what a tree taught me about my knee - and rest
Last summer wild winds whipped around the garden throwing every branch into a whirling dervish dance. Two great branches of a Chinese Elm tree snapped and smashed onto the garage roof.
On Winter Solstice of 2022, I slipped in the garden and broke my patella (knee bone) into four pieces.
There are many parallels between our injuries. My arborist promised that he could not only save the tree, but also the two limbs connected by a fraction of their wood to the trunk, and he has. My surgeon promised that I would have a mended knee, and I have. The tree surgery was as lengthy as mine and involved strong bolts and cables, while mine needed minuscule wires.
I have drawn great solace from that tree and its journey back to wholeness.
The connection between us as two living beings having integral parts of their structure broken, which is probably the deepest connection there is, reassures and sustains me.
The journey of recovery has taken great patience and acceptance of what can and cannot be done. My tree embodies this. She stood firm throughout the winter. She shed the branches that needed vital energy required for healing. She began to grow new bark over the bolts. Her spring growth came much later than usual and her fresh leaves are tightly bunched to the branches, regenerating by degrees.
Watching this progress teaches me much about resilience and allowing for rest and recuperation. These past 18 months have been full of frustration for me as I learn to walk again, stumble and limp on. I start my social media posts knowing that consistency is key, yet I come to a place where it seems overwhelming and I stop.. The business is beginning all over again after COVID yet I feel I am way behind everyone else in that and ought to do more.
I have so much yet to learn! How easy it is to be calm and self-contained when all is going well and the drift of life takes me easily from one experience to another. How much more difficult to retain that poise when the winds blow suddenly from another direction. Learning is uncomfortable, perturbing and disquieting. Beyond, though, lies the possibility of wisdom.
The amount of restorative resting is hard to do for a person used to doing. And to the outsider, the amount of sleep I require could look like laziness. But so much is not possible when you can’t bend one knee! 18 months seems an impossible amount of time for one simple break, and without the assistance of my Feldenkrais teacher I know with certainty it would take much longer.
But the tree and I will recover, grow new bone and branches, live longer to put forth blossoms and hopefully provide shade, shelter and support for many a year to come.
To you, I say if your body asks you for rest, then rest. Something within you is healing and needs the quiet period of doing very little. Thus you will regain the rejuvenated essence of yourself that others treasure.
