“Listen to me, your body is not a temple.
Temples can be destroyed and desecrated.
Your body is a forest—
thick canopies of maple trees and sweet-scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood.
You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.”
Beau Taplin

You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated. 

How I love those words today. Love thinking of my body as a forest, not a temple, able to renew itself and grow tall and strong and verdant, over and over again.

The forest has always been a haven for me, ever since I was a little girl in Canada running as fast as I could along trails carpeted thickly with pine needles. I can still feel the spongy ground underfoot, smell the pine trees warmed by the sun, feel the dappled light on my face.

I’ve seen forests blackened by fire and scarred by logging, but, given time, they always come back. In Canada, they’d return with a crop of seedlings, brilliant fireweed dancing in the wind, huckleberry bushes, and plantain. Here in Australia, I see healing in charred gum trees covered with clumps of leaves that slowly become branches, frothy clouds of lantana flowers, and the sound of bellbirds in the undergrowth.

I feel burnt and scarred by the events of the past few years: cancer, hospitalization, virus, injured hubby, and the death of my brother, to name a few. Followed by the deep, internal changes that come out of such things. I have changed, and I’m still feeling my way forward, sometimes blindly, trusting that I will find where the new me fits.

The forest continues to comfort me as I go through these changes, reminding me that nothing stays the same, grief, loss, and pain are inevitable, but so are joy, wonder, and beauty.

I love seeing how broken things – trees torn out by flooding, branches sent crashing down from storms – now provide homes for amazing lichen, fungi, and the tiniest plants. Brokenness is not the end, not the final chapter, it just means change.

So, on days when grief is especially fierce, when the painful things of life seem to far, far outweigh the good, I go to the forest and wander and linger and weep and smile and get back to the things that nourish me in body, soul, and spirit so I can keep growing, so I can grow back.

I will grow back. xo