The Breaking of the Old, and the Breath of what Begins.
The invisible scaffolding that shapes us, and what remains when it’s gone.
What happens when something that once held you falls away, leaving you to stand on your own?
Outside my window this morning, a huge elder maple tree fell. What followed was a rush of feelings, memories, and reflection I didn’t expect. This piece explores what holds us, what lets go, and what we learn to carry on our own. This is for anyone feeling their foundations shift and wondering what's next in the face of change.
We woke up this morning to discover the grand maple that stood steadfast and solemn in our front yard had snapped from her roots and fallen. It was a haunting sight to see her dark silhouette draped in thick mist and fog from the window.
Despite the fact that most of her life had left her, she had remained standing, nursing a young maple sapling from her deepest reserves. Now the old mother lay splintered sideways on the ground, while the sapling stood for the first time on its own.
When I saw her lying there, I was overwhelmed with more grief than I could explain. Since moving to this property 9 years ago, she had become a fixture in our surroundings. As I watched the sapling's burgeoning life entwine with her worn-out body, I marvelled. Its bright green and scarlet leaves set against her pale trunk. It was so tender to see the two, once inseparable, now apart. The one brimming, the other broken.
But what moved me most was this: although it seemed she had held the sapling upright, it could only mature in her absence. Her fall looked like an ending—but maybe it is something new beginning.
Leaving the little one to fend for itself, she was the scaffolding falling to the ground. The timing is especially prophetic, as I sense scaffolding falling from me, from all of us at this point, leaving me, and maybe you, feeling unmoored.
In scaffolding, I mean the invisible structures of support we lean on - relationships, beliefs, familiar comforts - that shield us from feeling vulnerable or exposed. It is these supports that hold us steady as we grow, often unseen until they fall away, revealing a backbone we did not even know we had.
Her safe barrier allowed the child to grow. Providing protection from strong winds and the drying heat of the sun. It was her body that enshrouded, protected, and carefully nurtured her legacy, which today stands without her to support it. Her bones snapped at the trunk. Her life is now fully used as intended.
The sight of the two trees split struck my heart - a place that has felt distant and hard to reach recently. A quiet ache of fragility reverberated through my own rising vulnerability. A fear of being alone in the vastness, and the courage to be fully present in my body.
We assume support will always be there the way we need it. Most of the time, we don't even realize how much we rely on it. But what happens when it disappears?