Fire Scars

In case you haven't had a chance to listen to the Fire on the Mountain podcast I shared last week, I wanted to offer my favorite part of the story.

In the podcast, Ann Black shares how her family lost their home to the fire in the Santa Cruz mountains last year. Like all of the stories of fire loss and the devastation forest fires bring, it is a heartbreaking story.

Toward the end of the episode, Ann shares about visiting the property in the months after the fire and how she had to get to know the land again.
 

"As you keep going back more and more, you start to recognize it.
It's the same place, it's just changed -- it has a fire scar. And you can even start to see that it could be beautiful."

It made me think about how we all have scars -- scars on our bodies, on our hearts. How tempting it can be to avoid, to not go there because it's so painful. But just like Ann kept going back to the property, going to be with the land, we can keep coming back to ourselves, to our scars.


I sat down to write this newsletter about a story of how strength training healed my year-long elbow injury many years ago.

Halfway through, I realized that even though that kind of healing is important, tending these deeper, sometimes unnameable wounds, is the work of our times.

It takes strength and stamina to do this work.


I hope you'll join me in Remembership and the Strength Building Challenge. Yes, you'll be physically (and measurably) stronger by the end. You just might also find an inner vigor and connection to your own source energy that serves you when you need it most.

As ever,
Michelle