Healing Memories in the Forest

A forest trail at Burfoot Park, Olympia, WA
A place of beauty, A place to heal

September 2013: I wrote this several months ago--then felt too vulnerable to print it.

April 2013:  It has been a long day. My head throbs. My stomach is in knots. Ancient sorrows and terrors have begun to surface. I need some green growing...I need some nature.

I am in Olympia training to work with people caught in domestic violence. What ever possessed me? Just because I've had some....um...interesting experiences, like being in what I thought was a common law marriage with someone who insisted on growing marijuana illegally. Like getting busted for said marijuana and nearly losing my children. Like being on and off of welfare until I finally learned to make a decent living for my family-- and now own my home free and clear.

I thought I might have something to offer women who are struggling as single moms through some of the same issues. So I volunteered where my skills might be useful, and found that the greatest need is working with people caught in domestic violence situations.

Trillium growing in the forest

I didn't know the training would bring up those long buried memories. I didn't know how these memories would affect me physically and emotionally. I did not at first know why I am exhausted and my head hurts. I knew only that I need wild, I need green growing things, I need trees.

I drive away from the city, past the house I once lived in, a house that carries some of those memories, past the school where my children went, to the park I remember. Walking down the trail through the woods to the beach, some of my tension eases. The beauty of the woods engulfs me. I touch again that deep joy that lives within me.


Can the beauty of these woods help to heal other people? Might I share this beauty some how, through my paintings, with people who need green as I do? Who need healing from...um....interesting experiences?

grandmother Dragon

Dragons have always intrigued me, ever since the Dragons I met in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy and in Ann McCaffry's Dragons of Pern series gave me as sense of Dragons as far more complex than the greedy destructive dragons of European tradition. As I studied dragon mythology around the world, I began to appreciate Dragons as deeply symbolic of ancient wisdom, creativity, and power.

As I became more powerful in my own life, my relationship to Dragons changed. As a single mom, I worked to overcome poverty and to finish my college education (is education ever finished?); I adopted Dragon riding as a symbol of my own conquest of fear and adversity. I formed DragonRider Press to publish my first children's book, Atom's Monster.

Now, once again, I am redefining myself and my life. Once again, my relationship to Dragons is changing. I am claiming my own power, wisdom, and creativity. Now I AM the dragon.