Dear friends, it is time for both Grandmother Cottonwood and I to pursue new adventures in life, so this will be our final blog post. Since the tree herself was cut down last June, I feel that her spirit is finally ready to move on.
It has been a great honor to translate the communications of GCW into words and pictures. We’ve worked in partnership to bring you over 500 posts since 2015. And now, we say a loving goodbye.
Please enjoy GCW’s offerings from our archives. Thank you for your kind attention and support throughout the past five years. Dear readers, you have been much appreciated!
Remember Grandmother Cottonwood when you need to feel grounded, when you desire inspiration, when you find yourself off balance or living in your head, or when you want to connect with the spirits of nature.
GCW in winter
We leave you with a final practice to help you live connected to the Earth, centered in your body, and aligned with spirit
Visualize your energetic roots anchoring you to the Earth, drawing in vital Earth energy. Visualize your awareness centered in the trunk of your body, your heart and belly. And finally, see and feel your energetic branches reaching to divine light, pulling in life giving nourishment and inspiration from the heavens.
(If you have children or grandchildren, they will love this visualization!)
Here are several humble and easy tips from GCW based on her tree wisdom and observations of humans during her long life.
Tip #1: Spend time in nature every day to renew your relationship with with the web of life. In nature, you can release human caused worries, tensions, anxieties and find the peace and calm at your center.
Here you can walk and move your body freely. You can swing your arms, you can run, you can sing to your heart’s content. You can catch a snowflake on your tongue. You can climb or lean against a friendly tree. You can sit on a rock and soak in the sun, observing the life surrounding you and the beating heart within you.
Everything you experience in nature can be seen as a mirror of your inner self and you can learn from this; the dark forests, rolling prairies, deeply rooted grasses, feathered creatures of the air and treetops, grazing animals, fur bearers, scampering tree dwellers, the moods of weather and sky, the quality of light, industrious insects, magnificent spreading trees, tangled undergrowth, flowing streams, silver ponds, changing seasons…
Nature places no demands on you, makes no judgments about you, has no agenda for you to follow. Here you can be yourself. Here you can reconnect with the carefree and happy child within you.
Grandmother Cottonwood, winter
Tip #2: Hug a tree now and then. If you are tuned into your body in a sensitive way, you will notice a change in your energy as you hug a tree. You might also notice the energy of the tree. It may feel loving, welcoming, vital, peaceful, calm, patient. As you hug one of our representatives, you connect to the grounded earthy energy of the tree, and that will energize you!
Tip #3: Root to the Earth. You’re in a body and thus you belong here. You are meant to live fully in your body, not spending the majority of your time in your mind. If you do, eventually you will crash like a weak rooted tree in a high wind. To root yourself, visualize sending your energetic roots deep into the earth so you are anchored to the soil and bedrock. Now you can pull Earth energy into your body through your roots and know that you belong here.
Tip #4: Reach to the Light. Take up your allotted space in the canopy, so to speak. Soak in life giving energy that is your birthright and grow toward the sunlight. A tree will never turn away from the light, but grow always toward it, reaching and reaching and soaking in as much as possible every day of the growing season.
Grandmother Cottonwood
If you are alive and reading this, you are in your growing season. Make the most of it! Claim the light that is yours without apology.
If others are overshadowing you, find safe ways to find the light that is yours. You might start small and build on your successes over time.
When you are rooted and reaching to the light, when you spend time in nature, when you hug a tree now and then, you fully alive in body, mind and spirit. You are free! You are participating in full spectrum of human possibilities from the earthy to the sublime.
In this way, you connect and know your oneness with the web of life.
Ask Grandmother Cottonwood 