– Practicing. Music Row Counseling Nashville

Last Updated on July 13, 2024 by Chris Roberts

Learning from Trees

By: Grace Butcher

If we could, like the trees, practice dying,

do it every year just as something we do—

like going on vacation or celebrating birthdays—

it would become as easy a part of us as our hair or clothing.

Someone would show us how to lie down and fade away

as if in deepest meditation,

and we would learn about the fine dark emptiness,

both knowing it and not knowing it,

and coming back would be irrelevant.

Whatever it is the trees know when they stand undone,

surprisingly intricate,

we need to know also so we can allow

that last thing to happen to us as

if it were only any ordinary thing,

leaves and lives

falling away, the spirit, complex,

waiting in the fine darkness to learn

which way it will go.

This is a poem about grief, in general.  But, not a concrete grief, as we so often think when we conceptualize grief.  Grief, in many ways, is about letting go.  Grief teaches us that everything is impermanent.  All things that come into our life will eventually end, both good things and bad things.  And most of us, out of our awares, fight like hell to hold on to those things that naturally want to pass on through.  We understand the concept of wanting to hold on to good things, but we don’t give enough credit to the energy and effort we exercise in trying to hold on the to the bad as well.  For the second we let go of the bad thing that happened, we immediately must come to terms with its acceptance.  We all know this intuitively, but few of us grasp it realistically.

The trees in this poem become a beautiful metaphor for showing us, and reminding us, that everything must pass through the doors of time.  But, with trees, we know they are going to be okay!  We know that new life will spring back during that next season of spring.  With us, however, we aren’t so sure things will spring back.  We can’t predict, with certainty, that new life will grow back where death and loss have consumed, and so we hold on to the past, to the memory, to the feeling we had when we lived at a time before its ending.

As the poem suggests, we must learn to practice the letting go, the accepting of the old thing leaving, and the embracing of the terrifying hope that something new will blossom.  Trust is a dangerous thing.  It dares us to believe again that the thing we wanted, the thing we so exquisitely held for a brief or lengthy time, did not take something from us when it left, but it simply added to this life that we so precariously hold.  There is enough death and enough beauty in this life to make us all want to lie down and give up and give in.  The ever alluring neon flashing sign of apathy and indifference.  Why should we care when everything is going to leave?  Why should we invest when everything is going pass?  Why should we love when everything is going to die…including ourselves.

Grief comes to call on all of us.  Whether it’s a child moving from the toddler stage to the kid phase, from moving to a new city, or from the simple ritual of nightfall and the end of another day, we all face moments of grief on a daily basis.  

Nashville therapy at Two Trees Counseling with Chris Roberts can be a place to begin to learn and practice ways of acknowledging the grief, so we can move into acceptance, and once again trust in living life.  It is so easy to get stuck in holding on.  There are so many things worth holding on to.  And without warning, we find ourselves lagging, meandering, and shuffling our way through life with no conscious awareness of how we got to this place.  

Counseling in Nashville, TN can be a place to unpack long ago, or most suddenly, losses that confounded us, confused us, and disoriented us.  Chris Roberts has over 15 years working with individuals and couples in helping them regain a new vitality for life and love and living.  If you have questions about counseling, or would like a book a session, you can reach out to Chris at chris@nashvillecounselor.net, or by calling (615) 800-9260.