Chickadee and the Nest

Words as Medicine

Before I lived on this mountain, among the trees, I sought advice from an acquaintance about what it’s like to live at the edges of the human world. “Winters in Vermont…?” he said with a tone that hinted at more than he could adequately express, “Winters in Vermont are strong medicine…”

I didn’t know at the time what he meant. And yet, something about it lodged in me. It landed like a bird in the outstretched hand of my wondering, like a feathered truth quivering with a future I was about to know.

I’ve been thinking a lot about medicine theses days, partly because I live in Vermont now, and it’s winter and I haven’t seen the sun in what feels like months. I am wondering about anxiety. And depression. And the tears it summons in me just to write that. And as my friend hinted, there is an abundance of dark and quiet in this moment without as much farm work or human interaction to focus on.

This disorienting season has resulted in a continuous thread of unwritten stories in me. They’re stories that haven’t felt at home in this space between us because they’re so fixated on my internal landscape that they’re not all together based in reality (which is slippery slope these days too). As I’ve obsessively gazed deeper and deeper into the murk within, much of the beauty and belonging I feel in the world without - the fields, the forest and the stewardship of it all - has gone quiet. And the medicine I normally rely on has felt insufficient to keep me above the surface of what is coming up.

When I say medicine, I’m actually not talking about the stuff prescribed by a doctor. I haven’t yet had to make my peace with that mystery magic, though there are hints that it might be something I should reconsider.

Instead, I’ve been white-knuckling my way through on my own formulation of drugs - exercise, beautiful food, caffeine, companions, creative expression, an ongoing relationship with the spiritual dimensions of this life, therapy… They have helped me access and understand parts of me that I’m shocked to admit as a 48 year old I was unaware that I was living with. And as I’ve unpacked box after box of my life and sifted through the relics of my formation I am learning how to be in better relationship with the things I’ve found inside.

In that process I’ve become extra fascinated by THIS very act - the process of finding words and bending them into a narrative. This, I believe, is my medicine too. I have observed time and time again the ways in which the stories I tell can induce a feeling of wholeness as potent as any neurochemical. When I’m confronted with a big mess of feelings, and I can assign them a name and organize them on a page, something in me shifts. Powerful metaphors feel like they bind, lock and key, with specific sites in my being. And when they do, I am remade. I recently learned there is a whole field called narrative psychology dedicated to the power of this practice.

So in the pre-dawn (and somewhat perpetual) darkness of these days I go, with fire and journal, in search of the stories to orient myself to the day. One simple way I favor the possibility of finding that which I’m hoping to find is to be sure that our bird feeder is full.

Woodpeckers, blue jays, tit mice and nuthatches all choose to overwinter in Vermont. But my favorite bird of all is the fierce little chickadee - a slight, proud-chested acrobat that flits around on pine needle legs and weighs little more than a folded paper crane. As unfathomable as they appear amidst the wind and tsunamis of snow rolling across our field, they persist.

I watch them dash in and out carrying seeds to the various caches they’ve stashed around the woods. And I follow them in my mind back to their snowy branches where they pause, look over their shoulder and implore me in my darkness to watch…

As the light fills in the morning I study the way they weave their nests with soft moss, birch paper and strands from my daughter’s summer hair. I am touched by how the round bowl of it holds them just so. And suddenly, into the outstretched hand of my longing, something lands once again. It is a recognition that these stories I tell, they are my nest. The weave of them, when loving and sacred, keeps me safe and warm. They are medicine.

But the stories I’ve kept bottled up in this long silence? Something about them feels off. And like the wrong medicine, stories can be toxic too. The ones which have haunted me are woven from the tangled thorns and barbed wire I’ve collected from my past. Left alone with them and the echo chamber of my mind, I spiral and spin into a blackness with a gravity that is hard to escape. I don’t know if righting these stories will be enough to hold me through the fierceness of this winter. But I’m trying. And this story feels aligned with a beauty and order of life outside my window that is, at long last, showing me the way again.