Growing up in the city limited my exploring in nature to one or two city blocks when I was young.   Fortunately for me, there was a pond surrounded by trees only a block away…. sadly though, the community used this pond for a dump.  Even though I had to contend with old tires and trash, it never stopped me from exploring it or from visiting a particular tree on the pond.  I would wonder over on many occasion, climb the tree and chat with it.  It was a refuge for me.  I can’t remember our conversations, but I remember, I visited the tree and shared a lot. Somehow, that tree comforted me.   Its funny when I think back on it, when I couldn’t get out to talk to the tree, I would write notes with my finger on the built in wooden cover over our dining room radiator.  Somehow, I knew as a child that that wood was connected to the Tree kingdom and the Tree kingdom were my friends, so it only made sense that the wood would carry my messages to them.

Twenty-five years after this time in my childhood, my father passed away.   Shortly after his passing, I went over to Mom’s home to help clean out papers and files that were kept in the desk my Dad had in the basement.  This was a very emotionally exhausting job as my father spent most of those twenty-five years fighting the state hospital system of which my brother grew up in.  In those days, there was nothing good about state hospitals. They were overcrowded, understaffed and used large amounts of medication to sedate the residents in lieu of proper staffing.  There was much to fight for when one took a stance against this monstrosity called a “hospital”.

That afternoon, while going through those files, I spent hours reading horror stories and crying over the suffering my brother went through as well as so many in the state hospitals.  My goal was to remove all these sad memories from my Mom’s basement and burn them to cleanse the energy forever.  So, on that hot mid-summer day when I came up from the basement after hours of reading those sad and horrific files, I carried with me a large black garbage bag.  I called two very good friends and asked them to help me with a large bonfire to burn and cleanse all that these files held.  While I waited for them, I went out into my mom’s large three season porch and sat in exhaustion on the couch and looked out onto a Parkway full of 100+ year-old Elm Trees.  In a moment, I received a gift from these very large, old trees that I will never forget.  Each tree in front of my mom’s home and all the trees east and west of her home up and down the Parkway, all at once, sent me the most beautiful emerald rays.  It was like each tree was a sun and each Tree was shining down on me with these magnificent and beautiful emerald rays of energy.  I felt renewed, healed and very loved by these trees.  Never had I had such an experience, even though trees had been my friends since I was a young girl.

Trees that surround me, have always been a comfort and joy to me in one way or another.  On that particular day, some very old and familiar Grandmother Trees, sent amazing love to my very saddened heart and they allowed me to see them as I had never seen them before; communicating with their magnificent healing emerald rays of light.