May 16th, 2025 Hawthorn Journal

 

I’m back, biking down Woolner Trail again to visit the trees. I’m starting to see them more like I see people. Not in terms of anthropomorphizing but in terms of inherent value. Not value according to capitalism but value according to life, the sanctity of life and not interfering with it.

I arrive at the benches where I usually lock up my bike but I’m overcome with grief. Grief about Palestine and the insane dehumanization that’s still unfolding there and feeling powerless about it, grief about Amara’s dreams unfulfilled, grief about not feeling “rooted” where I am, like the trees are.

I re-call Amara (the one who is inspiring this journey, who I hope is also on some level joining me) before they got sick sharing with me that when they were looking for land/the right place to create a healing community, they arrived to this place they were inquiring about and just started bawling uncontrollably. This is why they called it the crying place. They just knew in their heart that it was the right place. There’s maybe more to the story but this is what I remember. I reflect on that a lot sometimes and how maybe some part of them or the land even had a sense of the challenges ahead. I also re-call talking to Amara (in the throws of living & dying with cancer) about place and belonging and how rupture from our roots can create sickness and returning to our place of birth or homeland can bring us deep healing. In that conversation they were encouraging me to watch the babushkas of chernobyl to illustrate this point, for anyone else interested. I found it really touching. The story/lived reality of those grannies reached far into me with my own complicated relationship to land and belonging which I know pales in comparison to the horrific experiences unfolding in the world rn and that have transpired through time immemorial. 

Revisiting these trees also brings me back to a time when I was living in Stratford briefly, visiting TJ Dolan Natural Area almost daily. I think this was one of the first times I felt a deeper kinship growing between me and the trees. The forest there became like a close friend to me when I wasn’t allowed to be in close contact with humans. I gravitated to the river instead, to the apple trees, the poplars, willows, maples, to the evergreens and the forget me nots that were blooming there right around the same time of year during the first wave of covid. Those flowers are forever etched into my heart now, as I was preparing to leave everything behind and return to my place of birth.

It was a really strange, beautiful & challenging time without a solid place of my own to land for a stretch and it was also the most healing, full of lots of free time & CERB money. I felt held and steeped in flow and surrender. Also in only a few short months (given the time I needed to decompress) all of my food allergies went away. I had been battling a leaky gut and full body eczema for almost a decade exasperated by eggs & dairy and returning to my roots, spending time with family and feeling supported was apparently all I needed to heal at the time. This was part of the conversation with Amara which led to a viewing of the babushkas of chernobyl which I also regret bringing up in hindsight given the state they were in. It pains me to think of what Amara may have needed that we collectively didn’t show up with, that I wasn't able to show up for given the state I was in. I have deep regret about this and would do so many things differently now given the opportunity if I could. The finality of death really stings in this way, how do you do deep repair work with someone you love who is dead. Perhaps through prayers, spells, letters, therapy, enlisting a medium etc. there are ways.

I'm still so grateful for that healing time in my own story, however short lived. In reality it was the silver lining to what was only the beginning of a lot of even more challenging times.. Choosing the path I did at the time offered me many corrective experiences though. I remember seeing 7 eagles along my journeys East, each time thinking they were good omens that I was on the right path and they were. They were signs that I was spending a lot more time in nature noticing and being present instead of treating my body like a machine as we are so often expected to do in our culture. 

I noticed on my bike ride down here and also last night driving home with my partner, watching the world go by that the grass is exceptionally green lately. Maybe it's the rain or maybe it's that I'm feeling more embodied lately, everything pops. I’m also reminded of this expansive state he spoke of later that evening that I notice myself tapping into now sitting here grounded to the earth post-cry, feeling like my body is merely an extension of my surroundings, like my feet are my feet but they’re not that separate from the ground. As I’m feeling this a pink energy emanates from my body, engulfs me somewhat. It comes and goes and then leaves and it’s nothing new to me.

I think it’s funny when people think their energy is just one colour when it’s actually quite dynamic for everyone in reality on the daily.

I’m grateful for this involuntary skill that I have somehow honed which reminds me I’m a human with a spirit that never dies. Same as the spirit that I see in the grass, in the water and rocks, through the streets, in my food & drinks, everywhere. Everything is alive and vibrant and so much more so in this season I find. It’s hard to tell sometimes where the energy is actually coming from, who it belongs to, it’s so interconnected with everything. You can kind of tell by proximity, but not always. It moves sometimes and follows its own path, expands and contracts, comes in and out of existence like my breath or maybe just my awareness, I don’t know exactly. Where does it come from and where does it go?

