inner soil
back in july of last year, the first month of place corps, I was sitting cross legged on a classroom floor in the omega institute when i heard a word that lit up my whole being. the word is heartwood.
heartwood describes the innermost part of a tree— the core of the trunk. but this word wasn’t shared with me in the context of these tall beings. Abrah, one of the educators for our permaculture course at omega, shared this word to talk about our innermost human selves— the core of the human being, the inner soil.
in her book on social permaculture— design practice that connects ecological wisdom with social systems— Abrah writes:
“If the heartwood... is not upright and healthy, neither will be the outer layers of growth... designing our innermost core so that it is full of life and vitality means that our change-making endeavors and ourselves will endure in the face of adversities that will surely come.”
notes from my journal
as I began to locate the heartwood within myself last july, i immediately wanted to go deeper into that place. what does make my heartwood upright and healthy? how can my innermost core be full of life and vitality? where does my heartwood find its roots?
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10 months later, here i am, definitely not having answered all of these questions, but I have so much more clarity and patience.
im learning that my inner soil, my heartwood— or whatever other ecological metaphor you like to describe that place inside you— is so alive, and it requires nourishment to maintain that life, just like a tree needs carbon dioxide and soil needs moisture.
it takes a lot to feed and nourish that place, and often, i’ve found that found nourishing that place also means letting old parts die— composting that which no longer serves me… and creating fertile ground for new growth. this is radical, sacred work to cultivate our inner gardens. how we treat our soil inside is reflected in whatever else we do.
with continual guidance from Abrah, from Dawn, our program director at place corps, and from the stories I’ve learned through a recent exploration in family ancestry, i’ve found two things that have really helped me tend to my inner soil— these are practices and lineages. practices meaning the acts that make my inner self strong, and lineages meaning the wells that my practices draw upon.
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my lineages are multiple: i come from strong, resilient, enduring ancestors. my ancestors are jewish peoples who worked to find home time and time again, continually believing that creating conditions for future life is worth it. my ancestors are mystical, ritualistic, earthly, divine people. and my ancestors are also settlers, complicit in violence, and entangled in complicated histories. the judaism i was taught as a child didn’t make space for a lot of this messiness, and this past year has given me so much opportunity to release old learnings and make space for new ones.
i’m learning to tell time with the moon and the sun like my ancestors once did, i’m learning to honor the land with seasonal rituals, i’m learning to gather food and medicine in a basket, and i’m learning to decolonize, de-dogmatize, and de-stigmatize my relationship to spiritual and religious practices
my lineages also come from chosen lines— from the folks who have cultivated soils before me in order for me to do the work i’m here to do. these people are regenerative farmers, land and water protectors, community organizers, truth-tellers, herbalists, midwives, ritual leaders, mystics, worker-owners, healers, artists, educators, yogis, foragers… and so many others who carry on the work of our ancestors: believing that creating conditions for future life is worth it.
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the practices that make my heartwood strong come from all of these places. meditation, barefoot walking, ecstatic dance, mindfulness, building altars, breath-work, yoga, lunar rituals, befriending plants, communal music making…these are just a few of the activities that remind me I’m part of a much greater something. these activities remind me that the life force in me is the same life force that rises the sun and pulls the ocean tides and might, one day, bring a child forth from my womb.
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the work of cultivating my inner soil is hard, hard work. and it’s life work— it will never be done. there are always more ways that i unlearn internalized oppressions, challenge dominant narratives, and live my life from a place of truth rather than story. what i’ve learned in this process is that this work is not only worth it, but necessary. the work of becoming a more whole, alive, and present human might be the most important work i can do.