What if I took down the wall?

As a young girl, I had a garden.

There were flowers and weeds, but that’s okay because I liked weeds, and birds and worms and probably some bugs, the nice, non-freaky ones, like butterflies and lady bugs and rolly pollies, definitely a unicorn and a dragon and lots of faeries, and there was a well that the garden drew water from, and everything grew all nice and happy.

But then, as a young adult, I accidentally and ignorantly broke ground and shared the well that watered my garden with a poisoned water supply. My flowers started dying, the weeds choking to death, the creatures leaving. It suffered serious neglect. I didn’t know that I could fix it, much less how, so I abandoned the garden and watched it die and mourned my loss.

A few years ago, I suddenly figured out that I had the power to heal the garden. I went crazy, pulling weeds (the non-okay ones), tilling the soil, planting seeds, hanging bird feeders, the works. But I didn’t clean the water; I didn’t stop the poison.

I repaired the garden, but it was still drawing on a poisoned well.

This resulted in a slow-growing garden with dim, weak flowers and frightened, hesitant creatures. Lots of set-backs and frustrations, to no avail.

After some time and many, many sessions of trial and error, I repaired the ground and stopped the flow of poison into my well. Suddenly, my flowers were growing fast and bright, creatures returned, the soil darkened, my roots thickened!

I built a thick brick wall, some twenty feet high and twenty feet deep, to protect the new and fragile garden. I pulled all the weeds, even the ones that were probably harmless, because the garden is new and fresh and fragile, and who knows what might damage it? So much damage was done in the past to this tiny octagon of land, I have to take drastic measures to keep it safe. No well-water here, only water I test first and make sure is safe. The garden flourished, but only within the confines of my wall, and only a small few can see the growth for fear of more poison.

After all, it was my fault the poison killed my garden in the first place, and I can’t protect the garden without being on constant vigil for future attacks.

But wait.

It’s not my fault. The water was poisoned. Though I suspected it, I was young and afraid – and for a long time, ignorant of how to cure it. I certainly blamed myself and hated myself for enduring the poison, lost faith in myself and stopped trusting myself, and I became so afraid of poison that I built a wall so high all I could see was the blue sky above.

But what if I took down the wall? What if I trusted the land to guide me? What if, instead of blame, I thank the old worn tired land for all the hard work and suffering, and let it grow as it wishes? What if I simply move on and let go? After all, I know the land nearby is drawing on poisoned water, and as long as I stay here, the threat of poison is high.

Somewhere along the way, I lost faith in myself, in Spirit, in the universe, and took up the task of directing myself and protecting myself. I stopped letting go, stopped trusting, stopped listening. I built walls to protect myself because I didn’t trust Spirit to protect me. I didn’t trust the messages I was receiving because I didn’t trust myself.

When I found trust in myself, I was able to take the walls down. I could trust that I would be led to either heal the poisoned well or to move to new land – and if I trusted myself, I could trust Spirit, I could trust my intuition, and I would know what to do.

But only if the walls came down.

What walls can you take down?

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Have you read the Connection Manifesto? It tells the story of why there is so much hurt and sadness in the world, and how we can heal through connection.