Posted on February 7th, 2022

None of us would have thought in 2020 that we would still be in a pandemic in 2022, battling the third wave, and yet it has been inspiring to see so many of us adapting to the great changes that this pandemic has brought. Changes in job, career, family, finances and worst of all, dealing with the grief of isolation and death—many of us are at a breaking point, having used all our tensile strength. People in economically and socially disadvantaged communities have suffered the most.

Resilience is a word that came up for me when I thought of 2022. Resilience is our ability to endure and bounce back from difficult situations.

As I had my own mental health struggles in 2021, I took time to deeply reconnect with the earth’s grounding energy and took many forest baths in isolation. I have found my connection to trees and soil very healing. Three lessons that I have been practicing and want to share with readers are:

• Anchoring: Trees impart the wisdom to stand silently rooted in the most difficult weather.

Our values and our connection to our ancestors have the potential to become our strongest anchors. This is especially true for people who have been disadvantaged by systems of oppression, faced historical erasures and internalized that oppression, thus cutting themselves from their roots and trying to fit into the dominant culture. Creating clarity around our deeper cultural values that sustained our ancestors through difficult times can help us make important, aligned and empowering decisions.

• Connection: Trees keep in touch with other trees and the fauna, creating a diverse ecosystem in which everyone participates to nourish and grow.

Nurturing the connection we have with our family, relatives and a diverse community can support us through the toughest of times. People thrive when they know they are loved and cared for and when they have someone to love and care for in return. A diverse community also allows for diverse and new perspectives, which in turn provide nutrition for our collective growth.

• Liberation: They work underground without having any need for external validation and are able to create shifts that change the entire forest landscape.

Learning to liberate ourselves from our pursuit of being seen and being significant is a paradigm shift in a system of beliefs about what success is, squeezes us for more and impacts our health and the wellbeing of our families and communities. Liberating ourselves is a practice of being able to sit with the discomfort of not doing. The pandemic became a tool for many of us to learn that lesson.