Every morning, rain or shine, summer or snow, she walks the woods at dawn. Perhaps, this is one of the big reasons she is such a terrific therapist and caregiver.
"I have to do it," she told me at a Wednesday night church supper. "Otherwise, I would not be able to give anything to anyone else."
We can all talk endlessly about the need for caregivers to engage in self-care. This clinical therapist lives what she preaches. "If we lose touch with nature, we lose touch with ourselves," she told me. Her advice is for all of us.
I thought of the prisoners I visit on death row. Glenn is locked up twenty-three hours of every day.
For the one hour he is released every morning, he must wear hand-cuffs & leg shackles &
he is restricted to a square of concrete covered by a cage. "We don't let these inmates touch grass," one of the guards told me. He meant the kind growing just beyond the concrete, not the kind you smoke.
Our humanity is tied to the earth. The forests of this world hold great magic. Of course, we need to draw near in order to witness his tricks.
We need to leave the enclosed areas in which so many of us live. We need to taste the smell of autumn, listen to the song of the wind as she travels tree to tree, watch the journey of the sun.
One recent afternoon, I decided to follow my therapist friend's counsel. Of course, I couldn't just walk through the forest, I had to make some photographs for you.
-Reverend Erie Chapman.
