The forest seems intent on healing me. Take today, for instance. I was walking on the trail, taking notes on Shakespeare. My latest writing project is about Shakespeare, and I was looking for inspiration. I carried a small notebook and, for the first half of the walk, I wrote down what came to me. Then, when I reached the entrance to the mini-forest, I saw what looked like a hip bone lying on the ground. It was a thick piece of wood shaped exactly like a hip joint. I was a little shocked when I saw it, it looked so much like actual bone. I stared at it a moment, then immediately realized that my writing subject had changed. I was to write about hips, not about Shakespeare.
I’ve been writing daily for quite a while now—sixteen years—and in this time, I have learned that writing is in charge. When I first started writing, I thought I was in control. I had been taught this in school, and it’s how I functioned. But, as I’ve continued to write in this new way—letting writing take the lead—writing has begun to change me. I never know how writing and the forest will accomplish this. Today it was through a piece of wood shaped like a bone.
I’m pretty sure the forest brought me this gift to help me heal from childhood trauma. I was born with congenital hip dysplasia, which means that my hip joint was not formed correctly in my mother’s womb. Some of the risk factors for this disorder include: Being firstborn—that would be me. Female sex—check. Breech birth—yep. Positive family history—yes. Joint laxity—I’m learning I have this. I was a prime candidate for developing hip dysplasia.
My parents did not catch the problem until I was about one year old. By then, I was already starting to stand and walk. To be honest, my parents weren’t paying much attention, or they would have noticed something was wrong. Regardless, the doctors had to do something if I were going to be able to walk. So they put me in traction, then plastered me into a body cast. They try not to do this to babies anymore.
This was too much for my mother. She simply collapsed under its weight. She had trauma of her own, and this triggered it, like one domino knocking down a row of others. This had catastrophic results for me, the most important being the dissolution of my relationship with my mother. Dissolution is a harsh word, but it’s accurate in this case. Dissolution: A dissolving or being dissolved; a breaking into parts; disintegration.
Of course, I don’t remember precisely all that happened to me as a child. But I can guess, from the way things turned out, that at the point of the body cast, my mother simply disappeared emotionally. Through writing, I have remembered many occasions in which I reached out to my mother. My mother rarely reached back. I don’t know how I made it through childhood with a mother who was not only absent, but at times seemed bent on my destruction. For my mother did actively try to hurt me. She was jealous of my relationship with my father. But these are stories for another day.
When my hip failed, my life took a completely different turn—both at the age of one, and again at the age of fifty. I don’t remember much about one, but I do remember fifty. Basically, my hip began to fail. I would be walking and suddenly the hip would lock up. I was in extreme pain and totally unable to move. My super-shallow hip joint was now disintegrating. It couldn’t hold me up anymore.
I was aware of the trauma I had been through as a child, but I had never been fully able to process it. Now that trauma was breaking through and I was being asked to deal with the emotional roots. But first I would have to fix the physical problem.
I scheduled a hip replacement. I was, of course, unconscious when they performed the surgery, but I can only imagine how this new medical trauma must have triggered the old. I remember the first steps I took with my new hip. I felt like I was falling into the Grand Canyon. It took an impressive amount of willpower for me just to initiate the movement. When my foot touched the floor, a bolt of electricity jumped into my leg, then raced through the rest of my body. Of course, this was not only physical, but also emotional. I understand now that my body was letting go of the tight control that had been wrapped around me as an infant. The body cast was being dismantled.
Sixteen years of daily writing has taught me more about this trauma, and healed me in many other ways. Now nature is adding to the work. Today, as I walked on the trail, my lesson from nature was unmistakable. I suddenly felt as if someone had their hands on my hips and was leading me forward. This was an actual, physical feeling, but, of course, there was no one there. I have had this sensation a few times before—always when I’m walking on the trail. Gradually, I have come to understand that nature is trying to heal me. This might sound strange, but it is true. This sensation has been repeated three or four times.
The pressure on my hips began to rearrange the position of my knees and ankles and, in so doing, changed the way I walked. I’m not saying these physical changes are entirely permanent, as the effects start to fade when I leave nature. But each time the sensation occurs, I’m convinced a small part of me does get permanently healed. Over the long term, my body feels different.
By the time I reached the Frog Crossing sign near the end of the trail, the forest had full control of my hips. It steered me to the entrance, and led me under a tree canopy, and I suddenly found myself in the middle of a vivid childhood memory.
I am visiting my aunt for the summer, playing in the large ravine behind her house. I love this ravine. My favorite thing to do here is to look for salamanders. I don’t think salamanders are slimy or ugly, and I’m not afraid of them. I think they understand me. I’m pretty good at knowing which rock to turn over to find the salamanders. I also intuitively understand why they would want to hang out under rocks.
I make up stories with the salamanders. This summer, we are in the middle of World War III. They are soldiers in my army, and I am depending on them to protect me. Together we have to face the enemy and win our secret battles.
I think WWIII might have originally started when I ate a green potato chip. A group of us were sharing a bag of potato chips, and I got one with green on its edge. I was sure I shouldn’t eat it, but I was so hungry I ate it anyway. For the rest of that summer I was totally convinced I was going to die. I never told anyone about this, except for the salamanders. They understood and helped me to fight for my life.
I recognize, now, that this was a part of myself who felt she was contaminated. She directed me to eat that green potato chip so I would become aware of her. She came into existence because of what was happening with my father back home. He was violating my boundaries and I was certain it was all my fault.
The salamanders knew that WWIII could help me. They showed me how to get angry. They showed me how to fight for myself. And they showed me how to win. The only problem was, I couldn’t take any of these skills back home, as it would have been way too dangerous. But for this short, two-month period, I was as free as any salamander. Nature had come to my rescue.
These days, nature is coming to my rescue again, along with the practice of writing. The two work together to heal the trauma inside me. I never know what I will receive when I walk out in nature, nor how the writing will lead me through it. But I do know that the combination of nature and writing is unbeatable—better than WWIII. Nature kept me alive back then, through unspeakable childhood trauma. It’s my turn, now, to pay nature back.
Julie Mariouw is a former English teacher and Amherst Writers & Artists facilitator who offers online and in-person writing workshops through Wellspring Writing Workshops, LLC, which she founded in 2016. Julie combines the power of metaphor, the senses, movement, and nature together with writing, to create healing and increased creativity. Julie’s writing has been published in Wilderness House Literary Review, Teach.Write.A Literary Journal, Recovering the Self, The Huron River Review, The Brick Magazine, Crazy Wisdom Journal, Natural Awakenings Magazine, and Verdad Magazine.
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Image credit: Kelly Wright via Midjourney, DALLE-3, Krea, and Canva.
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