Remembering

A friend of mine recently sent out a blog titled: “Nature: The Remembering of Who We Are”  That friend is the person who organized and ran the retreat I took in Spain where I first was introduced to Forest Therapy.  The piece is so well written that I encourage you to check it out for yourself.  It brought to mind a nature memory I had when I was in the last part of my Forest Therapy Guide training during my 4 day immersion.  I was sitting in a field of wildflowers and could feel the love of my great grandmother watching over me as I picked the flowers.  It brought me right back to my childhood home where I would pick clover in her yard as she watched over me out her picture window.  It was a time of my life where I was truly carefree. I was safe and loved.

Memories like this make up the very fabric of who we are and how we interact with the world and with others.  Sometimes those memories can fade as we become tamed by the world and numb ourselves to so much around us.  But we can find our way back to them through nature.  It is interesting how something such as a smell of a flower or how the sun hits you in just the right way can trigger a memory.  

I am currently on a journey with my Mother to see if we can unlock some of her memories.  She has been diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy which is causing her to lose parts of her vision and her memory.  When we noticed her memory was fading I had purchased one of those online memory book subscriptions thinking that we would have fun reliving stories of her childhood and early adulthood.  Things didn’t turn out that way as she already has lost some of the ability to recall events.  But I am finding that given the right set of circumstances; my telling of a story, the taste of a peach, my description of an old picture might spark a memory and then there she is again recalling the past like it was the present in her animated way that I love so much.

One very special gift we both have is the fact that my Grandmother (her mother) kept a diary for years! (pictured above)  And I mean YEARS…dating back to 1919 all the way up to 2002.  We are missing a few years in there, but not many and what we are missing seems to be captured in a seven year baby book!  These treasures are helping me find those little keys that seem to open up the memory bank.  And so starts a journey of a daughter helping her mother recall her cherished memories with a little assistance from her mother’s mother!