Can You Let Earth Love You? Building Relationship with Earth
Earth Day is tomorrow, and so I've been pondering my relationship with Earth and how much it's changed over the course of my life.
I've always loved Nature. I grew up with a huge backyard where I'd run through the fields, climb trees, catch frogs, and spend the summer swimming in the pond or the local gorges, muck between my toes.
I got a B.S. in Environmental Studies in College, and was always vocal about saving water, recycling, reusing, and simply doing as little harm as possible to the Earth.
But back in those days, my lens of caring for the environment was very scientific and rational-minded. I approached it as if humans were a pest. As if Earth would do better without us here. And if doing more actions would "save the environment."
In my own unconscious way, I was projecting my lack of inner self-worth onto my relationship with Earth. And projecting my inner shame, my feeling of being innately “bad,” onto all of humanity.
But 15 years ago, I started opening up the Earth from an embodied place, not just a mental place. I started to approach my relationship to the Earth as a spiritual one.
I began to feel the love coming from her and the plants, and started to believe that I was actually important to this world.
The earth and the plant spirits helped me begin to heal my inner wounds, unearth my deep shame body, and claim my own worth and mattering.
And as I did, I began to slowly transform my stance of apology to one of humility.
Humble in understanding the way I am but a child upon the Earth, with beings far older and wiser than I.
Humble in knowing my place here. Knowing it not from an aggrandized nor meek way, but an assuredness that how I live my relationship with the Earth matters so much more than what I do.
I started to recognize the beauty that I (we) could offer the Earth. I started to embody my place on Earth, and began to grow the internal sense that I belonged.
I started to feel worthy of receiving the wisdom and abundance the earth so generously offered. And also started recognizing the power I held in being active in reciprocity.
The power to offer my own heart, prayer, and gifts back to the Earth. How much that really mattered to Earth and all of Life. And how much engaging in a deeper, more intimate relationship with Earth truly mattered to me, to my own heart, to my spiritual well-being.
(Do I believe humanity is still wildly out of balance and needs some serious shifting in our relationship to Earth? Yes. Which is why I do what I do.)
One of my favorite Robin Wall Kimmerer quotes from one of my favorite books, Braiding Sweetgrass is:
“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”
When we allow the Earth to love us, we heal not just ourselves, but the relationship between humans and Earth that’s been so fractured.
No amount of using less water, less plastic, or less pesticides will change the internal relationship you have with Earth.
It comes from a deeper place. It's a being with, not a doing. (Not to say using less water, plastic, and pesticides isn't a good thing!)
So as we approach Earth Day, I invite you to consider two things:
How do you show the Earth you love her? What ways, large and small, weave together to form the way you are with Nature? And also, what acts of devotion do you offer to Nature?
How do you allow Earth to love you in return? What ways, large and small, do you let the generosity of Earth to come into your heart? Do you let yourself receive and embody the wisdom that's overflowing around you?
Enjoy this guided meditation to take you into your body, and connect with a tree ally, deep in the soil of the Earth.
We have so much to learn from the way trees hold themselves. Among other things, they can help us find a deep rooted stability, a sense of safety, and trust within ourselves.
Connecting with these allies is the first step towards re-rooting yourself in a new story of groundedness and belonging.
