The Friends I Didn’t Know I Was Missing

Every year, when the weather gets cooler and the angle of the sun changes, my Jade plant and Ficus tree return from their summer vacation in the garden.

This year, I was surprised by how emotional I felt seeing them on my desk again.

I’d missed them—far more than I realized.

I know they had a wonderful summer outside (they grow larger every year). I have spots in the garden reserved especially for them where I can visit, but when I brought them back into my office, I felt something I can only describe as an embrace.

And as I sit here typing this, I can feel their presence and support surround me. We are together again, and they are happy, too.

During the rest of the year, they sit on my desk and frame the view out the window toward the Wild Rose Café, where squirrels and birds come to visit. They are part of the landscape of my work and my daily life.

And they are much more than beautiful plants.

They are friends.
They are allies.
They are family.

The Ficus has been with me a long time.

I found it in a department store that was closing out its plant section. It was clearly dying, and I knew no one would pay the listed price of $5. So I purchased the sad ficus and brought it home to die where someone cared. Instead, it surprised me.

It rallied. And thrived.

In 1999, it made a cross-country road trip with me when I moved from the East Coast to Seattle. We drove through brutal winter blizzards, and every night we had to hustle the Ficus out of the minivan (covered by plastic garbage bags) and into our motel room so it wouldn’t freeze.

During the day, things were piled around it in the van.

I fully expected it to lose most of its leaves. It didn’t lose a single one.

The Jade plant has a different story.

I received it as a cutting from a jade plant hobbyist I happened to consult about a technology issue 15+ years ago. I don’t recall the name of the type of jade or the name of the person who gifted it to me; I wish I did. I nurtured it and watched it grow, and a few years later it surprised me by blooming around Christmas, which it does every year now.

Tiny white flowers. I had no idea jade plants bloomed. I still remember how delighted I was the first time.

Jade plant enjoys summer vacation by the Catio.

Every year, I put both plants outside in their special places in the garden for the summer. And every year, they come back inside when the seasons change.

I suppose I had come to take their presence for granted.

Until this year.

It has been a hard year. There is so much I try to put into words through my work and writing: my experiences with animals, what they have taught me, the changes happening in the natural world, the things that threaten animals and all life, and the ways we can find our way back into relationship with the living world around us.

Sometimes the words don’t come easily, and I need to look up and remember that I am not alone. My plant companions have been quietly keeping me company for years.

I think many of us have beings in our lives that we don’t always notice until their absence makes us realize how much they mean to us.

Maybe it’s a tree outside your window.
A garden you’ve tended for years.
A houseplant that has somehow survived every move.
An animal companion.
Or a patch of wildness that you visit again and again.

What living beings have become part of the fabric of your life?

I’m grateful for mine.

Welcome home, my friends and allies. 💚

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Learn how to walk in harmony with the natural world, connect more deeply with animals, restore balance to your life, enhance your intuitive skills, and help heal the Earth through my live Reiki and shamanic virtual classes and digital workshops.

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A WILD WAY TO HEAL
Rose De Dan, Wild Reiki and Shamanic Healing LLC is an animal communicator, Reiki Master Teacher, shamanic energy healer, and author of Tails of a Healer: Animals, Reiki and Shamanism and Out of the Darkness and Other Animal Tails. Her classes, sessions, and ceremonial work are inspired by wild and domestic animals who have issued a call to action for personal and global healing.