Who Are You Becoming? #12
Listen with your heart. You will understand.
Who are you becoming?
While watching Pocahontas with my mother and 2 granddaughters last night, I told my mother, when it came to this scene: “This is who I am becoming.” I was referring to “Grandmother Willow,” the tree spirit who Pocahontas seeks guidance from and to whom she takes her dream.
My mother said, “Well, this is evident in your art for a long time,” referring to the trees I have drawn with faces for years. I love the bare trees as well. Naked trees, trees in their stripped down season. Not because I treasure winter so much as because I enjoy drawing their bare branches reaching towards the sky even as they entangle with each other. There is something stark and beautiful about naked trees.
Perhaps it is also the crone in me tickling at my awareness since I was a little girl. Naked trees. Deep roots. Old soul wisdom.
I can easily feel myself in the tree spirit in the movie: ancient, wise, kind, and mischievous. And not in the least reluctant to raise my roots to trip a couple of miscreants up to no good.
Maybe we can only “become” what we have always been inside. A tree cannot become other than the seed it was planted. An oak cannot suddenly start sprouting rose buds. And a rose will never turn into a watermelon. Thank Gawd. That would be weird. No, if I am in my soul an ancient willow spirit, it is because I have always been this. I can see that. I can see the little girl playing on the banks of the Yellowstone River climbing in the low thick branches of the willow knowing in some small and great way that this is who I am. I can see myself pulling long strands of her great hair and whipping them about, whipping my brothers, mischievously not maliciously, raising my roots to trip miscreants—I rather enjoy it—because that is who I am. I can see myself waving in the spring breeze those particular early leaves that look like caterpillars scattering on a good, strong, mountain wind. I also easily find my roots extending into unnatural spaces, cracking pipes and reminding those that build in sacred places that nature does in fact always win.
The “Grandmother” part I find rather effortless as well. It’s had to imagine any part of me ever resisted it, but in my defense I was less than 40 when initiated into that club and worried about outcomes that have indeed come to pass. Nevertheless, I find my matriarchal roots as easily as I find my arborist ones. I find myself an easy harbor as well with deep waters and a quiet cove into which . I take my little tempest tossed ships into that harbor and hold them securely as the storms pass by.
Yes a tree, indeed. An ancient and cheeky grandma to boot. It is not who I might have thought myself even a few years ago, but it truly is who I have always been.
How do you see yourself? What might you be in the process of becoming?
Thank you for reading. This is 12 of 90 so we have aways to go and who knows from there and beyond. Your encouragement means the world to me. So, thank you!
Lotsa love,
~Justice