Healing with Nature by Susan S. Scott

Healing with Nature by Susan S. Scott

Author:Susan S. Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse


CHAPTER 10

New Life in Relationships

Creative Relationship struggles to grow

in the shade of another tree.

To thrive,

it made a loop with its topmost branch to stretch laterally into its

own sunlight.

Langley, Washington.

Chapter 10

Though most libraries and bookstores housed huge sections of self-help books focusing on how to have, improve, save, and leave intimate relationships, I had yet to find any wiser advice than the stories I stumbled across in nature. Trees lived creatively from the very particular places from which they grew, no matter what was happening around them. Rarely did I see relationships between trees to be perfect or even close to ideal. Such a concept was absent in nature because the trees were simply striving toward the real. They did so in imperfectly beautiful ways, like the young pine that made a looping turn at the very top of its life in order to grow laterally into the light. This young pine had found itself struggling to survive in the shadow of its massive elder. To continue growing along the genetically programmed pathway straight upward would have meant certain death. For this tree to live within a relationship, it had to become extremely creative. It turned a somersault into the sunlight available. I marveled at the genius of such a creative solution.

One of my clients was finally able to discover a miraculous turn in her life when, as a single parent, she adopted a child from China. For years she tried in vain to find a relationship with a man and have a family, but time had ticked right past her child-bearing years. Though she had many interesting relationships with lovers, none had become marriage partners. She did not want this fact to interfere with her deepest heart’s desire to be a mother, so she turned directly toward her dream and adopted a child. Within two years of the extraordinary challenges of being a single mother, she met a man who wanted to share family life with her. It was her radical turn toward new life which had brought her to what she could not find by walking the more traditional path. Such a turn revealed her genius, though at times, I am sure she would say that being a single mother also revealed her biggest flaws.

A couple I worked with for several years had come together just after losing their long-term partners for very different reasons. Instead of proceeding down the traditional path of falling in love and marrying, these two decided they wanted to let their relationship tell them what form it wanted, very much like a poet lets a poem reveal its native form. For the second half of their lives, they decided to maintain separate homes and spend time together that had nothing to do with problem-solving different parenting styles or financial strategies, or psychological issues that manifested themselves in their intimacy. Both decided to do their personal work with their own therapists, and see what it was like to experience intimacy as more pleasure than problem and conflict.



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