Nothing Here Is Ashamed To Exist
IF YOU FEEL SHAME...IF YOU WONDER WHERE YOU BELONG...
Queen of the Forest
7/13/20263 min read
I saw a tree the other day when I was exploring a new place.
Its trunk bends sharply to one side, as though years ago the wind asked it to grow in a different direction than it had planned. One side bears the marks of old injuries. Several branches have long since died, while others continue reaching toward the light.
I didn't look at it and think it should have grown straighter.
I didn't wish it had hidden its scars.
In fact, it is those very things that made me stop and notice it.
Perhaps that is true of so much in nature.
The cliff worn smooth by centuries of weather.
The boulder split clean through by frost.
The bird with a missing feather.
The fox with a torn ear.
The old pine whose top was lost in a storm decades ago.
None of them seem burdened by what has happened to them.
They simply continue living.
Somewhere along the way, many of us learned a different lesson.
We learned that our mistakes should be hidden.
That our failures define us.
That the parts of ourselves marked by loss, trauma, regret, or embarrassment somehow make us less worthy of being seen.
We call this shame.
It is such a familiar companion that we sometimes mistake it for wisdom.
We believe it keeps us humble.
We believe it protects us from rejection.
We believe that if we carry enough shame, perhaps we can prevent ourselves from making the same mistakes again.
But I wonder if shame has quietly convinced us of something nature never would.
That imperfection is the opposite of belonging.
Yet every walk outdoors tells a different story.
The forest is filled with crooked trees.
The shoreline is littered with broken shells.
The meadow grows wild, uneven, and wonderfully untidy.
Nothing seems embarrassed by being unfinished.
Nothing apologizes for weathering difficult seasons.
Nothing hides because it has changed.
Nature seems to understand something we often forget.
Living things are shaped by life.
The marks they carry are not evidence that they failed to exist correctly.
They are evidence that they have lived.
Perhaps that is why I find such comfort outdoors.
Not because nature tells me my life should be easier.
Not because it promises healing will happen quickly.
But because everywhere I look, I see things that have been broken, bent, weathered, reshaped, and still belong completely.
There is no separate corner of the forest where imperfect trees are sent.
No lonely hillside where scarred rocks are hidden from view.
No quiet meeting where the rivers gather to apologize for flooding.
Everything simply takes its place within the larger story.
I wonder what would happen if we learned to see ourselves this way.
What if the hardest parts of our lives were not reasons to hide, but reminders that we have participated in the beautiful, difficult experience of being human?
What if our scars were not interruptions to our story, but part of the landscape itself?
What if the chapters we wish had never happened became places where compassion quietly took root?
This isn't an invitation to celebrate everything that has hurt us.
Some wounds should never have been ours to carry.
Some choices deserve repentance.
Some regrets deserve honest reflection.
But shame asks something different than responsibility.
Responsibility says, "What can I learn from this?"
Shame says, "This is who you are now."
Nature makes no such accusation.
It simply continues offering examples of lives that have been shaped, altered, weathered, and made more interesting by time.
Maybe that is one of the quiet gifts waiting for us outside.
To stand among living things that have never confused being wounded with being unworthy.
To remember that existence itself is not something we have to earn.
To notice that nothing here is ashamed to exist.
And perhaps, little by little, we might begin to wonder...
why we are.