The Wound

Today I went on a personal nature walk that brought me to tears.

The day before I had led a nature therapy group. It was a lovely time. As we processed together at the end, Renee offered a piece of wisdom that landed deep: Healing isn’t about chasing what feels good. It’s about facing what hurts.  

That truth stirred something in me. I realized I’d been carrying an unease since midway through the walk, a discomfort I couldn’t name. Aren’t Nature Therapy walks supposed to be about joy and connection? About soaking in the positivity of the forest?

But the more I sat with it, the more sadness welled up. It wasn’t just personal—it was planetary. A grief for my own wounds, our collective violation, and the human violation of Mother Earth. 

I’ve been using the Franklin & Marshall trail system, which I recently learned grew over an old Armstrong industrial dump. That knowledge shifted something.

A few weeks ago, one of our participants, Carol, became visibly unsettled during meditation and moved to a different spot. Later she said, “I sense energy. The tree I was sitting with felt deep pain.”  

Now I understand. I told her of the toxicity that lay buried beneath our feet. And I realized—however uncomfortable Carol felt, the tree felt witnessed.

Forest Bathing has opened my eyes to an older, indigenous peoples’s truth: that nature is not just scenery, but sentience. That every tree, every leaf, every breeze is alive and aware—and that we can interact with it, heart to heart.  I’ve had some pretty amazing, eye-opening connections and conversations with plants and animals.

There’s even science backing this up: plants respond to attention. After learning this, I began emotionally tending to a neglected houseplant. It wasn’t thriving. But within two weeks of mentally paying it attention , I was genuinely shocked to discover it had 50% more leaves. I’m not exaggerating. It’s now brimming with vitality. Just from being seen.

Isn’t that crazy?

Every living thing generates an electromagnetic field. Humans have a strong one. We feel these fields interacting—like when you sense someone staring at you, and turn to find a stranger locked in you. Or when you walk into a room and feel something’s off. That’s your field responding. Indigenous wisdom has never forgotten this.

It’s not mystical—it’s relational. I just tell people to pretend they’re kids again and use their imagination. Make stuff up. On this last walk, Jim shared, “I didn’t know I could talk with trees! One asked to take my negativity. Another asked me not to let go when I hugged it.”

I’ve come to feel deeply witnessed by the trees. Like they are watching me. We’re simply meant to be in relationship with the forest. 

There’s a strange clump of Armstrong tile in the middle of the trail—like it was pushed up from below. I’ve passed it many times, unsure what to make of it. Isn’t Forest Therapy supposed to be about good vibes? Is naming toxicity part of the practice?

That evening, I suddenly felt it clearly: Mother Earth had placed that tile there. Right in the path. So her pain could be witnessed. I had been trying to bury that, but I could no longer. 

I felt a tremendous weight rise—my pain and hers, intertwined. I began to weep.

We live in a beautiful world. But one we’ve saturated with toxicity—through our industries, our food, our repressed emotions. That toxicity doesn’t just stay in the soil. It transfers to our bodies, our emotions, our relationships.

On my personal walk the next day, the sadness was palpable. I realized I’d been ignoring the pain—mine and the Earth’s. Because that’s what we humans do to cope.

When I reached Carol’s tree, I now truly saw her. She was bent and bowed. I wrapped my arms around her and sobbed—for her hurt, the grief I’ve buried, for the loved ones I’ve hurt and who’ve hurt me. For the world that is crashing into ruin before our very eyes.

We held each other for a while. We had a lot of pain to share.

Do you see what happened? Her roots had shattered. She’d fallen, bent and gnarled from the toxic soil. “I didn’t ask to be planted here,” she told me through her tree-tears. “I didn’t ask for this kind of life.”

Her bark was stripped, her body exposed. But now, a vibrant green carpet of moss was growing—a protective layer. A companion shrub was growing over her, branch dangling onto her. “Don’t give up,” it whispered.

Then I saw it: Armstrong tile tangled directly in her roots. It’s off to the side in the picture above.

“You’re amazing,” I whispered. “You’ve borne a burden others couldn’t. And look at you—sending out new branches! Transmuting the toxicity.”

I knew she was surviving because she was tapped into the fungal networks (what some call the Wood Wide Web!) that connect trees and share resources between them. She was receiving energy from the wider forest. Held in community.

She is an Osage Orange tree. The Franklin and Marshall woods are thick with this unusual native North American tree, the thickest concentration in the county that I know of (not that I’m an expert). When I researched them later, I discovered they return an unusual amount of nitrogen and phosphorus to the soil. 

Is it a coincidence that they are so concentrated here where their fertilizing abilities are most needed?

A hundred steps away I knelt at the gaping wound of the tile in the path, weeping again. Witnessing her pain as the Earth witnessed mine… and the wider pain of a country that is beginning to tear itself apart.

As I stepped away, something shifted. I continued through the forest and saw it anew. It was shimmering with life. Birds, squirrels, insects scampered about joyfully carrying out their missions. Breezes whispered and sighed through the forest.

Further down the path a leaf fell in front of me. I knew instantly the tree had dropped it for me.

“What’s the message?” I asked, looking up at it. 

“You’re doing it!” the tree laughed, shaking its leaves. “Look up! Tune In! Listen!””

Ah. My chest expanded. I breathed deeply, taking in the canopy and the azure sky as the words leaped to mind:

 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech… there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.” —Psalm 19

A lightness entered me. I felt embraced by the wider forces that I was invisibly connected to.

We humans bury our pain. But that just encodes it into our bodies. The only way to transmute it is to acknowledge it. To share it. To open instead of closing.

And here again I fall into the temptation to focus only on the healing, the light, the positivity. To push away the raw wound inside.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Jesus spoke those words well knowing our human psychology and the pathway through it. You don’t get the fullness of divine comfort without embracing the fullness of mourning.

We have to hold both in tension: Shadow and Light. Wound and Healing. It’s both/and not either/or. Or as the sage Jelly Roll has spoken, “I’m not ok, but it’s all going to be all right.”

We all have our personal tragedies that we are dealing with-or not. We also have the tragedy of the unfolding bitter divisions in our country. Is this by design? Will we stand?

The message of the forest is this: we are invisibly connected. The tools to transmute our pain are here. Don’t let it stay buried; acknowledge and share the rawness of our wounds. Instead of closing up and retreating, open our embrace wider. Step into the Creation, the green living spaces, witnessing and being witnessed. Listen. Hear the lessons being spoken to us in the wind. 

And no matter how bowed and bent by life we are, when we tap into the larger forces holding us, we will send forth new life.

The cycle of death and rebirth into something new