Tag: healing

The Beauty in Broken Pieces

(*Note: Something I wrote several months ago when I visited the seaside)

I’ve been searching for shells since we got here. I’d imagined that I’d find beautiful shells, lovely smoothed pebbles and silky grey driftwood just like the ones I usually find at other beaches, but instead there have been very few in sight. All I’ve found has been broken bits of seashells, tiny and smoothed.

At first I was disappointed. Then this evening I wondered…What if this is what the grand wise ocean wants me to receive right now? What if these tiny bits of seashell are a mirror of the broken bits of wildness that the great mother is returning to me – fragments of a shattered whole that needs to be put back together?

We search for beauty in wholeness, but there is beauty in broken fragments too, and the treasure in these pieces is the journey we walk when we slowly glue them back together. Maybe what we piece back together doesn’t become a perfect picture of what the original once was. But then again, maybe the point isn’t to recreate that and instead it is to find new ways to put together something new – a mosaic of wild shell pieces that represent a new way of being.

Brokenness brings growth and evolution, so when we patch ourselves back together, then it is important to allow the skins of our souls to take new form and become what it is now, not what it was once was. Not who we are told she should be.

This is how we heal. This is how we grow.

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Gathering Wild Inspiration

Just a short pondering for today….

The other morning, I stood there at the water’s edge in the gentle rain. Willow trees drooped around me and raindrops danced on the waters surface. I breathed in the peaceful earthy scents of wet trees and earth as I gathered inspiration for my writing, quietly listening out for wild stories and earth whispers. My heart came alive in a special way and in that moment,  I understood so clearly what John Muir meant when he said….

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” ~ John Muir

Where do you go to witness beauty or gather inspiration? And where do you find your peace and healing?

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500 Words of Wild Wisdom: A Path Through the Forest

Today, I am so happy to share the first instalment of the new 500 Words of Wild Wisdom blog series. The first guest post is A Path Through the Forest from Anne Linn, a beautiful poetic writer whose work I love and the author of The Little Flower:You Are Loved. In this piece, Anne writes about her experience of nature as a path to the Divine Mother, healing and a deeper connection with herself. 

A Path Through the Forest by Anne Linn

I knelt in the rain, in the last light of autumn and prayed to the Goddess, to all overseeing things. I prayer to the trees, to the sky, and felt the darkness gathering around, inky black and full of stars.

I walked in the forest and it seemed darker than I remember, and yet more lovely as I crouched to pick the last of the blueberries, as I gathered golden mushrooms along a moss covered path.

The sun and gone away, and I walked through a long shadow, feeling the evening deepening, seeing the sky lose its colour.

I stood by the stream, hearing the rush of water, loving its song, which is the music I always return to, the song of water.

I felt broken there in the forest, cracked open, and I kept walking even though I had been tired, had told myself I would not go far.

I felt the presence of the Goddess in the air, in the wind. I wanted to get closer, to feel her touch. I felt I was walking in a white glittering light, in an eternal church, vast and beautiful, stretching into eternity.

Life was easier then, when I wasn’t alone. When I was filled with her love, spreading out, touching everything with beauty, so even the dark trees seemed wrapped in pearls, in white light.

A Lesson Learned

I was asked to share something I had learned from nature, from the Goddess. I couldn’t think of much, other than one powerful thing, that nature brings healing. And that it helps me find her, my divine mother, helps me connect with her and with myself.

I once visited a friend in a beautiful place in nature. She took me to see a couple who lived away from any noise, any roads, and grew their own food, a river only steps away. My friend said how much she’d love to one day live like that, and I felt that too. I have often dreamed about owning a small house or cottage in the forest, next to swaying trees, my window overlooking an overgrown garden of herbs, wild roses climbing the walls.

But as I looked at this beautiful sanctuary in nature, it somehow seemed dark, empty. And I felt how alone I’d be without the God and Goddess, how I needed them to fill the space I was in. I felt that wherever I went, I had to carry them with me, and let them show me where to go.

That’s why I look for her in everything, when I make my food, when I walk in the forest. I want to be filled with something divine and beautiful, to touch something unseen, a world hidden and out of sight, but so close, the veil so thin I can almost reach through it. Sometimes in dreams I see beyond it and catch glimpses of glittering mysteries. Places I think we all long for. Places we might have been once, that was once home, and that we deep down still remember.

Last night I awoke from a dream, feeling I had been in a vast temple of stone, and wanted to return there. I was filled with longing and joy, because I remember a fragment of something wonderful, fragments of love.

It made me want to bring that temple inside of me, to carry it with me throughout the day. To have a secret place in my heart for the Goddess, to worship her, the rose, the light.

About Author:

 

Anne LiALheadshot.jpgnn writes about nature, about spirituality, and the Goddess. She also shares about grief and loss, and ways to mend the soul, the heart. She has written a short story, and is currently working on her next book. You can find her at www.littleforestflower.com