I Come From The Trees

The house was not a home, but the tree was.

The tree stood tall and magnificent at the centre of our back yard with wide sweeping branches that swayed in the wind and rustled peacefully. It was my favourite place, a refuge from the storm of the house. A wooden swing hung from a high branch attached by thick ropes. I would escape the house and leap onto the swing whenever I could, pumping my legs until my feet reached the sky above the house. When I could see my toes touch the horizon, I would imagine I could fly, dreaming of somewhere better than the house and yard that I inhabited; somewhere I could be myself, where I could be heard, a place where I could be free.

My father cut down the tree to build himself a pool.

I still remember the sound of the chainsaw as it jolted to life and took the first violent bite into my tree. The circles of wood were discarded in untidy piles around the yard and not cleared for weeks. I was surprised by the acrid scent of the wood carcasses, which only grew worse as time went on. Each day on the way to and from school, I was forced to walk through the now graveyard where my favourite tree lay discarded and rotting; every step, a funeral march for my one place of peace.

For some of us, becoming ourselves is painful. For others, it can be as simple as stepping into a favourite pair of jeans. If you are the former, the journey to becoming your true self may involve a dramatic (even traumatic) exorcism of everything you once knew. Sometimes in order to become who you are, you have to pull off your own name and feed it to the dust.

***

A Giant Sequoia stood in front of me, unexpected. I was in England and this tree did not belong. It had been transplanted from its native California, a resident alien, out of place among the Birch and Ash of West Sussex, England.

Standing defiantly tall and with a well-established girth that hinted of both time and self- determination, the Giant Sequoia made its home at the centre of Bishops Palace Gardens. The tree's large twisted roots reached deep into the soil, firmly grounded; a solitary, independent species surrounded by thousands of faunae and flora that it would most certainly outlive. I didn't know it at the time, but this tree would be a catalyst for radical change in my sense of self. It would help me rebirth my identity after painful trauma.

I loved it immediately.

I approached the Sequoia slowly; with the kind of veneration one would give to a mythical creature or a sacred space. Scattered among the intertwined roots there was a collection of freshly dropped cones. I lowered to scoop one up and held it reverently in my palm. I gazed at the deep grooves across its surface, its symmetrical diamond shapes. Even the cones of the tree were full of beauty and confidence.

As I carefully dropped the cone into my coat pocket, I felt a calm wash over me. I was at home there with the Giant Sequoia tree, in the middle of the public gardens, in a way I had never felt at home anywhere. I closed my eyes and let the calm darkness wash over me. A sense of peace sent my spirit plummeting through grass and soil, down through the upper and lower mantle, straight through to the burning core of the Earth and back again shooting up through the branches of the tree and into the stratosphere.

***

I spilled the milk.

As I watched the white liquid cascade across the table and drip onto the carpet, I held my breath. Fear shot through my body like a jolt of electricity. I was seven, maybe eight, and I knew what was coming next. It was an accident. I hadn't done anything specifically rebellious or even rambunctious. I definitely had no intention of spilling my glass of milk, but to him it was inexcusable.

"For heaven's sake!" He shouted, pushing back in his chair dramatically, fists slamming on the table and knocking more milk out of the glass.

His voice was an echoing shotgun blast in an otherwise quiet house. I observed the milk as it gracefully unfurled itself from the glass container and plunged itself off the table. My small body still frozen in fear, I watched my mother scurry to grab a towel, her eyes on her husband and not me. His explosive shouting brought me tears and shame.

As my mother mopped up the milk with a stained, crocheted reusable cloth that was long past its prime, I remained frozen in place. I stared at the fallen glass; the transparent cylinder, a soldier slain in some undefined battle I did not understand. My three siblings had long ago vacated the dining room and found entertainment or reprieve elsewhere. I was stuck watching the pool of white.

My father had left the room, ensuring everyone heard his displeasure, and every footstep on the way. I wanted to help my mother, but I could not move, not until he was far enough away. I realized I had been holding my breath and exhaled.

"Could you help me?" She asked. Now able to move, I righted the glass and took my napkin, pressing it into the liquid and watching it darken the cloth, removing the mess from the table. She defended him, like always, excusing her husband for the unnecessary storm rather than shielding her children from the onslaught. I simply nodded, a little mouse unable to squeak, and pushed back from the table, tip toeing up the stairs to my room as quietly as possible.

***

Sequoiadendron giganteum, commonly known as Giant Sequoia or Giant Redwoods, can live up to 3000 years with branches as large as 8 feet in diameter. Sequoias are resistant to disease and have bark as thick as 3 feet deep. They are some of the most resilient trees in the world.

