What we can Learn from Nature

“In tending a plot and nurturing and caring for plants we are constantly faced with disappearance and return.” - Sue Stuart-Smith

I used to shy away from buying and then having to care for any plant, whether indoor or outdoor.  I found it too stressful to even contemplate being able to care for them, all I could think about was what if I kill them.  The concept of disappearance and return did not enter my mind, it was all just too overwhelming. 

This fear was challenged when I was given a beautiful house plant and I decided I’d have to try and look after it.  Thankfully it was a hardy plant and very forgiving and it lived with me for many years.   I learnt a great deal from caring for it and I believe that it was my connection with this plant that reawakened me to myself and to nature.

I have always loved being outside in nature, and have written a blog about this. I believe this unconscious connection began from a very early age.  I realise that in almost every photograph I have of myself as a baby, I am outside, either sitting up in a pram or on the grass, usually accompanied by an animal of some kind.

“I pause now to reconnect to myself as a baby and this takes me deeply into myself and into the earth beneath me.”

Rachel Podger

As I write now, I am reminded of these photographs and a childhood spent in the refuge of nature and the unasked-for comfort of animals.  I pause now to reconnect to myself as a baby and this takes me deeply into myself and into the earth beneath me.  I feel the strength that it gives me, in turn, I grow a little taller within myself. 

This conscious connection to mother earth and to her gravitational pull, reminds me of what it feels like to sit and meditate.  It gives me an opportunity to reconnect and recharge and to allow the comfort that nature gives and for her to speak to me, inevitably, when I need her most.  Nature reminds me of those who have gone before me and of their love of the land and nature as a whole.

Nowadays, when I buy a plant whether for indoors or outdoors, I can allow myself to nurture and enjoy it for the time that I have it in my life, and to trust that if make mistakes whilst looking after it and for some reason it doesn’t survive I can learn from the experience and keep on trying. 

The cycles of disappearance and return are endless and appear in our lives in a multitude of ways.  I thank and remember fondly the person who gave me that plant, it was at a time of beginning my work with caring for people and has taught, and continues to teach, me so much.