The Healing Power of the Co-creative Circle

 

During the first lock downs of COVID, our tiny village on the shores of Georgian Bay filled with city dwellers seeking respite.  Their respite became our “invasion” and so we sought the solace of a nearby County forest out in the country. This forest was planted one hundred years ago to replace the trees that were all cut down by the early settlers to the region in the late 1800’s, trees that were planted to stop the soil from blowing away.  The forest became our welcoming refuge, our delight, our community and we forged relationships there.

In the winter of the second year of COVID, the loggers came and cut down dying Ash, mature Poplars and Maples.  They hauled out the logs they could sell and left behind huge piles of broken branches and tree stumps.  Our hearts broke looking at the mess that was left behind.  But, we had a strong relationship with the forest and couldn’t abandon it.  It was painful.  Then the downed branches began to whisper to me and form patterns in my imagination that led to the weaving of a big basket, there on the land, using the Ash sticks.  Next came a carving of a face in a left-behind Poplar log.  My partner and I co-created with the forest and our spirits came alive.

During the next month, the unmarked graves of 215 children were located on the grounds of a now closed Indian Residential School in Kamloops, BC.  This touched hearts that until now had remained closed, opened eyes that hadn’t yet seen and triggered ancestral traumas for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. More pain.  We made a tribute to the children in the forest and people added prayer ties, special objects and Indigenous and non-Indigenous people held ceremony there together.  It became a spot for discussion, for honouring, for storytelling, for healing.

During the next month, the LDD moth caterpillars ate the remaining canopy and it felt apocalyptic.  The remaining trees were now bare.  My partner made brightly painted mythical, magical birds from pieces of wood found in the forest and mounted them on the tree stumps adding funny names.  People shared the pictures on social media and families came to see the art work that was “popping” up in the forest.  They felt comforted by the forest and the artwork.

The "Lesser Tidbit", one of the magical, mythical birds created from found wood and paint

During the third summer of COVID, we spent our time creating a circular community garden with an Indigenous advisor to bring the community in our village together.  During one of our events there, a neighbour who is a former township councillor asked us to take part in a National Healing Forest initiative to provide spaces for Truth and Reconciliation work to be done all across Canada.  And so, we began the journey with a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to create a space at the County level for this work.  We decided to suggest the forest we had already been working in even though we never had permission to create the art there. It felt scary to share this with the people that we had judged as “destructive.”  It turned out that the director of the forest was fine with it once we took him on a walk there with the other people in the working group. He said that it was clearly already a healing forest. Our fears of the County destroying the art were needless it seemed.  And now we continue to work with the group to create a learning circle, better access to the river for Elders and improved parking.  A whole new vision is being co-created for the possibilities of activities and ceremonies that could take place in this healing space.  More relationships are being forged. 

National Healing Forest logo (https://www.nationalhealingforests.com/)

In fact, my partner went to the forest on the day that the crew were creating a new parking space.  Members of the crew asked him to show them the art work and explain it.  And so, he did.  He said that they stood in a circle, listened carefully to what he had to say and asked a few questions.  This seemed like a kind of a miracle to me.  The circle had opened wide enough to include the people that we had seen as “the bad guys.”  And here they were, using their “tools of destruction” to create the parking space requested by the Native Women’s Association as we work together.

The new parking area for the Healing Forest

I never could have imagined all the beauty that could be co-created at the beginning of all of this time of disruption.  I have learned though, that when things fall apart, to pick up the pieces that I want to keep and make something new, something beautiful, something form the heart.  I have learned about the magic of co-creativity and the power of the circle, the power of community.  I could have recounted all the losses as only negative.  But, that wouldn’t be telling the truth.  The truth I have come to learn is that within a co-creative community circle, healing is possible.

Retrieving Pearls from the Mud

 

The bright October sun and relatively warm weather called us out onto the water for the last time of the year.  We had been waiting for a good day to take our twenty-foot freighter canoe from the dock on Duck Bay where she floated all spring and summer to a boat launch on the North River.  After some repairs, the canoe will rest under tarps on the boat trailer in the back of the yard for the rest of the fall and winter. 

Our trip from the dock, under the Highway 400 bridge and through Matchedash Bay let us experience the wind that was coming from the Northeast.  I wrapped my sweater and scarf around myself and put on a pair of thin gloves.  The sun warmed one side of my body while the wind cooled the other.  Once we entered the mouth of the North River, we were more protected from the wind by the thick wall of cattails that lined both banks.  The air was very clear and fresh as we made our way upstream.

Eventually, we came to the Lawson Line bridge which runs alongside the boat launch.  There was already a small motorboat beside the launch.  It’s bow line was held by an eleven-year-old boy.  We slowly beached the canoe beside the motorboat and I hopped out onto the shore with our bowline in my hand.  My partner took off the fuel line and let the motor run dry for the winter.

As the last splutters of the motor died out, I noticed a pick-up truck with a boat trailer backing up beside me.  An elderly man got out of the truck and greeted us.  We were beached between his truck and his boat.  He took the bowline from his grandson and pushed his boat out, trying to get it around our canoe which we dragged onto shore a little bit more.  But the wind that we had noticed on our trip was still fairly strong and it blew the man’s boat away from the truck.  He became frustrated and told us that we could get our boat out before him. 

