Heart Reading … Day 82
The pursuit of wellness VII
Day 7 of 10.
There are hundreds of ways to pursue wellness in just one day alone! How can I do this topic justice in just 10 days? I can’t. So I will write what is flowing for me and hope it, like every heart reading intended to honor that flow, resonates well wherever it lands.
Today what’s up is the shift from fearing creatures big and small to feeling kinship to them. When we can face any fear we have it makes space for joy and facing the fear of creatures is one of the more doable fears to face. This shift for me happened both quickly with one classmate’s intervention and slowly over time with a practice of growing a sense of curiosity and respect for lives I don’t understand.
In college I went on a picnic of sorts with my friend Susan. Sitting outside at the table a honey bee was flying around me and Susan could see I was terrified. She saw me swat at it and had to intervene because I obviously was threatening this creature’s life. She explained why honey bees are really important (sadly I was 18 and hadn’t ever considered pollination) and then shared her belief that since we were outside in their home we should respect all beings’ living space. It was as if lightning had struck me.
Many years later I went on a weekend retreat to learn mentorship from nature which brought this new appreciation to a whole new level. The short story here is that our big initiation was to trek deep into the woods with a head lamp and then turn it off while finding our way back in the darkness. We’d previously been told there were 4-foot coyotes spotted. I was very afraid but that first moment in the dark after turning my light off, pausing to get my bearings, all I could feel was love and curiosity emanating from a host of hopping, flying, and crawling critters — towards me!
That curiosity is the light switch dispelling the darkness of fear — a balm for the soul.
Another quick story is the time I was in a foreign country on a group tour with my daughter. The guide asked us who liked spiders and a couple of us held up our hands. He asked for a volunteer and when I stepped forward he put a tarantula in my hand that he’d fished out of a hole in the ground with a piece of straw. It was magical. I felt such great mutual love in that moment!
A lot of people are afraid of spiders and snakes (both Rosie and Luna jumped at a tiny snake skin on the sidewalk the other day) and may view insects and invertebrates as “creepy,” but spending time observing them in real life can evoke real feelings of caring and compassion. Whenever my kids used to find “someone” in the house that lived outside they’d call me to come move them from our home back to their home.
As a young adult, when I was “shedding my skin” of insect and invertebrate fear so to speak, I experienced ridicule from one family member in particular. In hindsight I realize this was actually not so nicely disguised admiration — which can often happen when you make an impression on others.
A few years ago I drove by a front yard flower garden that made such an impression on me that I took a photo and made this little postcard of “10 ways to get lost.” I sent them a postcard and thanked them for making such a pretty garden for the bees and butterflies and spiders and worms and birds and…