I don’t often draw conclusions, I just notice what’s happening. That’s enough for me, not everything has to be monetized and or completely dissected in a linear, scientific way. It’s ok for there to be some mystery. It’s relieving actually, to not have to know everything. I am no god.

Animism has always been undeniable to me though. I’m rooted in these relationships, to spirit and nature. We all are. Whether we are aware of it or not. Sometimes my ego wants to claim them (the energies) as my own, but they are not mine, these energies exist with or without me, maybe as I do, fleeting and impermanent. AND I still exist even if I am not seen by everyone, even if I shape-shift through lifetimes. So too do the energies I believe.

Today I’m bringing with me some prayers and apologies to the hawthorns. One thing I’ve learned that I’ll hold onto about them is that they are known as sacred portals to the otherworld, to the faeries. They are also associated with and often appear on land shared with sacred springs and wells and are thought to be their guardians. And, we should not mess with them (the hawthorns) or the faeries might seek revenge on their behalf. Much misfortune has apparently befallen those who betray, violate or cut them down etc.

So far, the faeries haven't messed with me for taking a few thorns home to place on my altar...
Though I’m not sure I believe in fairies tbh but I do believe in the power of associations and the meaning we collectively attribute to these beings. I also hold space for the possibility of things I don’t understand being true even if I’ve never come across them myself. Who knows, I don't know them, but maybe other people sincerely do.

There is also the belief that the Hawthorns can clear negative energy and through time have been planted near places where injury or death has occurred to help the land heal from the energetic imprint left behind.

People also bring them the waters they’ve bathed the sick and dead with as prayer for their beloveds and to clear the energy.

So today, I bring them my prayers for Amara’s continued healing on the other side, my apologies for not being there for them in their dying and prayers also for my own healing which sometimes in a way feels inseparable from theirs.

I reflect on the fact that many of the conditions we develop are inherited, ancestral patterns that take time, maybe lifetimes to manifest and may take time, maybe lifetimes too to heal & transform and also, do they really belong to us as individuals I wonder. Just questions and curiosities with no solid conclusions yet. But who’s to say that the healing and transformation we need is or should be individual. The following are sentiments that stick with me witnessing Amara die, experiencing my own somatic "failings" and how I've re-framed my experience after reading and feeling mirrored by authors like Johanna Hedva ("How to tell when we will die") and Sophie Strand ("The body is a doorway"). I am left wondering and questioning, are these experiences of illness our failings or are they our bodies wise attempts to respond to a failing culture in protest and with hopes of course correcting. I stand with the latter myself. "The way out" by Alan Gordon also finds a way into my heart and logical brain when it comes to the power I do have to shift things when it comes to fibro specifically but the book lacks a critical lens to me on ableism and the social constructs that breed illness in the first place. I will not throw the baby out with the bath water however when it comes to the individual power I do have to shift things for myself amidst the many factors of influence remaining outside of my control. Neither the internal or external factors should be denied in my opinion. Both matter tremendously.

At heart and in reality, I think our disorders and dis-eases are deeply cultural, contextual and inseparable from the social constructs and histories we are embedded in, that we come from. Much like my legs are grounded by gravity and my lungs are filled with air by the trees.
Like Thich Nhat Hanh often explains when it comes to inter-being, the flowers don’t exist independently from the water, sun or dirt etc. In his words "Interbeing is the understanding that nothing exists separately from anything else. We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person". Not that I have excelled at this through life but I aim to get better at it with time. Sophie Strand also shares a similar sentiment reflecting on illness and it's connection to care for & connection to the land, Sophie concludes poetically in a recent post that deeply resonated with me " All of us, whether we know it or not, are made up of otherness. We are threaded through with unknowability. We are more like constellations, a few stars flung against empty space, pretending at a shape."

There are so many conditions contributing to our experiences and yet when we get sick we are often treated as the problem and the one responsible for causing it or fixing it but these experiences are so much bigger than us and the solutions are too. I’m quite confident that the World Health Organization would agree with me here when it comes to inequity and  the social determinants of health “which include the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, as well as the broader economic , social and political systems that shape daily life” (quote by AI, do I need to credit a robot idk)... Anyhoo, we are linked to and interwoven with so much more than we can name or see. We have these bodies on loan and yet we are so much more than they can hold. I know Amara’s life and their death continues to have deep impact, it reverberates and touches everyone who’s ever crossed their path in so many ways. In innumerable, immeasurable, unnameable, unknowable ways.

