Redcurrants, by Linden

It was summer. I had been struggling to tend to my bed in the beautiful community garden I was part of - let alone managing to make it to the shared work days where we took care of the apple trees and fruit bushes. I was depressed and anxious and utterly exhausted. I had spent a long time doing activism, and eventually it just got too much - a couple of years previously, I burnt out, and my mental health crashed. Even at this point, I still sometimes struggled with the feeling that if I wasn’t fighting for a better world I was worthless, that anything else was a waste of time, and now I couldn’t even do that.

One day, I made it down to the garden - it had been raining, and the sun had come out to make everything gleam. I looked at the redcurrants - like bunches of blown glass, still full of fire - and I felt so sad that I hadn’t been doing my part to take care of them. I felt like I didn’t deserve them. And in that moment of guilt and pain, I felt like they were speaking to me: It’s OK. We want you to have what you need no matter what. We know you’ll give back when you can. 

I took some redcurrants home. I don’t remember if I added them into smoothies or jam or crumble, but I remember that feeling - a moment of really feeling like I was a part of nature, not separate. I had been reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, and I suddenly understood what she was saying about the earth loving us back through sweet and beautiful things. I wasn’t a burden, but a part of the world that was hurting, and that deserved belonging. It was enough to just exist, as myself and in relationship to the beings around me. 

Though I wouldn’t hear the term until years later, I think that was the start of my journey to becoming a nature connection facilitator. That sense of connection was a precious thing that I wanted to figure out how to share. How different would the world be if we acknowledged that we all belong, and took care of each other - human and non-human - in mutual aid from there?

redcurrants, wet with dew, drip in the morning sun