Storytelling, Venting and Surrender
Nature has an important role in helping us resolve our emotional conflicts
To find out more about this month’s online workshop, or watch my recent interview with freelance nature writer Vanessa Wright, please scroll down to MY OFFERINGS.
“When we become open to a different ending – not one that supports our grievance, but one that reveals the next piece of personal healing we’re being invited to do - our stories can become miraculous!”
SOMETHING HAPPENED RECENTLY – a challenging experience that filled me with very intense feelings. As I’ve considered how to write about this, it’s made me reflect on the nature of storytelling and the vital need to return to more authentic forms of communication.
WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS TO US, we might feel drawn to tell others about our experience. Recently, I’ve been wondering about our urges to recount stories. We’re no longer informing tribe members where to find the ripest berries, or the areas along the river that crocodiles frequent. Now, we whinge about the friend who repeatedly shows up late, or blab about a colleague we suspect is having an affair with their boss. These forms of storytelling could be referred to as venting or gossiping.
The more time I spend in nature’s wordless company – transfixed by the fairytale rustle of wind in the treetops, or how the fizzle of flowing water can tickle my ears – the more I suspect the stories we tell ourselves and others have become tarnished by something less natural.
Venting and gossiping can alleviate discomfort or fulfil an urge, but only in the short-term, and are far from the evolutionary purpose upon which storytelling began.
‘UNCONSCIOUS STORYTELLING’ – often used as a form of catharsis – can perpetuate emotional wounds rather than heal them. By recounting our grievances and hurts without conscious awareness, we might solidify our perception of being wronged. We might choose to spend more and more time with those who sympathise with our grievances, enjoying the short term hit of pity, though we never experience lasting relief.
If cathartic storytelling slips into our writing, we can feel utterly devastated when our work is rejected.
Early on in my nature apprenticeship, I remember being powerfully drawn to a tree after entering a forest on the verge of tears. I was aching and raw with aloneness. For a brief time, I felt as if the tree was insensitive to my pain.
‘It’s giving me nothing!’ I thought to myself, yet at the same time I realised my blindness: I was so committed to my story of aloneness I saw it everywhere.
A veil lifted from my eyes.
I realised the tree was providing the most profound gift of presence – rather than the saccharine sympathy I thought I wanted. It sat beside me witnessing my tender, stinging heart without judgement or expectation.
That was when I experienced the impossibility of ever being alone with such a stalwart presence as nature beside me.
SPENDING TIME IN NATURE has taught me a new way of communicating and relating to my experiences. As I’ve taken my injuries to the forest, I’ve learnt an entirely new way of speaking about things. I can’t gossip with the trees! I can only lay my truth at their roots. I feel how the sturdy trunk of an old oak sees through me as I lean against its firm, rumpled body. When I climb into the arms of an inviting beech, there’s no point in selecting only those specific details that prove how misunderstood I am. It’s not agreement I seek from nature, but guidance on how to be the one I came here to be.
This is why, with my most recent challenging experience, it took some time to figure out how to write about it. I’m no longer choosing details to make you think, ‘Poor you, how wronged you were’. This story isn’t about a villain and a victim. In fact, it’s about the power of unravelling story and allowing the truth to emerge.
ON A NIGHT OUT RECENTLY, I asked a friend to give me a ‘wide berth because they were drunk.’
I haven’t consumed alcohol for over a decade. (It might be I write more about my reasons for this in another post, but for today simply understand that witnessing people drinking can sadden me.) I’ve often talked to my friend about how much I prefer them sober. I’m able to say quite openly, ‘Okay, I’m leaving now, you’re at that point of drunkenness I can’t handle.’ Their drinking has become more intense for me because they’ve had a recent health scare, which means it’s significantly safer for them to abstain from alcohol.
These details are not there to make my side of the story ‘right’, but rather to illustrate how I fell under the spell of these details and believed myself right!
The next time I saw my friend, there was thick tension in the air. I peered through this gummy, dense atmosphere between us and asked: are we friends?
What then became clear was that my friend was carrying enormous rage. Their next words were delivered with such a tense jaw they were a ventriloquist, hissing at me to never again speak to them in the way I had the other night.
I was rubbing my hands on the tablecloth, focusing on the feel of the fabric so I could remain present – as much as my mind wanted to argue back. I slowed my breath, allowed the feeling of fright to be there without yielding to non-stop tears.
‘I hear you,’ I told my friend.
My mouth was bone dry.
I worked on bringing attention to my heart so I could allow myself to feel this moment fully, acknowledging that no matter how ‘right’ I’d felt to ask them to give me a wide berth, they were genuinely angry.
When they finished speaking, and I had allowed for a moment of silence, once more saying, ‘I hear you’, I asked if we could hug. They nodded, and for a few deep breaths we held each other.
Later, I walked to the nearest park!
ARGUMENTS AND CONFLICT can cause a rampage of feeling through our body. Many of us (like I was) are numb to this energetic onslaught, because we’ve learnt to hide out in our heads. Perhaps we mull over what was said and by whom, we obsess over how outrageous the other person was, and what we wished we’d said in return. The faster we think, the less we feel.
Some of us have learned to numb ourselves from both feelings AND thoughts. We rely on one or more coping mechanisms – eating, scrolling, venting, and more.
The reason I was heading to the nearest park is because of my commitment to let nature be my ‘coping mechanism’.
As I walked there, I had a feeling in my body that resembled a grey, heavy ache. A dense area in my torso gave a sense of constant sinking. And then, for brief moments, the feeling disappeared. It could be I was navigating crossing a busy road, or checking the map on my phone to ensure I was going in the right direction. These moments were a welcome reprieve, all was forgotten, until suddenly my aching, heavy, sinking despair became forefront once more.
