Transplant SHOCK

What is happening? Where am I? What day is it? Who am I now?

"Indicating innumerable stresses in recently transplanted trees and shrubs," transplant shock can also be a good analogy for moving to a new place in mid-life, or an old place that feels something like home and something like a wormhole to another dimension.

After a 34 year stint gallivanting around the Midwest following various vocational pathways post grad school, along with some national and international globe-trotting for research, exploration, and fun, I have landed back in my home state of Missouri, and my home town of St. Louis by the mighty Mississippi, home of the Gateway Arch, that mesmerizing threshold to the West, Forest Park, the Missouri Botanical Gardens, and Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. Not to mention a certain baseball team with red caps and Birds on the Bats! Go Cards!

I love this rolling soul-scape, with its gorgeous hills, valleys, cliffs, and striking granite formations. The hills ARE truly alive here! I love the Ozarks, the prairie grasses, the wetlands, rivers, lakes, and mostly, the trees. Missouri awakens my love of warmth, high humidity, and lush greenery. Yes, its heat and humidity can be enervating, but I always feel alive here, and my creativity flows. I start singing my river songs the moment I enter the boundary from one of Missouri's eight neighboring states. And it won't be long until John Denver's "Cool an' Green an' Shady" starts drifting through the filaments of my imagination and dreams.

While it is wonderful to be "back," as family and friends welcome me graciously to the circles and comforts of my childhood home, I am a totally different person than when I left over three decades ago. The "can't go home again" feeling is pronounced. It feels truly unsettling, and not at all like slipping back into a favorite pair of jeans. I experience the change as somewhat shocking to the system of perception and integration. Old relationships have shifted. Old places are no longer what they felt like. Old self has morphed into fuller, older, and hopefully wiser, more compassionate, more loving self. A self that recognizes and integrates a much wider "We."

Re-rooting can be stressful.

Familiarity, confidence, and tranquility is often born of repetition and intentional deepening. When we move somewhere, our space-time-rhythm is thrown off, and we reach out, or usually deeper, to find our inner cadence and soul-balance. We attempt to imitate daily routines from our old homes and schedules to comfort us and ease the transition, but we quickly learn that new daily interactions, new places that look and feel different with the angle of the sunlight at different times of day make us long for what has been. We don't want to think about all the change in our environment and way of proceeding. We want to see it as a background, out of our immediate awareness, so we can focus on "more important things," like a new job, home, or routine. Until we integrate the newness, it takes a lot of energy to learn new pathways, new sources of light and nourishment.

The challenge for successful transplant is mindfulness. Re-rooting requires us to notice EVERY detail of what is new, what is most receptive to new life, new growth. It may be that the old sources of hydration and nutrition that were our old relationships, habits, and joys, are being composted. We may find that something that worked really well for enlivening and sustaining us in the previous environment doesn't work so well in the new setting, and we need to adapt. Going deeper to the source within to sustain us, working with our breathing, and gently leaning into what IS right now will help us along the way. That takes incredible presencing and sensory awareness, and receptivity to what is all around and within us. It takes settling, listening, and learning anew. New languaging, new movements, new cycles.

While I am feeling the ground beneath me shifting in terms of relocation and re-rooting, I am also accompanying others through their own life and professional changes. It is good to be a student among learners! What I hope to remember in the meantime is that while transplant shock causes some stress, the joy of seeing the first tiny sprouts, the stalk lengthening and blooms appearing, or the fruit ripening into fullness truly makes the journey worthwhile. If you are feeling some transplant shock in your own life, you are not alone! Environmental Soulutions is here to accompany you. LAW.EnvSoul@gmail.com