How Your Gratitude Can Help Heal The World.

The Giving Tree, written by Shel Silverstein, has been a childhood favorite for many. But there's so much about this book that has always left me feeling so unsettled. 

To summarize the story (spoiler alert!), a little boy makes friends with a tree and he climbs on the tree and has so much fun as a young boy. He comes to love this tree. Throughout the years, the boy comes back to the tree to solve many problems. The tree gives the boy his fruit to sell and ultimately allows him to cut down the tree itself to use, leaving only a stump, where the boy returns as an elderly man to rest and sit upon the stump. 

The man just took and took and took. And the tree just gave and gave and gave. Yes, because she loved him. Of course. 

But how would that story have looked differently if the tree showed herself a little more self-love and set some healthy boundaries?  Could she have still offered support and apples without giving her everything?  Could they both have had a bountiful life at the end? 

How many relationships do you have in your life where you feel like The Giving Tree?  Do you feel like you give and give and give and another person takes and takes and takes? Do you feel like all you have left is a stump? 

How can you offer yourself more self-love and hold a few more boundaries with the people in your life so you can flourish too?

We see this in our relationships with the people in our lives, but I believe this book is at the core of what is happening in our world right now too. When was the last time we sat and gave gratitude to Mother Earth for all her resources, animals and oxygen that she offers up to us daily? 

I believe we have been the takers here. 

While beach cleanups and trash pickups are very important, when was the last time you offered your heart to Mother Earth in gratitude for all she does? 

I am always teaching you here, and all of my students in class, to ground. Although until this week, I've never thought about giving gratitude first. I've always taught to drop into meditation, ground and draw up Earth's energy without ever thinking about offering gratitude to the core of our Earth first.

I believe she is depleted. She is tired.

We have left her with a stump. 

Join me in this week's meditation, Grounding with Gratitude, where we take a moment to give gratitude to the center of the Earth and to the Earth itself to begin to heal her. As we heal her, we heal ourselves. As we heal ourselves, this COVID-19 chapter will close. This illness is about so much more than our physical bodies.

It is about healing our hearts, our connections and our Earth. It is about giving back to the original tree that sourced us.  Much like our meditation from a few weeks ago, Do you have enough space to be you?,  where we discussed being connected like the tree from Avatar.

We have left our Divine tree to become a stump. Now it is time for us to connect and allow that tree to blossom and come back to life. 

The beautiful part of this is that as we offer gratitude to the core of our Earth, we heal our own hearts simultaneously.

The gratitude offered will be the gratitude received. We are all connected. 

Thank you for healing along with me. Together we will heal this world and our lives will never be the same. 

Much love,
Erin