***

The house I grew up in was suffused with the anger of a man who never wanted to be a father. Every wall and window were laced with traces of his poison, off-cast onto the paint and glass, a film of toxicity that was inescapable.

My father was uncommonly tall, with black and silver hair, a perpetual scowl and long skeletal arms and fingers that gave him the look of a slightly human Nosferatu. He was a lawyer, a career chosen for the money only, and he hated his job; this was something he reminded us of daily, and we were expected to show utmost respect for his choice no matter how he acted. Every choice he made showed us clearly that his own enjoyment was far more important than the wellbeing of his offspring.

As a child, I lived with a consistent understanding that my needs and wants did not matter, with the perpetual decision made by him and enforced by my mother, that we must do what he wanted to do, go where he wanted to go, and like what he liked or risk the consequences.

In that house, I moved slowly, quietly. I would hold my head down intentionally, and roll my shoulders forward, bracing myself for the moment he would erupt. This was a shield I would not outgrow until my mid-30s. I was always ready to curl up and disappear. They called me "mouse" because I was small, a quiet little creature that would seek out cheese slices and mashed potatoes but who ate little else until nearly the age of 13. I never liked the nickname, but it stuck. I was shorter than the others, skinny, and timid and I was reminded of my fragility daily. Naïve, I believed the words anyone told me, so when they said I was small I became smaller. When they said I should be quiet, I held my lips shut tight for decades, until I had the courage to shout.

While my siblings would wrestle and tromp through forests like giants declaring their dominance, I would talk to fairies and pixies, imagining the magical creatures vividly flittering along beside me as I held out my hands to brush the leaves and tall grasses where I roamed. I firmly believed that I would one day find the door to Narnia or some other magical realm and I knew when that door opened, I would run with abandon and never look back.

On family walks, I let myself fall behind on purpose, embracing the coastal cedar trees with my whole body, legs too, and hang on the trunk until forcefully wrenched from the embrace (usually by one of my siblings). Whenever we left the forest, I felt a part of me retreat. I yearned to return, never wanting to return to our house. Outside, even loud voices were more subdued, and there were many more places to hide from the Nosferatu beast of my father.

***

Despite their incredible resilience, Sequoia trees are relatively rare and only grow in specific environments. Most commonly Sequoias are found between 5000–7000 ft above sea level along a narrow strip of land in the Sierra Nevada mountains. These trees are some of the largest in the world and the most resilient, but uncommon. It's unlikely you will encounter a Giant Sequoia unless you visit the Sequoia groves of Northern California, or happen to find one in an unexpected place, as I did in the south of England.

***

It was February and I was naked with a group of fifteen strangers. Most of the others were lying on cold tiles that surrounded a large hot tub. I remained submerged in the uncomfortably hot water even though it prickled my skin. I was self-conscious and did not want to lie exposed on the cool ceramic tiles even though the cold would have been a relief. I sat in the water with the hot liquid up to my shoulders, a security blanket from my own skin. I could feel the sweat bead on my forehead and my wavy hair curl in the humidity.

The facilitator led the group through a guided trance. I closed my eyes.

I saw myself walking down a small path through the woods. Surrounded by numerous tall, sequoia trees, I made my way down a twisted path until I met two women. One was younger than me, more innocent, with colorful clothing and cheeks blushed from dancing her way to my side. The other, an older woman with wavy gray hair, confident and wise, eyes with a depth of knowing so intense it hurt to look at them. The two women leaned in and kissed me. They spoke a name to me that I had never heard, a name that was not the name my parents had given me. They told me it was mine to take.

When I opened my eyes, the naked strangers around me smiled. I smiled back. I couldn't help it. They knew. They hadn't seen what I had seen, of course, but we all knew that we had shared in something rare. I lifted myself from the hot tub and darted across the tile following a woman with curly hair and confident curves, watching as she leapt into the cold of the large unheated swimming pool. I followed without thinking and leapt, feeling my warm body descend into the shockingly cool water.

It was like being born backwards. I had somehow plucked myself from the land of the living and jumped back into the waters of a universal womb that whispered an invitation for me to break free.

***

 "You have grown into a beautiful woman," he began. "But…"

I sat across the table from my mother and father, both looking at me with the tangible distaste that comes from deciding your children should be exactly how you want them to be and then realizing they have not complied. I was thirty years old and I sat at the same table I had cowered at for decades, the table that taught me to fear spilled milk. Now, my parents demanded that I sit with stiff-perfect posture and lips shut tight as they instructed me on the right way to treat my body. I listened as they went through a long list of disapprovals, my stomach tight, a suffocating heat building in my chest.

