Blooming when Broken

The inspiration for this title sprang from a phenomenon I observed while hiking through Tice Woods at Rotary Nature Preserve a couple of weeks ago. I feel so lucky this nature park is a 5 minute walk from my house, and I regularly indulge in “forest therapy” on the trails here. However, there was a massive ice storm in our area over Valentine’s Day weekend and hundreds of trees splintered and many toppled completely under the weight of the ice. My beloved nature park, along with other parks in our town have been officially closed with all the downed trees. The last month I have ventured over there a few times, carefully picking my way along the trails that are unobstructed; I just couldn’t stay away from my neighborhood forest.

I noticed these brilliant snow-white blooms on this fallen tree and they stopped me in my tracks. How is it possible for a tree to bloom when it’s downed? How does something grow when it’s  supposedly cut off from its life source – the roots nourished by the rich earth? I’m no botanist, or even remotely gifted in science, so instead of trying to figure out the answer, I simply marveled and pondered. Nature often provides me solace and a reminder that all living creatures are resilient. Just like this fallen tree, we, too, can “bloom” even if we feel broken.

A notion I have wrestled with the past several years is that joy and pain exist side by side in our lives, often every day, sometimes in every moment. Pain can be sadness, grief, disappointment, anxiety, anger – any range of emotion caused by the stress of living as a human being. When we find ourselves muddling in liminal space, it’s helpful to acknowledge, and even surrender to the fact that joy and pain are companions, almost by design. I heard on Another Name for Everything that every joyful moment has a quality of sadness, because everything ends eventually. Soon I experienced this myself.

A few weeks ago, armored with the COVID vaccine, I jetted to California to connect in person with people I love: my daughter, and dear friends from college. The long weekend fortified my soul in all the obvious ways. The joy of reunion and quality time was palpable…and so was my acute awareness that the 3 days would gallop by, and I would have to say goodbye to people I love and don’t get to see often enough. Predictably, the sadness cloaked around me the following week, competing with the joy that bubbled in me from the warm memories.

Collectively, we’re experiencing joy and pain. At this point in the pandemic there are positive signs, as more and more people are getting vaccinated. My son went back to school in-person last week for the first time in 13 months. Some restrictions are loosening, giving us happy glimpses of all the things we’ve missed. But we’re not “there” yet. There are still a lot of fears, paranoia, hesitancy, and in Oregon, rising cases again. The difficulties of isolation and loss and many other conflicts have taken a toll. Joy and pain, side by side, in this liminal space.

My mid-40’s were a dark period for me. But I started a gratitude journal because I was weary of walking in darkness. When I first started writing in it before I went to sleep, my goal was to write one thing that happened that day that was good or that I was grateful for. My writing life was dormant then, and it was too painful, rather than cathartic, to write. So I kept it simple and the goal was just a word, or a phrase, or a sentence. Years later, I have countless little notebooks filled with goodness. It’s a practice I keep up because it helps me remember there is good in everyday, even the shitty days. Joy and pain everyday.

The more that we resist our pain, the more it doubles in energy. Which is why so many of us are struggling with our pain, individually and collectively. As a culture we are masters at addictive preoccupations. Capitalism makes it easy and even glorifies these addictive preoccupations. The word “addiction” is pretty loaded, but honestly, we’re all addicted to something…whatever the thing is that numbs our pain, masks our pain, avoids our pain, escapes our pain, blames our pain. 

Liminal space, when the known is over and behind us, and the unknown hasn’t yet begun, when we are stuck in the waiting room…this is the space to actively accept our pain and embrace our joys. To be brave enough to feel all the feelings and humble enough to reconcile with our shadows. We can use our pain for transformation, because if we don’t, we will likely transmit our pain to the people around us. We can bloom in the midst of our brokenness.