After Release Comes Rest

Losing leaves, necessary rest and how to befriend a tree.

Ten days ago a violent wind blew through our town and our lilac tree dropped all her leaves within 24 hours.

As I scooped up armfuls of heart-shaped leaves and tipped them in the compost bin, I reflected on how different her experience of release had been to that of the trees in our nearby park and even to the plum tree that grows on the other side of the garden. Whereas my lilac lost all her leaves brutally and abruptly, other trees have been gently shedding for weeks if not months. First the horse chestnuts, then the silver birches, then the oaks, each species losing its leaves according to its own natural rhythms. My plum tree, struggling with leaf curl and this year unable to yield a single fruit, began to shed in the middle of summer.

There are many ways for a tree to lose her leaves and yet the result is the same: bare branches readied for winter’s hush. Whether the release was slow and steady or fast and dramatic, the next step is the same: rest.

Like the trees, it’s healthy for us to pass through seasons of letting go but I have become twitchy around some of the spiritual language for release, in particular the word “surrender”. When I read old journals and notice how often I wrote about surrendering to God, I realise that much of this desire to surrender was actually shame fuelled self-rejection. I try not to cringe and instead touch the pages gently and offer compassion to my younger self. She had wanted to be free but hadn’t yet been helped to understand that surrender is not about rejection but expansion. What she needed was to move towards, befriend and hold tenderly the very situations, qualities or emotions she was wanting to expel from herself.