For the first time in my life, my father had called me beautiful, only to erase the words I had longed to hear with one tiny three letter word.

But.

I knew they would not like my stretched ear lobes. They had ignored the tattoos, the nose ring and scaffold piercing, even while visibly disapproving (whenever they thought I wasn't looking) but the fact that I enjoyed the look of gauged ear jewelry was too much for them. I was damaging my body, they said. They didn't realize that the small act of carefully stretching small holes in my lobes gave me a sense of ownership of my flesh. This ownership was something they, the sibling abuse I had endured, and the various religious institutions I grew up in, had never given me.

It was the "but" that shook me out of my forced smallness, the shrinking that happened each time I entered their home. As a child, when I asked for affirmation about my physical appearance the answer was always "you look fine." Love and appreciation were something to be earned through above average school grades and fitting a specific recipe of "good" that I was unsure how to conjure.

I realized as I sat at the same table I had sat at every day as a child and teenager, still shrinking myself to reduce potential outbursts by my father, that I deserved better. Unfortunately, I was still unsure what better looked like, but I remembered how to scream.

***

After the final remnants of the tree had been removed from our yard, I stopped playing outside. I became afraid and often stayed alone in my room with the door shut tight. I learned to fear the shadows. I kept my moon-shaped nightlight glowing well into my early teens, a small beacon in the ever-thickening poison cloud that covered me.

In that house, the dark was full of whispers, of slammed doors, wandering hands that dictated, clung and controlled, and voices that instructed "don't tell, don't worry, don't go." It was the type of dark that devoured even the brightest light, extinguishing it not with a gentle breath but a heavy-weighted snuffer designed to crush any flame.

***

It was October. Once again, I was surrounded by strangers, this time fully clothed. Some in pointed witches' hats and long robes, others in rainbow skirts, or simple jeans and t-shirts. Many of us wore black. I entered beneath archways of pine branches and settled myself on a blanket on the floor. It was Samhain, when the veil is thin and the dark is at its peak, calling forth magic into the night. During this evening's guided trance, I did not see the two women who had met me along the path several years before. This time, I journeyed by boat across choppy waters to an island covered in thick fog. A woman emerged from the fog.

Wild brown wavy hair, scars etched across her face and arms like tattoos chosen for their meaning. She embraced me. Her strong arms reached behind and plunged fingers into my shoulder blades removing something deep and toxic from inside me. The feel of it made me inhale deeply, suddenly. I spoke, gasping, my eyes closed in the crowded hall.

"Who are you?" I asked. She pulled back, cupping my face in her leathery palms, her eyes serious and focused, full of love.

"Sequoia."

***

I carried the Giant Sequoia cone home with me, back to Canada and the house where I lived with my partner and child. I planted it, not in the dirt, but in my heart. It remained a seed waiting to bloom even as I experienced the ongoing anguish of my relatives' voices shouting and declaring ownership of me and my choices, even as an adult.

When I stood for the last time at the end of the bedraggled driveway of the house on Esquimalt, I saw a new kind of darkness emerge, one much different from the crushing shadows that I knew before. This darkness held a confidence, like the curious unknowing of space. And hope.

Soon after, I encountered the unexpected and fiercely independent Giant Sequoia in West Sussex; the tree that would become a beacon for better things, for resilience, for healing. It was an invitation to something beyond the fear of spilled milk and slamming fists. The Sequoia tree called to me often over the years. It reminded me of its singular presence all the way in England, its declaration of selfhood beyond the groves of its ancestors. It signaled to me the need to own myself.

When I finally decided to walk permanently away from the oppressive weight of my biological roots, I felt the seed within me begin to crack. The first small shoot pushed its way through the dark soil, a tiny fist pumping toward the sky.

Sometimes it hurts to become who we are. When we stand face-to-face with the failures of the generations that came before us, we must choose. Do we let the pain bury us in shame? Do we continue the cycle of trauma, sorrow and regret? Or do we transmute it?

In 2019, I answered the call from my ancestors and joined the generations of thousand-year-old Sequoia trees standing proudly, resilient against the onslaught of time and suffering. I legally changed both my first and last name, gifting myself with a new birth certificate no longer connected to the legacy of my parents. Instead, I took the surname Sequoia, forever linking myself to the trees that gave me the courage to break free.

Now, I am from the trees. I am a Sequoia. Resilient, my roots reach deep, plunging through the soil, beyond the upper and lower mantle to the burning heart of the Earth and back again.