The Black Walnut Tree (Part 2)

Calling Me Home...

Part Two: A Tree Calls Me Home

A SHORT RECAP - READ PART 1 HERE

I used to think the trees that shaped me were behind me: the lovers in Zălanpatak, the sweet chestnuts of my Dutch childhood, the oak I clung to in New England, the giant fig in Sydney that saw me off the night before I left my brother. I thought I’d named them all.

But the trees are never done with us. Not really. As my birthday draws near again, and with it, the renewed weight of that medical file that says “terminal” something began calling. Not with words. With a silent, persistent pull. With presence.

A memory of strange, dark nuts my mother once brought home from a walk. A shape I couldn’t stop seeing in my mind’s eye. I close my eyes and feel the fine ridges of the husk, notice how it lays heavier in my hand than the regular walnut. How it is seemingly impossible to crack. Like truth can be a rock solid kernel, when what we long for is to melt into softness, into wisdom, into sacred knowing.

A whisper I didn’t know how to place became a summons that I could no longer ignore: go to the black walnut. now.

BLACK WALNUT SYMBOLISM & MEANING

“In many cultures, the walnut tree, including black walnut, is often seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge. This symbolism is linked to the walnut itself: a rich core enclosed in a hard shell, symbolising the pursuit of knowledge, which may require effort to "crack the shell" and access its contents.

In certain ancient traditions, the walnut tree was also associated with justice and integrity. With its straight trunk and deep roots, the tree symbolises moral uprightness, sometimes believed to help clarify situations or maintain order.”

I have been a little obsessed with the black walnut tree, ever since my mother discovered its nuts, strewn on a path where she regularly goes for a walk. At the time this tree revealed itself to me, the current rogue cells in my body were still a secret.

Once the mystery mass showed up, untreatable but stagnant, suggestions were made. People experiencing cancer, like me, will be familiar with loved ones doing deep dives in pretty much anything that promises a cure. Ivermectin, many said. I replied, thank you. It is not something I would ever do without medical supervision.

Month later a new acquaintance told me there is a plant based variety of Ivermectin. Curious, I looked at the ingredients. Among other natural substances known to be effective against fungus and parasites, was the black walnut.

Ehmm, I thought, while I ordered a bottle of black walnut tincture to my order of vitamins and supplements.

I don’t always take tinctures the way they are regularly subscribed. Some, like artemisia annua I took almost religiously for a few weeks in the exact dosage. Counting the drops as they merged with water felt like a meditation, a ritual.

Before taking anything, I always say a little prayer, mixing blessings and gratitude: Thank you for providing for me. May it be to my highest good.

The black walnut works differently for me. I only take two or three drops, whenever I feel I need to strengthen my connection with her. Just a taste, a little of the essence, as a reminder of why we have bonded, in this particular experience, this time and place.

HEALING WITH THE LOCAL

I am naturally drawn to forests and plants. Always have been. By the time I left primary school I could tell you the spiritual and medicinal properties of all local wild flowers and herbs. I had started learning their latin names, late at night, secretly reading in bed when I was supposed to be sleeping.

In healing we have started to look at other cultures. Ones that instead of discarding and discrediting ancient knowledge, are passing it on from generation to generation. Films like the last shaman and books like plant spirit medicine make it tempting to look for healing there. But instead of booking a ticket to Peru, I turn to the local.

In my personal history this is unusual. Ever since we left the place of my birth when I was six years old, all I have ever wanted was to leave this country, look elsewhere. I still have a visceral response when I think about the village where I grew up. I accept now, at 48, that the years there were formative and meaningful, but you couldn’t bribe me with all the world’s diamonds to relive them. Or to return there. I have some ancestral healing to do, including bloodline, land and local identity.

I have not felt at home anywhere, ever since. That is 42 years of self-imposed exile.

I had lost even all intention of growing roots and blooming, until, the tree called me home. I am learning, slowly, that there is not either /or, here/ there, there just is….

REFLECTIONS ON A SURPRISE SEEDLING

1. When I held that seedling in my hands and brought it home, what part of me softened for the first time in months?What fell away in that moment, even if only a little?

Gently caressing the leaves of the seedling with my nose, she connected with me. My response was: I know you will guide us home. I felt a sudden warm wave of gratitude, and of safety. A tiny spark of belief was returned to me. That in this life and in this world I will have a home. My fear of being scared, alone and uprooted forever was lifted for a while (it will take time and continued aware practice to help this grow).

I now live from the question: how do I stay connected to the seedling and my sense of self so I will be guided to my home….

2. Do I think the walnut tree knew it would come to this, not just the loss, but the replanting? Did she trust me enough to die near me?

