A Tale of Two Trees 

The healing, the recovery, the path back to flourishing and reclaiming your life can get very interesting, very fun, and very delightful.

Devastating Stress and Loss

Our move from Colorado to California two years ago was filled with grief, loss, and distress when my husband had a heart attack the day before the movers came.

Fortunately, he recovered, but maybe we weren’t thinking clearly when, shortly after we moved into our new home, we decided we needed to trim the big overgrown ficus tree in our backyard and we proceeded to make a series of consequential mistakes.

First of all, I don’t know why it felt like such a big priority to trim the tree right away. The big bushy tree wasn’t interfering with our lives in any way.

Secondly, we found out later that you do not want to do major tree trimming in the hot summer because it stresses the tree too much.

Thirdly, we hired an inexperienced gardener to do the trimming, and he didn’t know what he was doing. What he was doing was over-trimming our beautiful, lush tree until it was so stressed it lost nearly all its leaves and looked like it had been killed!

To say that my husband and I were devastated when we saw the destruction we had wrought would be an understatement. We were appalled. Shade is so precious in the desert and our tree had been growing there since the house was built nearly 30 years ago.

We felt terrible having unintentionally inflicted mortal wounds on a majestic living entity. It’s not easy to replace a mature thriving tree. And sadly, the stricken tree seemed a dismal representation of the loss and upheaval in our lives in general.

After much dismay, we decided to hire a different gardener to give us his opinion on what to do and his advice was: “Give it time.”

Watching and Waiting

So that is what we did. We watched and waited. And the next spring, during the growing season, our wounded tree began to leaf out again, not all over but around the outer edges. It looked very odd, with some branches empty and stark white like the bones of a skeleton in contrast to the bright, bushy healthy leaves growing on adjacent branches.

We let our tree be for nearly 2 years, watching with joy to see which branches would come back to life and fill out, sadly noting that a main larger branch and many smaller branches remained leafless and skeletal. 

We lived with uncertainty that whole time, we didn’t know which branches were completely dead and which would come back to life.

Finally, in careful consultation with our faithful and wise gardener, we had him saw off the big dead heavy branch and many smaller dead branches that were weighing the tree down and then the tree looked really odd, gutted. But, by this time we were committed to letting nature take its course.  

We were happy to have some shade, happy the tree hadn’t completely died, and we were curious to see what might happen next. If the tree could recover this much, could it reconfigure itself into a semblance of its former glory we wondered?

And lo and behold, it could!

Growth and Rebirth

This tree is now flourishing in our backyard 2 years after we nearly killed it, in fact it has grown so much it is now shaggy with leaves and really could use a trim!  LOL!

If you look at the tree from a certain angle, you can definitely see where the large bough was cut off, that experience will always be part of its history, but from most other angles all you can see now is a flush, thriving tree providing much-valued shade in the hot desert sun.

And are we also thriving in our new desert home? Yes, in many ways we are. Of course, the difficulties of the past few years will always be a part of our history too, and we’ve learned some valuable lessons that apply to tree care as well as to life:

Watching our tree suffer from being over-trimmed and nearly killed and fighting its way back to vibrant health has been an invaluable life lesson for us.

This is a story about two trees, our wounded tree and our healed and flourishing tree.   

But it’s also a story about how our lives can feel cut down by fibromyalgia, by harsh and inappropriate care and misunderstanding, and the grief of losing the life we wanted for ourselves.

It’s a story about how life can feel overwhelming and in impatience we can make mistakes, sometimes shocking mistakes. The grief is real, the loss is devastating. All true.

But the healing, the recovery, the path back to flourishing and reclaiming your life can get very interesting, very fun, very delightful.

Action Steps

Take your journal to a quiet place and reflect on the story I shared.  

• What parts resonate with you?
• While acknowledging that tree care and managing a chronic illness are not the same thing, are there any themes in the story that could inform how you are managing your fibromyalgia? 
• Are there areas in your life where having more patience could be helpful?
• Do you need to give some things more time?  What could that look like?
• Are there places where you need to take focused action, and what would that action be?
• Could you benefit from upgrading your healthcare team? 

Working with a Certified Fibromyalgia Coach who has personal experience and expertise in helping others reclaim their health could be a game changer.

Write down your thoughts then choose and commit to one small next step. Try putting your hand on your heart and ask your body, what do I need to focus on next? Then make a plan to implement that action.