On a nice winter day …
It was a wonderful winter day and the sun was shining so I decided to go out and give myself the pleasure to commune with nature for an hour or so. I decided to go and see my giant friends in the wood. They are some century old beeches that form a part of the wood where I normally go walking and relaxing during my week days. I hadn’t been there to see them for a while, therefore I thought to go on my pilgrimage of love to visit my old friends. Some of them are so big and old that they have fallen on the ground and broken in various parts. They lie on the ground with their roots exposed and show their magnificence, they are awe inspiring!
I remember the first time that I saw a very big and old one on the ground and could not remember having seen it lying there before, therefore I realized that it must have fallen recently. I felt inside a sharp sense of loss and grief similar to what one feels when a loved one passes away. I felt sad and mourned as if my grand-father had just died. It is natural to grieve and mourn the passing of someone or the loss of something, it is part of life. I walked around the gigantic tree in disbelief of how big the tree was, I felt like a midget in comparison! I wanted to cry in fact, I could almost feel the pain of the tree that couldn’t stand any longer and gave up. Of course I was projecting my human experience on the beech, but I couldn’t help myself. In its death that beech was majestic, magnificent, awe inspiring, I felt speechless.
The difference between a tree and me
When I go back to visit the beeches, the fallen and standing ones, I look at them with a fresh eye and see again their beauty and appreciate even more their enormous size. While I was standing there in awe and admiration, I realized that I was admiring a huge tree because of its size, but I couldn’t do the same with my life as we don’t grow as tree do. We just grow up to a certain size and then we tend to shrink in the last part of our life, we don’t keep growing! I am witnessing this process with my parents right now. We don’t show on the outside the physical appearance of our life as trees do. All of a sudden I realized that if I were a beech like the ones in front of me there in the wood, even if I am not as old as they are, I would start having a certain stature and height. If I could add more branches to my trunk year after year and my trunk could expand according to the years lived on this planet, I wouldn’t be a little tree any longer, but I would possibly be like a good looking and imposing tree! If I could put all my life experiences so far in a physical form, I would probably be amazed by my height and size!
I am like a tree
I stood there in awe for another while, but now in awe of myself and my theoretical tree called Gabriella Guglielminotti Trivel. I also realised that the trunk of a tree is circular and it grows in rings. As a matter of fact experts can date the age of old trees or even fossil trees by looking at how many rings there are in a tree trunk section. Then I thought of my female cycles. A woman’s cycles cover a huge part of her life and bring so much experience to a woman over the years. I thought of myself approaching little by little my menopause years and how much knowledge and wisdom I have accumulated over time. The more I thought about all this, the more I saw the similarity between me and that majestic beech lying on the ground. By looking and admiring that giant, I was admiring myself in the future when, after a long and adventurous life, I will decide to let go and lie down for good, wow!
My cycles and self-love
I felt speechless again and tears came out of my eyes and I stood there in meditation/admiration for a while. Realising all this, made me feel a huge surge of self-love for the woman I am and want to become. I cycle like Nature and like that beech on the ground I go through my ‘inner seasons’ every month and through the ‘outer seasons’ every year. I can’t stop this process or alter it, I can only second it and go with it, something bigger than me controls it, I just need to learn how it works and follow it, go with it and enjoy it! When I do that my self-love grows like a tree. I love my seasons, am proud of my growing wisdom and my extreme joy is sharing it with other women in the world. Do you enjoy your cycles? Are you aware of how big your tree would be, if you could put your life into the form of a tree? I would like to read your thoughts and comments. If you want to start appreciating your female cycles and grow your self-love, check Flying Inspiration and have a chat with me.