Confronted with the dark, falling weight within me, my mind was a rolodex, rotating through all available stories in order to explain this dense feeling of being submerged.
If we try to ease our pain at this level – the level of thoughts, words, stories – without conscious awareness, then what happens is that we likely craft a version of events that justifies the way we feel, rather than transmutes it.
This was exactly what was happening in my head. I watched my thoughts demand that my friend was wrong: their anger was evidence of how ‘unenlightened’ they were; I was far superior.
‘And, actually,’ my thoughts went on. ‘It’s so difficult to be committed to a healing path and having to interact with people who are completely unaware of themselves!’
That was when I noticed the horse chestnuts were in bloom. Pyramids of creamy-white flowers filled the towering trees all around me.
My relationship with nature is that it often reaches for me when I’m lost in thought. It hooks my attention tugging me back into the present moment. I stood very still, gazing at the horse chestnut flowers, my mind suddenly quiet and relaxed as, with each gentle breeze, a shower of petals drifted to the ground.
The air was filled with the strangely layered scent of this flower – at first a bitterness that seemed to jerk my nasal hair. Then, a hay-like musty scent, which expanded my nostrils, followed by something sweeter, honeyed that shot all the way to my brain. It evoked my years at primary school, specifically mid-morning break time, running with abandon through playing fields lined with horse chestnuts. And there, in the background to these years, my friend, ALWAYS watching out for me.
HOW GRATEFUL I AM for the way nature pulls me free of my trapped places of pain.
At first, I can often witness my resistance. As the natural world drops something compelling in front of me, I cling to my thoughts, their relentless cycle of worry or grievance. Beneath this clinging is sheer terror akin to how I might feel grasping onto a rock face, not wanting to plummet to an uncertain fate. But I’ve let go enough times to trust that the moment I release my fingers the sense of bliss will be ecstatic: I tumble free of the past pains that can keep me prisoner and find myself in a paradise of the present moment where an infinite number of joys and possibilities are available.
Here's where we can allow ourselves to tell a different story about what happened.
BY THE TIME I REACH THE PARK, I’ve let go of the narrative that my friend was wrong to be angry. Instead, I’m curious about what hidden wound has been triggered by these recent events.
When we become open to a different ending – not one that supports our grievance, but one that reveals the next piece of personal healing we’re being invited to do - our stories can become miraculous!
The grass shines a luscious green. There are patches of daisies and other wildflowers. I surrender to the network of paths that weave through the park, letting my body move itself as I absorb the beautifully unmusical birdsong – several tweeting instruments all playing wildly different symphonies.
I come down an avenue of planted trees and a sapling calls to me. It’s so slender, just a sprig, still encased in a wooden frame for support and protection. I don’t remember being drawn by a tree so young before.
I lie on the grass over its roots, and allow my limbs to soften, marvelling on how much easier it is these days. For so long, my body was a rigid armour I didn’t seem to be able to influence. I often felt trapped within an ever-tightening enclosure of metal-like flesh. But now, I breathe and feel each muscle release. The sense of shame I’d been trying to crush and squeeze away can now move, flow, disperse.
Slowly, I become less a person with fixed qualities who has been wronged; less a person who has shamefully wronged another. My attention is no longer on the story I’ve been telling myself. Instead, I sense the sapling.
I feel its youth. And here is where I receive what I need.
I realise the sapling doesn’t carry the weight I had as a child when called upon to deliver: a weight of fear I wouldn’t meet expectation. This is when I understand that so many of our affronts are caused by the inner child within who was never allowed to be who they truly were. As a result, we cannot bear it when others seem to act exactly as they want, revealing themselves outrageously with no apparent concern for others.
It’s a relief to experience feeling calm about allowing everyone to be who they want.
And then, I notice something I don’t recall ever experiencing before.
Other trees have stepped into this conversation.
Not because the sapling isn’t up to it – it very much is. No, they are serving a purpose. For the next few minutes, I feel my brain being tugged by each tree individually. Each tug brings a fresh perspective. Every tree has a different way of seeing what transpired between my friend and I.
There are no words, just directions, tangents, angles, lines.
I lie there and feel my mind pulled down a plethora of different paths. Slowly, I sense my narrow, tight, hard thinking being kneaded into something more spacious and soft. Something forgiving. Something that will rise up.
Without my rigid adherence to one way of looking at this story I feel utterly peaceful.
WHEN WE LET GO OF RIGID NARRATIVES, when we’re brave enough to explore how we might be unconsciously venting, we open to healing and understanding.
Nature has an important role in helping us resolve our emotional conflicts because it forces us to let go of words and open ourselves to more enchanting forms of communication. Whenever I return home from one of these kinds of conversation, I’m left with a very specific feeling that can last hours or days. This feeling is the warm, rising, bubbling softness of believing paradise exists, right here right now.
As always, wishing you creative contentment.
Gabriela, tree goddess.
Offerings
In this section you’ll be able to hear about my offerings and events.
JOIN ME for my next online workshop - ‘Journaling, Breathwork and Nature Healing to Transform your Creative Process’ - on Thursday 25th April at 6.30pm.
This month we’re exploring the element of WATER. It might be that you work through the emotional difficulties we can experience when we aren't flowing with our inner waters, which can be hugely beneficial for our creative work. Perhaps you discover how to experience deeper levels of excitement and pleasure for life, and find new sources of inspiration.
As a subscriber to Wild Muse, you can receive 20% off by using the code Wild01 at checkout.
WATCH my latest YouTube Interview with Freelance Nature Writer Vanessa Wright.
We discuss how how Vanessa left her corporate career to pursue her love for writing, the way she maintains her mental health in the face of adversity, and so much more.
It felt really therapeutic reading this. Thank you! I appreciate you.