The Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
How are we to know our place in the family of things when we have not known our place in our own family? Many people who have suffered complex developmental trauma have grown up feeling rootless and in many cases, self-less, unable to feel like they know themselves- who am I? A loving parent will affirm a child’s tenderly emerging identity, giving names and comfort to their emotions- helping them to know when they feel sad, or angry, tired or joyful. Will help them to navigate the territory of carving out their own physical, emotional and sexual boundaries as they grow. This helps the child to know themselves, to have a sense of entitlement to their own feelings and to be able to assert their needs in the world.
Without this life is tough. Who am I spills into all aspects of life in so many ways. An inability to assert one’s needs in relationships or with family members- to feel guilty about having needs at all, feeling more comfortable to suppress one’s own needs to meet the needs of others. Therapy can help with all this, to find and then to allow what has been suppressed for so long to be finally heard and expressed, to be able eventually to find one’s place in the world.
And in the meantime and beyond, there is the wisdom of the elemental Earth. To find your place in the family of things through connection with and surrender to the elements. We are all elemental, made of the same stuff as the trees and the stars. This is why we often feel so at home in the green spaces. Feel your place in the family of things as you sit on the Earth and watch the river flow. Know that you belong as you tread the leaves underfoot in the Autumn woodland. Be with fire as you absorb the heat and its transformative power. And know as you dissolve into a beautiful sunset or forget yourself as the clouds drift by on a summer’s day that you belong here. That you are a child of the Universe, that Mother Earth is always here to hold you. That no matter what you have been through in your life, you have a place in the family of things.