My partner pushed our boat back into the river while I held the bowline and the boat immediately floated downstream and came to rest parallel to the riverbank.  My partner backed our car and boat trailer into the water but the boat was now perpendicular to the trailer.  I handed the bowline to my partner and went to the riverbank to push our boat out. 

With the first step I took onto what I thought was a solid riverbank, I sank into silty mud up to my mid calf.  The second step resulted in the same scenario.  When I tried to pick up my right leg, I discovered that my plastic Croc sandal was stuck in the mud.  I stepped out of the shoe into more mud and then reached down into the sucking mud to pull my sandal out.  The mud smelled swampy and it got onto the sleeve of my sweater.  I repeated this manoeuvre with my left foot and then plodded, barefoot to the hard shore.  Walking gingerly over to the gravelled boat launch, I washed the thick mud from my sandals, hands, arms and feet.

While this was happening, the two men had worked together to pull our canoe onto the boat trailer.  Newly washed and shod, I walked into the water on the gravelled (I can see why that had been put there) launch and pushed the boat into its final resting place.  My partner drove the car and trailer into the parking lot and then returned to help the man put his boat on the trailer as well.  It turned out that both men had just turned 70 and they bonded over their common age and the help they both needed with the boats. Once I got home, I used soap and water to wash the lingering swampy smell from my hands, feet, sandals and sweater.  No harm done.

During this past week, I’ve have been watching a Healing Collective Trauma Summit on-line that has been moderated by Thomas Hubl.  I have been listening to the various speakers talk about personal, collective and ancestral trauma and have been trying to apply this learning to the work that I am doing.  Hubl speaks about how trauma is frozen in the permafrost of our cultures and that as such it cannot be informed or healed.  It just gets played out over and over again.  It is not until we can liquefy this permafrost that the trauma can be informed, that it can rise into our consciousness, be learned from, digested and integrated.  Hubl refers to pearls of learning that can be found in that permafrost.

As I listened to Hubl speak, it occurred to me that my experience of sinking into the silted mud and getting stuck may hold such pearls.  This is not the first time that I have sunk in the mud at this boat launch.  Twice before, I stepped off of the launch into a water filled ditch and sank into deep mud.  I had been wearing flip flops those time and I actually snapped off the strap as I tried to extricate my feet, breaking the shoe.  This time, I had “sensibly” worn Crocs and had stepped in a different area.  I slipped my foot out of my shoe this time and retrieved it with my hand.  I had learned something from my past experience.  What learning was available to me this time?

The North River winds through farmland on its way to the Great Lakes.  Run off from the fields takes soil into the water and this builds up on the sides and bottom of the river, hence the soft sucking mud.  As my feet sunk down into this mud, I was travelling backwards in time, visiting soil from past floods, spring run-offs and heavy rains.  I was travelling through the last two hundred years or so of farming in this area and the erosion of ploughed fields.  This land was cared for by the Anishinaabeg for thousands of years until the European settlers forcibly removed them.  Settler culture of owning, tilling, farming land is not “set in stone” on this land.  It is a sucking kind of mud that pulls you in and it is not easy to extricate oneself from this culture or even imagine something different.  I had to step out of my shoes and let my feet touch the earth.  I could pull my bare feet out of the mud fairly easily but not my shoe.  For that, I had to reach down with my hand, wiggle it and pry it from it’s mucky trap.  The domesticated part of me, my shoe, had to be intentionally pried out.  Once I put the mud filled shoe into the river water, it all washed clean and I could use it to walk easily on the gravel of the boat launch. 

Thomas Hubl talks about liquefying the permafrost so that change can happen.  Pulling my shoe out with my hand and then washing off the swampy mud, allowed a new use of the shoe.  Trying to pull the shoe out with my foot in it, would not have worked.  I had to try something different.

My belief, that the two men needed my help to put the boats on the trailers was false.  My belief that the river bank was solid was also false.  I had to feel the sucking sensation as I tried to pull my foot out with the shoe to learn that the shoe was well and truly stuck.  I had learned earlier that stubbornly pulling on the shoe wouldn’t work.  I tried something different and got out of the mud, out of the false beliefs. 

In fact, it was probably very good for the grandson to see his grandfather and another man problem solve together and help each other despite the strong wind.  That was probably a good lesson for the boy.  I had my own lesson.

When I sink into the mud, the permafrost of our culture that says nothing ever changes, when I feel stuck, I will remember the feeling of being stuck in the riverbank mud on that sunny October day.  I will pause and imagine how I can liquefy the situation, how I can pull it apart, take my feet out of my shoes so to speak, disconnect from a cultural pattern.  I may have to put my hands into the mud, to feel it, smell it, as I search for the pearl.  I may have to get my hands dirty.  And I will pull up the pearls of learning from that melting mud and integrate them into my knowing.  As I work at my own personal healing which is linked to that of my ancestors and the collective healing that I am a part of, I will remember the beautiful smell of the soap as I washed the stinky swampmud from my feet.  I will remember this as the smell of healing.