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| Cairns, QLD |
The Tree of Life - Session 3
We had seen how our Trees of Life live side by side in a Forest of Life so in our final session we discussed the Storms of Life and our Responses to the Storms of Life.
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| click image to enlarge |
I have a couple of comments written next to my tree which I think I added after the third session:
"My tree is not alone. It lives in the Forest of Life."
"If your roots are strong you can weather any storm."
The roots represent where you belong - your home, workplace, youth groups etc. I feel I need to strengthen these because living alone and not having a job means I lack the strength that others have. I am really grateful that I have Diamond House. The motto for Diamond House is "A safe place to belong, work and return." That sense of belonging helps a huge hurricane feel like a gentle breeze.
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| Wonga Beach, QLD |
The Tree of Life - Session 2
We put our individual Trees of Life together to make a Forest of Life.
I like analogies and visualising stuff so I found it pretty exciting.
I imagined my birds (my gifts to others) flying around the forest teaching people, showing empathy and spreading laughter. I could look at someone else's tree and find fruit (others' gifts to them) of laughter and think "wow, that could have come from one of my birds". I made all these great connections and was quite exhilarated by it all. The trees made it so easy to understand.
The funny thing is that when I was studying Anatomy and Physiology at Flinders Uni I wrote some really dreadful assignments. Isn't that hilarious? No, the funny thing is that my lecturer wrote "Can't see the forest for the trees." because I would write paragraph after paragraph of detailed analysis about how some process works in particular cells but I would have no idea how it affected the person in the case study.
Similarly, when I was in primary school we were told to draw a picture of trees and I started by drawing individual leaves of a tree. When everyone else had finished several trees I was still drawing the little leaves of one tree. I love that I literally couldn't draw a forest because I was stuck drawing the leaves of one tree.
I think there's another major example of me being blind to the big picture because I was too bogged down in detail but I can't think of it right now. With the Forest of Life I was able to focus on individual people and also see all people as a community and appreciate the wonderful interactions we have with each other.
Also in this session we chose someone important to us and drew a picture or wrote them a letter. I illustrated my Grandma's generosity by drawing stick figures of all the things she does to care for me. We discussed our letters and drawings in pairs or small groups.
