Remembering Deep Connectedness
By Suzan Muir
After the death of my dream baby, it took ten painful years of working with my sorrow and loneliness, suicidal ideation, breast cancer, anger and resentment until finally I incorporated those feelings and experiences into a new me - into a woman who no longer primarily identified as having, or, not having, children.
The tools that supported me during that active grief work, were dialogue with wise women, time alone in nature, growing organic vegetables, fruit and nuts, (and eating them) meditation, yoga, visualisation and massage.
Into my sixth decade I’ve passed beyond the annihilating grief of my childlessness and have come through the other side of this demanding rite of passage, feeling empowered and inspired by my child free life. I have my ups and downs like everyone but I’m also comfortable with my grief.
Whilst I live in a patriarchal, pro-natalist society which subscribes to the economic myth of infinite expansion, on a finite planet, my roots in the land I inhabit inform me of another older, wilder narrative.
A story of women who hunted and gathered their way across this landscape, who crooned and sang to the world around them. Who observed and were a part of the land that provided their food, water and shelter and who knew how to take only what they needed, always leaving enough of a plant or animal species for it to continue to flourish. Women who belonged to a people who kept the number of their own species in balance in relation to the carrying capacity of the land.
Some of this wild story is also myth and some of it is deeply rooted in our collective genetic inheritance of what it is to be a woman who knows land intimately, as Self, as sustenance, as comfort.
If I could have had children I would have, but that was not my life’s path. Now, with out children, I understand what I have personally gained through this painful life journey.
I have gained space and time to stand outside of human community and to observe the machinations of an industrial, resource hungry economy and the steady demise of the surface of the planet from which we all derive our sustenance.
Because I am not bound up with the daily need to feed, clothe and educate my own children I also have the time and space to actively respond to the devastation that I see. I have the opportunity to inhabit an old way of seeing and being in the world and to use this experience to be an advocate for the balancing of human life within Earth’s ecology.
Being connected to land is inherent to this experience. Deliberate, daily relationship with plants, animals, rocks, rain, sunshine, soil and seeds; nurtures my body, mind and spirit.
Not only do I harvest food and water from this land but I also go to it for renewal, guidance and inspiration. In being rooted and connected, this land’s spirit informs my life and flows outwards.
My desire to protect this wild landscape re-engages me with community though environmental agency, with other women, with those who also know of our ancient relationship with Earth and the mutual need of reciprocal respect and engagement between human and non-human environments for our species to sustainably flourish. With that, for me, comes the responsibility to be involved with local land care groups, local council politics and feeding into future landscape management plans for our shire.
This morning as I walked to a rocky outcrop, near my house, I asked a question of the forest,
‘What do you want from me?’
Did the forest answer me or was it just my mind, gentled into a place of quiet contemplation by the health and beauty of the wilderness around me? It matters not.
The answer came, ‘Go home and write about women and land and mutual sustenance…write a piece for World Childless Week .’ So here it is.
Regardless, my sisters, of wether you live rurally, or in a city, you may already have a pocketful of tools for maintaining meaningful ways of relating to Earth.
If you want to deepen your connection with our life giving planet and simultaneously assuage the commonly felt loneliness of being childless, here are some fun suggestions:
grow some house plants and get to know them personally,
cultivate mushrooms in a box in the laundry,
grow exotic patio food plants,
join a community garden,
depending on where you are in your grief journey around being childless - start a kitchen school garden at your local school ( sometimes it’s easier to work with adolescents than cute primary aged kids),
start a rooftop garden,
help your elderly neighbour to prune her roses,
take up city bee keeping,
do some kerb side gorilla gardening by planting fruit trees in your street, or bee friendly flowers
share some hens with the kids next door,
buy organic food directly from farmers; from farm gates, farmers markets, or Community Supported Agriculture,
take a daily walk or jog in the park,
get out hiking on the weekends,
go climb a mountain,
paddle down a river,
start a market garden,
or - even - move to the country…. now that’s a concept.
To find out more about By Suzan Muir and her retreats please click on this link here