By Robin Wall Kimmerer
I have had this book on my radar for a while now, and while I knew I would love it for the unique perspective on plant healing, and indigenous plant wisdom, I found it to be even more psychologically relevant than I anticipated. Various forms of ancient healing are returning to the spotlight after a long wave of Western medicine sitting front and center. Of course, ancient practices have continuously been upheld in particular circles (and thank goodness for the hearth tenders of this history), but in the escalating mental health crisis that we find ourselves in, there is an upswell of curiosity and willingness to explore these methods entering the mainstream.
Kimmerer offers a beautiful lens on relating to nature through her heritage as a member of the Potawatomi Nation and through sharing what she has learned from other indigenous cultures. One of the themes that struck me from a psychological perspective were her thoughts on language. She explains the striking discrepancies in how English relates to the world through an endless stream of inanimate nouns, where her native language is composed of substantially more verbs. These verbs extend the animated world around her, and in so doing illuminate more potential relationships between humans and the environment.
For example, if we see a tree as an it, how much easier is it to cut it down? How does it limit our relationship to see this being as a noun, vs seeing a tree as a she, engaged in all the verbs of being a tree- growing, waving, rooting, breathing. This perspective locates humans in a wider web of connection, something we have been longing for as a cultural whole, all the more so since Covid.
How might your mood shift if you rarely felt loneliness because of your connection with nature? How might your frame on your life widen if you saw yourself as the younger generation to elder plant beings? Seeing ourselves in this family context with the natural world may not only lend itself to an easy inclination towards environmentalism, but it may also be part of the antidote we need in our isolated and manufactured modern existence.