M Ljin

"Learning, gathering physical and emotional tools. making sure I'll be ready when the way opens."
…
But something within me says that it's all meant to be part of my story.

I think this is what may keep you sane through it! When we hold this attitude we are able to look closer and learn from our experiences rather than simply resist. “How can this help me become the person I want to be, and help the people who come after me do the same?”

I spread leaves in fall. Oftentimes, especially in exposed places, they blow off, but I do notice mulching keeps the soil more intact. Oftentimes I will hill up in spring so the mulch gets covered and buried.

Snow is also a sort of mulch. If only it stayed the whole winter these days! (Aside from January thaw—that isn’t new.)

Boiling is also one of the most practical ways of preparing food. If you drink the broth/water too—a soup—then you don’t need to treat other water separately or worry about it being unsanitary (as long as it is relatively clean already).

I actually noticed this happening here too—only some of the plants dying under the large wire thing.

What do you call it when there is a rather large stand of burning bush?

A bush fire.

What about digging a new pond/swale and using the soil from that?

Are you eating, drinking and sleeping enough? City noises are of course a cause of shallow sleep or sleep deprivation and that can mess with our ability to think/dream our way out of a bind, and that can be self-perpetuating when the anxiety it creates carries on and disrupts sleeping. And being well fed with balanced food and hydrated can’t hurt. Dehydration especially tends to make perception sharper and imagination less potent—leading to difficult concentration, higher sensitivity to noise, etc. Not that the noise isn’t awful, but anything we can do to help can make a difference.

Also sufficient exercise like walking…

Dreaming is also important for processing our situation, imagining/visioning a way out, and lifting the overwhelm and anxiety that the waking mind is wont to create, and the insights gained are often precious. My life has followed my dreams much more than it has followed my wishes—though my wishes are the direction, and dreams the path. (Both are necessary…)

Bad relations with others are really hard. I can tell it is still weighing on you a lot.

Maybe your intuition is telling you that these options aren’t right because you need to work on your relationship with your ancestors? Feeling uprooted from your family cannot help, and I remember reading you and your family were uprooted previously too, via migration (a cycle of unsafety/uprootedness). It might be that you need to work with your relationship with family to the point where, maybe you don’t need to move back with them or be totally friendly, but at least make some kind of peace.

(Assuming your ancestors are involved—it could be a bad romantic relationship too.)

I have worked on my relationship with my parents for a while now because I knew in my soul that was what needed work. It has been rewarding though hard. As Andrew Marlin sings: “Unlearn to live like prey”. I don’t know what sort of music you like (besides live and acoustic) but the whole song (Watchhouse, “Sway”) has themes that are relevant.

I believe now strongly that our relationship with ancestors is the root of our disconnection with nature and the world as a whole. I could share my experience of growing up in rural Vermont, in my opinion paradise, being taken foraging mushrooms, ramps and fiddleheads with my parents since before I could walk, and still feeling as a child an absolute dissociation with everything, walled off from everything, from my own body even, by my fear and powerlessness, my imprisonment in a human form, in a house, subjected to the wills of parents and teachers, adults. It wasn’t ever like I was cut off from external nature physically, and spiritually I was connected to the beauty and wonder of nature outside myself, but rather from my own inner, human nature. I would look for fairy doors in the forest to a land where I would be freed from the suffocation caused by the ancestral trauma of civilization. It’s the human nature, the one that comes from our ancestors who cause us to live, that seems to need the most healing.

I also find that the more I balance my relationships with land, neighbors, friends, and family, the less I need any of them to take care of me/make me feel safe. Some people are good at some things, others less so. One person might help with garden work but be completely useless with emotional support, or the other way around, for a contrived example. Maybe you need to give something to someone who can’t give it back to you but needs it, and that helps the community go round, same with other people and you. In certain indigenous societies (Mayans for instance) someone could go their whole life without experiencing true romantic love but still feel satisfied and in community. Martin Prechtel calls this “marrying the village” and it is a reminder of how the more connected we are the less we need one person to satisfy us. Really, community isn’t just us and our neighbors, it is our entire ecosystem, including humans/ancestors, mice, rocks, birds, mushrooms, trees, herbs, and mosquitos.

How does this sit with you?

I have to say, that looks like honey locust (thornless?) to me. Probably not though given the location.

What do they do if you have a “fall risk”? Restrict your movement?