When I first noticed she was gone, I felt gutted, scared, and anxious. Briefly I thought: If I have bonded with this tree, if we have become entwined somehow, does her end signal my ending too? Will I be cut down now too? I honestly, briefly believed that her calling me in had again meant… I am too late I could not save her (the same way I could not protect and safe myself, or my pets). It is too late to grow her babies. I will have nothing to plant. I will never come home. I will die. The timing of course, meeting her neighbour and his wife, discovering the seedling and the synchronicity of the way their friend is dealing with uterine cancer, changed everything. I just wish I had seen her in her full glory one last time.

I now live from the question: what more does the mother Walnut tree still have to share with me and what will her seedling teach me…

3. What’s the difference between the version of me who wanted the Hymer and escape, and the one who caressed the seedling’s leaves with my nose?

The Hymer me wants to wander forever and never have to bother with the bewildering pain of feeling so out of place, everywhere. The one who never belongs, the eternal outsider. The seedling cuddling me, is the one more connected to the core part of me that is also resembled in my astrology: I am a child of July, of summer, of Cancer. Cancers are homemakers, nest builders and nurturers. That part of me needs honouring.

I now live from the question: how can I have both the home and the hymer….and honour all sides of me… the wanderer and the nester…

4. The whole day felt saturated — heavy, thick, immense. What was my nervous system, your spirit, metabolising beneath the surface?

Being “home” in the Netherlands is triggering and confrontational. Hugely uncomfortable. It is not home to me, at all. It is a symbol of falsehood and performance, a reflection of deep rooted emotional corruption through dysfunctional family systems. I think that is why the symbolism of taking the seedling “with me” with the intention to plant it “elsewhere”, makes perfect sense. It is a direct metaphor of the direction I need to take in my life: plant myself away from the family tree. Instead of seeing this as an escape, a failing, or a denial of my ancestry, it is the reverse: it is the soul sovereignty coming into full being. Claiming the me I was meant to be, supported by the ancestors that were not corrupted. It is me acknowledging my right to belong wherever I feel I do. Not where others claim I must.

I now live from the question: what can ancestral healing bring me based on this beautiful day, and beyond…

5. I spoke to my council in meditation, the night before finding the seedling. Do I think the tree was one of them too: an older, slower member who doesn’t speak in language, but in root and rot and return?

Yes. I have always felt a deep safe connection to trees. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings my favourite character is Treebeard. In a way my inner council is a little like the Entmoet.

I now live from the question: who else will have a seat in my inner council….

6. My inner voice said to the seedling “I know you will guide us home.” Who is “us”?

Us is me, my rooted, healthy, safe ancestors (like my paternal grandfather), my pack of pets (hopefully I will live long and strong enough to care for more than the current constituency) and all the plants and seeds I still need to give to the earth.

I now live from the question: who will I meet along the way to join us….

7. Am I afraid of rooting again? What if this time the root isn’t into place, but into practice? Into presence — wherever I am?

I have tried this. I have entertained the idea suggested by Mirella (my former death doula), that home could remain unresolved in this life. I resist that in a way similar to the suggestion that was once made, with the best of intentions but completely missing the mark, that I should accept that without my uterus and full of scars I would never be whole again. No, not happening. I have a different path. Encompassing all of it.

Practice and presence will be an addition to place, not a substitute for it. I will have it all.

Zsolt, my other soul counsellor once said: what if home for you is not a place but a person? Here I feel 50/50. Yes I would love to come home to someone too, but I cannot have my sense of home solely depend on another person.

It both scares and excites me: am I crazy for thinking that now, at life’s edge, teetering on this terminal status… I can find and create my sanctuary? My home of joy, belonging, colour, creativity, growth, and invitation?

I now live from the question: what is left to heal to find my home, to restore my faith in belonging, to release false believes I will always fail…. (that one is hard as I have never had the right, safe, cozy adult home…)

9. What am I no longer pretending I don’t know?

This one remains in question, exactly as is…. probably in layer upon layer for a lifetime…

10. What’s the one truth — even if it hurts — that I never want to forget after this day?

That the place of the black walnut, where she stood, where we met, was a crossroads, not a destination. I was never meant to stay. She brought me to her baby, her seedling with a reason. Because we both still get to root somewhere else (had I not met the neighbour and found the seedling, she would have been pulled out at the roots later and thrown in the compost, as they did not wish to have her presence in their garden).

I live in gratitude for this meeting. I bow before the black walnut, open to receive all the blessings that spring from her spirit. I trust she will accompany me as long as necessary, to ensure safe passage and a soft landing for her seedling and me, her soul companion.