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Settling Into Life After Divorce
It's hard to believe, but it's been a year now that I've lived in the Pacific Northwest. It is one year ago in early September my daughter and I were having a grand adventure, traveling across the country to move me into my newly rented apartment.
Before moving I'd rented a tiny studio apartment that my other daughter found and recommended to me. Since I'd not toured it in person, I didn't know all that much about where I'd be living. What would life be like once I arrived and settled into this new part of the world?
A year later and the apartment I now call home has been the perfect nest in which to begin this next part of my journey. After divorce following a 42 year marriage, I live alone--a wildly new experience for me.
What a relief to know that I do love the space in which I live. Though I love the inside of my apartment, it's the walking distance into the woods that has me most rooted and grounded here in the Pacific Northwest.
On my walks into the forest, it takes about 4 minutes to cover the distance from my doorstep to the beginning of the trail. Just before I'm fully immersed in the magic of the woods, the paved road ends where a gravel road begins.
Nature's Promises: Taste and See
It's in June when I begin to notice that the entrance to the gravel road is hedged with massive amounts of wild blackberry bushes. Since this is my first summer in residence here in the PNW, I am delighted to experience the full growth season of these wild blackberries.
I wonder, too. These blackberry walls must have been here all through the winter. So how did I miss them?
Now, seeing these buds and blossoms feels like a promise from nature: Stick around. Pass by us on your walk into the woods. Pause and notice. From now through end of summer you get to watch us form juicy berries and see them ripen. Be patient. You'll have your pick of wild berry goodness on your tongue soon enough. We promise.
Nature always keeps its promises... to live naturally, to die naturally. On every walk through the woods I am reminded that death is a part of life, that life and death coexist beautifully. Trees fall to their death and become nurse logs teeming with new growth, nurturing the life that springs from trees falling to their death.
I notice, too... the comfort that comes with walking among the living and the dead each day. There's an incredible harmony, a kind of song I hear in the forest--rhythms of life and death.
Divorce: A Matter of Life and Death
Our divorce, too, is a death of so many many things. Yet alongside this death lives a healthy and vibrant new life. Sometimes I can't tell where death ends and life begins or life ends and death begins. They get tangled and twisted together, much like it is on my walks through the woods.
In choosing to divorce, I broke my solemn promise to stay married for the rest of our lives. It's no small thing, this breaking of a promise.
Yet my walks in nature keep promising me. It's natural for life to intermingle and coexist with death. These are not opposites, not at all at odds with one another. New life springs forth from decay. Acknowledge death and celebrate life wherever and whenever you're present to either one, or both.
My former spouse and I, we are each very much alive and well. Our family is still our family. We have each made loving promises made that will always be kept.
It's the end of summer now. I regularly pick the wild blackberries promised to me in late spring. I bite into the darkest of these berries, noticing how their purple juiciness tastes wild, tart and sweet on my tongue.
I've yet to make a wild blackberry pie, though there's still time. I do know that wild blackberries taste delicious in my yogurt parfaits.
Thank God for nature's promises made and kept. Cycles of life and death all around us--plenty to notice and name, to grieve and celebrate.
Nature-Walk Coaching
YesToLife Coaching is pleased to offer **Nature-Walk Coaching Sessions in the forest. Before our walk, you'll get to choose--whether to enter the forest with a specific focus/topic, or whether to discover the focus that comes as we walk the path.
As we walk together, you'll experience the magical connection that happens naturally while in the forest. Each Nature-Walk Session offers you coaching that goes beyond human-to-human interaction.
**For those living in the greater Seattle area.
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