November 25, 2023

In winter, we are prone to regard our trees as cold, bare, and dreary; and we bid them wait until they are again clothed in verdure before we may accord to them comradeship. However, it is during this winter resting time that the tree stands revealed to the uttermost, ready to give its most intimate confidences to those who love it. It is indeed a superficial acquaintance that depends upon the garb worn for half the year; and to those who know them, the trees display even more individuality in the winter than in the summer. The summer is the tree’s period of reticence, when, behind its mysterious veil of green, it is so busy with its own life processes that it has no time for confidences, and may only now and then fling us a friendly greeting.

Anna Botsford Comstock

I can relate to Comstock’s bare tree and I am “giving my most intimate confidences” not just to people who know me and love me but I’m casting a net towards strangers.

The last four months have been difficult. But this is expected when you write a memoir about trauma and how it continues to affect my right now and how I continue to live those hard lessons unlearned. Learned now but that doesn’t mean even the victorious isn’t surrounded by battle scars and battle fatigue. The victor stands in the middle of the dust and corpses. The key now is for me to walk forward and away, to stop living in that mommy daddy sister wound.

I almost let those people ruin my current relationship with not good enough, not worthy, perfectionism all the messages I give myself. I moved Dr. Doctor into the center of my trauma wound and made him feel it too and almost to a breaking point. So what did I do? I prayed for a miracle of understanding and grace to engulf me rather than the despair that was swallowing me whole.