This written piece has been inspired by my Tending the Garden of the Heart journey.
If you are keen to embark on your own 30 day journey of emotional and mental self-care and healing, as is offered by Connection Culture, you can do so here. I highly recommend it!
Where are our Elders? Where have they gone?
The wise, calm, benevolent ones that help us feel safe in the world.
Who offer a deeper and broader perspective on life than we are usually able to access.
Are they all in hospitals and homes and heavily medicated? Or are they still caught up in that rat race of a material world – of fake it til you make it and shop til you drop. Literally.
Many Indigenous cultures used to, and still do, have their Elders.
But they are few and far between, it seems, in our modern Western world.
It gives me grief that we have no basket to rest in, that we offer no such basket for our Elders. But, it gives me hope that I can be a part of that basket for my own daughters.
It gives me grief that our society dismisses our older people, with as little thought as they have while throwing out the rubbish. Not productive anymore. Not beautiful, a burden on the system…
It gives me grief that our Elders let themselves be treated this way. Shut out, shut away, shut down. Patronised, ignored… and even abused in worst case scenarios.
It gives me grief that our Elders are not standing strong in their values. Or that they have perhaps reached old age without even realising what their values are. That they are clinging desperately to the stories crafted for, and by, them.
But.
It gives me hope that there are some that want things differently.
There are some that want to change this model. Although I am not yet old enough to be ‘an Elder’, I am one of those.
I stand for change.
For love.
For deep connection with the sacred earth and with each other.
Connection at the soul level. Beyond the physical form that ages and falls away.
What is cultural repair?
It is this.
It is weaving all the broken, messy parts of humanity, along with the magical, beautiful and mysterious. Bringing it all together like a woven basket.
And it’s letting go of the need to fill that basket, or to see or taste the fruit. It’s doing the weaving for the sake of doing the weaving. It’s doing the work. The internal work. Not just the ‘work’ that our materialistic culture deems productive that is actually distracting us from what is real.
Who is in?
To further explore the themes raised in this post, book in to the Connection Culture Community Clinic for a healthy chat with Dahna, or any of our wonderful therapists.
You can also embark upon the Tending the Garden of the Heart 30 day Journey, and learn even more about the Elder living inside you.
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