April 2 2018

By: Jackie Hook
Monday, April 2, 2018

Our theme for April is Healing? Engage with Nature. Losses come in all shapes and sizes as does the healing that follows from them. One result of a loss is often a future you hadn’t expected. A few years ago, I was grieving the loss of an opportunity and a future I was anticipating. As often happens when I am in need of healing, I felt the woods calling so I went for a hike. About 30 minutes into my hike, a caterpillar climbing a tree caught my attention. I stood for a while gazing at its slow and steady pace. Then I noticed a big knot blocking the caterpillar’s path and wondered what would happen next.  This soon-to-be-butterfly simply stopped, turned to the right, crawled around the knot and continued upward. As I walked on, I realized that I too had reached a “knot” in my life and could choose to stop, grieve as I needed and then turn a different direction – other paths were still available for me to move forward. With cellphone technology at my fingertips, I turned around to take a picture of the caterpillar, and it was nowhere to be found. Although disappointed I didn’t get a photographic reminder of my furry muse, I had already received the encouragement and healing within. On that hike, I found something in nature that mirrored my life and it helped me heal

(First printed in the Centre Daily Times on March 21, 2018)

 

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