The Land Gave Me Security
A while back, I was listening to a podcast with an energy worker named Daniel Foor talk about animism and ancestral healing work. He commented that we often think about other humans fulfilling our needs, but that we rarely think about how the rest of the natural world is uniquely positioned to fill needs that other people cannot. I had been doing energy work processes with earth and universal energies for a while for the sake of healing myself, but this conversation spurred a deeper sense of commitment and security in what I was doing.
Doing guided visualization and “energy work” is one of many forms of connecting with the world around us. And for me, it has dignified my understanding of the consciousness of everything around me. I am in relationship to it all, and this relationship connotes exchange.
In August, I hit a tough financial spot and had to make some decisions about where I was investing my time, money, and energy. I ended up releasing a significant intention I had been carrying with me for over a year. The decision to let it go made an unexpected and crazy amount of space to re-invest and re-commit myself to other practices that I felt were more aligned. I could feel the physical weight of it all fall off of my shoulders. This cascade of energy moved me to release another long-held intention I had to move out of my apartment. The decision to re-sign my lease felt like another crazy and intense opening that allowed me to re-invest my energy into something that was already feeding me: where I already live.
I have spent quite a lot of time in my life engaging in fantasy, wishing I was somewhere else, wanting to travel around. When I left Michigan in 2016, I had no idea I’d spend the next 6 years in Washington, DC bouncing around to different neighborhoods and houses. In fact, I haven’t spent more than 2 years grounded in one place since I moved out of my parent’s house in 2010 to go to college. This may seem like an exaggeration. You might think that bouncing between dorms and my parents’ house isn’t technically like living in a different place or moving around, but when I contrast the last decade or so of my life with where I am living now, I am astounded at how difficult it is to feel rooted in your environment when you shift even the smallest of distances and watch as the people you live in close proximity to shifts dramatically. Maybe when you’re young it makes more sense to move around like that. There was so much excitement and energy to burn in my 20s. I wanted to experience lots of different things, and I did.
Landing in Denver in my 30s (and in the middle of my Saturn return I might add) and heading into my 3rd year in the apartment I live in now, I feel an ecstasy that is difficult to describe. I have had a million different jobs here, but my surroundings have largely remained the same. I even see the same faces at the grocery stores and cafes I frequent. I don’t know these people. I don’t even know most folks names, but maybe I will one day. And to feel recognized and to recognize by just being is a gift that I didn’t know I needed to receive.
I credit the land with this newfound, relational security. I don’t know how to describe why exactly. It’s like the fact that there are plants and trees and landscape that remains present in a cycle has mirrored back to me what it means to remain and change. To be in cycle. To be different and the same. To show up in all of my different forms yet remain rooted. I am accepted by the land. It remains while I remain. I am learning that if I stay in one place for long enough, I don’t have to do anything to be known. To be seen. To be understood. To have history. Maybe this is what it means to be post-Saturn return or “in my thirties” or being an adult. But I’m grateful to feel like I’m healing a sort of “attachment wound” with aid of the earth. I’m not attaching to a human, but to a sense of place. And this sense of place is remaining as I remain. It is growing as I grow. And it is doing it slowly, but surely. And wow, I am so grateful for this change of pace.
