already ready to become nutrients for the next round of life.

I actually love the death in my garden. Because it is part of a whole. I’ve gathered last year’s milkweed stems and nested them around some tiny new cosmos that are cropping up. I didn’t have this relationship with death in my garden until this year.

As you may recall from yesterdays post, as a child I was absolutely devastated to learn about the death of flowers - or to witness a tree cut down. I feel the sentience of flowers as equal with sheep or goats. I do eat them but I can’t bear to cut them - I wait for the petals to fall off unless I am specifically led to, like they really want to be eaten. My husband says I am part rose dragon.

Although my inner child sobbed for hours over the tree I couldn’t save from being cut, as an adult, re-tapping into that inner child who loves trees, have death-doula-ed trees in my neighborhood on a few occasions, and though it still hurts to see their sap still running as they are cut, knowing I could help their spirit energy transition helped me be less attached. And then comes the wonderful truth of stumps. I love stumps. I helped saved one from being dug out by city ordinance while it’s sap was still running, but later when it had fully transitioned its spirit energy, I saw it had been dug up and I was okay with it. In my garden, stumps are the heart of the ecosystem that transitioned my yard from suburban-urban superficial grass hiding trucked-orange stuff supposedly dirt, to a thriving, vibrant ecosystem, full of worms, mushrooms, birds, squirrels, bunnies, birds, bees, chipmunks, butterflies, ants, worms, herbs, wildflowers - all in a constant state of self-renewal.

A few years ago I learned something from my roses: for a few years I watched my old grief resurface, albeit less draconian when I watched them die. Then after a few more years I stopped being sad in the same way. I noticed the absence as the signal of their essence having gone in visible. Visible within as the formless essence of rose - awaiting to be seen again in the future in the physical. I started to appreciate their teachings on letting go and then I realized there wasn’t actually anything to let go of - just gifts every year to celebrate. My inner child can celebrate, honor and love the roses an when they are gone, I still get a little glum and nostalgic, but she is now able to be on to the next thing to appreciate about each season rather than clinging to the roses that have already given their gifts.

Then this year, I was sitting in the garden, fiddling with twigs and last year’s milkweed, now hollowed out stakes, and I started breaking up the stakes and using them to build a little nest around the baby cosmos coming up where I sprinkled seeds from last year’s round. It was something my inner child really enjoyed doing at the end of the cosmos season last year. And I realized how much fun it was to take the raw materials, no longer alive in the same way to nurture what is coming to life or about to come to life. The deathy stuff wasn’t dark or distorted, but actually a part of the whole. The whole garden. The whole of mother earth’s body recycling her resources. You and I are part of that whole too! Isn’t it wonderful?

Death is an illusion, and it doesn’t have to be so painful when we realize that like form itself, it is part of the Child’s play we get to participate in as co-creators with our Mother Earth and with The Divine Source Of All Life.

What is your inner child’s relationship with the cycles of life? Where is she holding grief?

Where is she ready for joy?

Do you notice that if you really let her grieve, she gets up, ready to play when all her feelings have been felt and honored?

Do you notice that her wisdom spreads out and deepens when you water her right to feel exactly as she does without assuming she needs to have a more adult perspective, whatever that is (note your inner child’s eye rolls on that, if any)?

Because I was both told (rightly) to be true to myself and then punished for it when it was embarrassing or inconvenient or too much for my parents own wounded children, I learned to hide in intellect, in analysis as a way to be safe. I lived in my head up, and very little in my body.

For a long time I couldn’t even say the words, “I am worthy to be alive.” My parents didn’t mean to do it, but the names they called me and the ways they misunderstood and mischaractertized me from their wounded places caused me to feel that I could not live without hating myself or them. It was a horrible conundrum. My brother chose not to live. I chose, for a time to hate them. But deep down I only hated them for blaming them for the hate I felt they forced upon me toward my own self when they projected their own wounds upon me.

In the exact places of their gaslighting is where I must love myself the fiercest - if I want to forgive and have compassion for them, which I do. It is ironic, that they tried to make me feel like an awful person for telling the uncomfortable truths or for honoring my own needs in ways they didn’t allow themselves, but it is in ferociously loving myself for doing exactly those things that I liberate myself from needing to choose between hating them and hating me - setting both of us free to be the love we always were.

What is coming up for you as you read this?

Feel free to grab a journal, a pen (or colored pencils/markers/paints or get out our music and dance.) If your inner child is prompting you, let yourself show yourself where exactly you need to affirm your right to be who you are. Only when you are no longer defending you to you can you be more gentle with others.

If you’re stumped,

Dearest soul-friend

Beloved

Holy Fire, Water and Light

Of Soil

And Wood Snake

Shedding skin Tonight

Let your your inner stump decompose

Or sit on it

Let it

Form your repose

Sit upon it

Out of it

New things grow

Unicorn

Owl

Eagle

Doe

Ultimately there is no foe

Fawn

Flower

Innocence meets wisdoms Power

To unicorn is a verb

It is one suberb

It is the act of shining in the storm

A light beyond the norm

Her hoofs prance on thunder clouds

Innocent

Sovereign

pure

She is the light that makes silver and gold linings

Rainbows crashing the party of dark clouds

The lightning of spontaneous inspiration

And the devotion to a truth beyond that which obscures clear sight

Parting the clouds in an arch of joy

She is the calling forth a power of love

It is to birth a sovereign, joyous norm

Dancing in and beyond the storm

Harmony

Beyond conformity

Owl hoots

Have a hoot

But don’t give a hoot

Eagle soars

No rush

Never bores

Doe innocent as ever

Yet her Eagle Nature protects her

And her owl wisdom

Learning what is whose

Hoot Hoot

Having a hoot

The Doe

And the Dove of Peace

Meet the bees making honey

And the butterflies doing as they please

Let her be who she is!

Let her have her say!

Beyond harms

Open arms

Clear boundaries

Cardinal and Blue Jay

Know how to play

Even the Robin guards its nest

The Jay may tell offenders to stay away

But watch how it is never there when the bunnies, squirrels, robins and chickadees breakfast from the same open grass communal resources on a peaceful display

Unicorn Dances a Rainbow of Power

Her Tears water Every Flower

Worm Wiggles

Flower blooms

Bee Buzzes and sips

Inner Child skips

Be Free to Express

Unco-opted and clean

Not afraid to play in the dirt

Or twirl in skirt!

Unhook from anyone who told you how to be you

Because that is something to discover

As you love the Inner You

In All her Aspects that you Uncover

And find her ever-innocent

No longer needing to take cover

No need for defense when you know you are pure

You can admit mistakes

No longer have to obscure

That life is a learning

All the way and forever

And it doesn’t make you wrong

It makes you a treasure

Yes

A Treasure

So Treasure You

And know that what is true of you

Is True of All

Unique

Yet Same

Innocence

And Wisdom

Answer the Call