Learning the truth about grief from trees

On sealing, then healing, in community

The landscape of the northeast U.S. in winter is not what most of us consider comforting. But after we lost our daughter-to-be unexpectedly in January ‘22, I first sought solace among the leafless trees here. Something about crunching ice underneath my feet, while feeling the wan rays of the sun shining on my face, seemed to mirror the paradox of deep grief and deep grace that I felt in those wind-whipped days. 

By summer, this barren wasteland would become a vibrant green paradise. Knowing this gave me hope that I, too, could move through this season of loss and into life again. 

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A few months later, seeking more warmth, my husband and I traveled to a wedding north of Topanga Canyon, outside of L.A. The California coast had been decimated by wildfires. The evidence of this was etched into the sides of the mountains, where new green grasses waved innocently under scorched black treetops. I felt both the “untouchable green” inside myself beginning to emerge, and a kinship with other beings who had lost so much of themselves in a single season. 

I’ve continued to be fascinated this year by trees, and the people who study and write about them. Our human world seems to lack the kind of rich community rituals of loss that can help us to truly seal our wounds, map new pathways of growth, and thrive again. Yet there are many ways that plants and their families heal themselves and each other after trauma. Call them adaptations, or traditions – perhaps there’s little difference, to an ancient tree. We can learn a lot from them. 

For example: 

• When they’ve lost a limb, trees suffer, but then, they begin to seal off the site of the wound to keep out disease, and grow new bark over the top. The process is exceedingly slow. No new limbs will grow in the empty space. To survive, the plant has to gradually branch in a different direction. According to Beronda Montgomery, biology professor and author of Lessons from Plants, “This wound-healing paradigm exemplifies that, to remain alive, some paths have to be closed and new possibilities pursued.” 

• Trees can often survive lightning strikes if they have community members (fungi, other trees, and even humans) who can provide them with additional nutrients and water during their initial phase of shock. People can even help to put their bark back on if it’s been blown off. Unless the lightning completely explodes the tree, it’s not over until it’s over. 

• Trees can survive major fires, and may even thrive more after a fire, if their underground root system is strong. In fact, some trees do not reproduce at all until after the landscape above the soil line has been cleared by a fire. Far from being broken or destroyed, their cones are opened by the heat, and the seeds inside are nourished by the ashes of the lost above-ground growth.

• Trees are more collaborative with other species than they are competitive; one thriving means another can better thrive, especially after fire or logging. Scientist Suzanne Simard has found that re-growth in clear-cuts after logging is strongest when it includes a wide variety of different types of trees – chosen family, not just genetic relatives. Clear-cuts will also often be re-seeded by untouched trees at the edges of the damaged area, which will then begin to shuttle nutrients to their new neighbors through fungal networks – an example, perhaps, of what it means to “spend your privilege” or “comfort in” if you’re not at the site of a trauma yourself. 

• Animal studies have shown similar trends: after a shock or grief, immune system ability is compromised and activity is “depressed,” but community support can make the difference between an animal that remains in survival mode and an animal that begins to thrive again. 

Trees have taught me to think of our friends, neighbors, and chosen family as the diverse ecosystem that can shuttle nutrients to us in our grief.  The ones who can gently replace our bark where it has been blown off. Who may not be touched as we were by the trauma, but will go on to re-seed our scorched ground with new connections, energy and support.

Trees have taught me to think of myself, and of other people who have lost pregnancies and children, as organisms that have lost an essential part of ourselves to the fire, like trees who have lost limbs. There is no replacing what was lost, for us. But we still have the opportunity to grow in new directions. We still have permission in sorrow, as Cheryl Strayed wrote recently to another bereaved parent, to seek what will save us.

Trees show us how to accept illness, death, and destruction, without inflicting the additional hurts (what the Buddha called the “second arrows”) of blaming and shaming. They do not apologize for creating barriers around themselves against internal and external threats, or for the slow and steady pace of their healing.

Through following their example, we may even come to experience newly-discovered aspects of ourselves and the world, like precious seeds tucked inside sap-sealed cones, that we never would have discovered had the heat of loss not opened our hearts. Not because we were always meant to, but because we choose to now.

Part of our re-growth, and the thriving of our communities, depends on allowing we who are grieving to share these new seeds with others. Thus, to bear witness to our stories is no simple thing. It is often exactly what we healing organisms need to close the old wounds, and begin to grow again in a new direction. 

Thank you to those of you who have offered this witnessing today, through your act of readership. 

Read on for other upcoming live offerings from me on this topic, below the Notes…

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Further reading:

• Finding the Mother Tree, a memoir by noted scientist Suzanne Simard, has shaped my thinking about trees and what they can teach us. It interweaves her own thoughts on motherhood and family with her landmark discoveries about how trees collaborate within ecosystems. 

• The Overstory, a beautiful, Pulitzer-prize-winning novel inspired by Simard’s work, also conveys some lovely truths around trees and community that have buoyed me during these last few years of climate dread and isolation. 

• Elizabeth Lesser, founder of the Omega Institute near me in NY, has collected many stories of people who have had what she calls a “Phoenix Process,” an experience of being burned down and rising from the ashes, in her book Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow. This book was a welcome companion in my first few months of grief. 

• Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School, a cancer survivor, a parent and a very funny person who would like to see us all retire the second-arrowing phrase “everything happens for a reason,” at least in situations that involve deep human suffering. I love her book, her podcast, and especially recommend her funny two-part interview on We Can Do Hard Things as a jumping-off point for her work. I strongly suspect she would not tell a tree struck by lightning that it was simply not praying hard enough at the time.

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I’m teaching an upcoming workshop on Thurs. March 23, on healing from grief in nature through the excellent organization RTZ Hope. The link to register is here (scroll down to the very bottom), and all proceeds go toward supporting the organization. I invite you to pass this link or email along to anyone in your own root system who may benefit from these offerings!