So, I bring my prayers for healing inter-generational trauma, for all of those I love, for all Palestinians and Jewish folks, for all of that untraceable and incomprehensible pain that we can’t really know unless we’ve lived it ourselves, unless it’s our own life and legacy. I pray for the healing of all divides and returning to those rooted places and practices, where no one is uprooted or displaced. Where life is sacred and not interfered with. Where we can just be rooted and feel safe, with nothing to prove.

I think in the past these prayers were tied to the trees on red ribbons but we are moving away from those times because who knows where the ribbons end up. It's bad for the earth.  It’s better I think to have these prayers remain in our hearts, shared with the trees, aired with surrender to some higher power whether to the trees, buddha, christ, mohammed, the rocks and or rivers, whomever. Write them some place on some sticks or stones, let them be felt and wash away eventually. We are always witnessed by some being bigger than us, even if it's "just" nature.

Anyhoo, I’ve been up on the hill with the hawthorns for a while now writing and feeling this out and I notice a bird I haven’t yet identified and I’m pretty sure it’s a northern shrike, I’m so amazed. Ugh it fills me with this strange satisfaction I can’t name but it’s there.

No no, lol I was wrong, it was someone else, more black from the back with a curious crown kind of like a cardinals, I will try to figure it out later. I turn on my Merlin app to help me investigate. (Future me: maybe a tufted titmouse). Do Northern shrikes even live around here? Questions for my father (who’s a birder), byron or the books. (Future self: uncommon resident here, so if I do ever see one it will be a treat). I'm humbled by my foolish propensity to jump to conclusions, something to watch out for..

Last time I was here I identified with my "seek" app that the dicots are lilacs and they have since bloomed, the scent is intoxicating, I could smell them from the river bank. It’s a gorgeous sunny day now. My sadness has passed and I’m just filled with longing for the steadiness of the trees that they hold and offer so effortlessly. Such teachers to me. I know their consciousness is different than mine but I want to know what it’s like to be a tree, what is their experience of life... I close my eyes and try to drift my sense of self to imagine what it must feel like to be these hawthorns.

How can we know?! I think of science/empirical evidence and how there’s no tangible proof for so many lived-experiences that get dismissed even when they are very real. I think of all the things that are true that we can’t prove and how biased the western world is (and the consequences of that) with what gets validated as true above other ways of knowing, of feeling and seeing and sensing. Who's experience is seen, validated and cared about and who's is dismissed and why. ..

It’s genuinely difficult to understand experiences other than our own, I know this intimately so I bolster the emotional boundaries I can conjure up when necessary and hold some understanding for the micro aggressions and blatant discrimination I experience at times, knowing that I have also been guilty of it. Sometimes we can’t know until we know in our own way. Karma is a bitch and I am living proof of that in my experience of chronic pain. I spent decades not believing my mother until the stress in my own life (none of which was my fault, or was hers) spilled over into the same affliction. 

I don’t believe in a god in the anthropomorphic sense but I do know that spirit is as real to me as the grass, as real as the sky and the trees are. I used to feel quite closeted about sharing any of this openly but more and more after so much gas lighting by the medical industrial complex, I refuse to deny my own experience of reality. Take it or leave it, my give-a-shit cells have died. Although clearly I am going on about for a reason, because I have felt unheard/unseen at times.

With the trees, there’s no fixing or solving, no judgments, no undercurrent, nothing to field, just being human. I'm grateful for that. It’s just me and the ground, the birds, the air, the sunlight, the open sky. I say that and I know they’re not solely here for me, they have their own lives to live and I’m just grateful for the companionship, for co-existing in the same place. It’s peaceful.

I also hold at the same time and know from experience that nature can be quite violent and unpredictable. The tornadoes, floods, hurricanes and wild fires that have been blazing through the land lately reminds me that just like us these imbalances don’t happen in a vacuum. These violent states are a direct response to the impact we’re having as humans and I want to do better. We need to do better. I want this self study of the trees to become part of that in some way, to honour the earth, to benefit the causes that Amara held so dear to their heart. I want their life (and their continuation beyond death), these trees, the myths and pagan practices to re-shape me this year.  So mote it be.

Thank you for listening to my thoughts and feelings, for witnessing my experience and for coming with me on this journey.

I really appreciate it.