Post on 2026/04/16
A spiraling tree teaches profound lessons: Your twists from struggle aren’t flaws—they’re proof of resilience.
I’ve been sitting under this tree almost every day for months now. Meditating. Watching the kids play. Throwing the ball with the dogs. I’ve always loved this tree—its dramatic corkscrew trunk spiraling counterclockwise toward the sky, its wild branches reaching in every direction. But I wasn’t really listening to it.
I recently went deeper into the quiet, into my writing, into stillness—and the tree started to speak. What it taught me changed everything.
Look at the trunk. Really look. Surrounding this tree, straight, tall pine trees soar upward without a curve. But this one? This one spirals from earth to canopy, as if someone deliberately wound it while it was young.
But no one did. The tree did this itself. It had to.
This tree has been here longer than the neighborhood. Before these houses, before these lawns, this was dense Northern Long Island forest. For 25 years or longer, this tree fought for light through the canopy of older, taller trees. It bent. It adjusted. It reshaped itself, twisting and reaching toward whatever sunlight it could find.
Then the forest was cleared. The houses were built. Most trees were cut down, but not this one. Someone saw it and decided to let it stand. Maybe its unique beauty, its dramatic spiral made them save its life. The twist from its struggle became the very thing that kept it alive.
This tree—this survivor—now stands in full sun, but the twist remains. Permanent. Written into its form. And as I sat beneath it, barefoot in the grass, for the first time I could see my own story in its twisted trunk.
We all carry twists. Moments when life forced us to bend, to adapt, to find another way forward. We don’t always grow in straight lines. Sometimes our path spirals. Sometimes it takes decades to finally stand in full sun.
We are not so different from trees, but here’s one crucial difference: Trees are rooted. They can’t leave. If the soil is toxic, if the water is polluted, if they’re surrounded by shade, they have no choice but to adapt or die where they stand.
We can move.
If your environment isn’t nourishing you, if the people around you are draining your energy, if your community doesn’t support your growth, if the place you’re living keeps you in shade, you can change it. You can walk away. You can find better soil.
Trees twist because they have no other option. You twist when you choose to stay in conditions that don’t serve you.
That’s not resilience. That’s just suffering.
We share the same needs with trees. We need roots—connection to the earth, to where we came from, to something stable beneath us. We need water—clean and mineral-rich, flowing through our systems. We need sunlight—not just on our skin, but in our lives: warmth, purpose, things that make us reach upward.
When we’re depleted—disconnected from nature, living under artificial light, breathing recycled air, consuming things that don’t nourish us—we weaken. We age faster. We break.
But when we align with what charges us? We don’t just survive. We thrive.
Look at this tree again. Most trees might put out two, maybe five new shoots per branch each season. This one? Thirty. Forty. An explosion of growth in every direction.
The struggle didn’t weaken it. The years of fighting for light, winding and bending and reaching—all of that made it more alive. More resilient. More full of life force.
The twist isn’t damage. It’s proof of commitment.
And here’s what the tree taught me: The twist is not a problem. The twist is your story.
Your struggles didn’t break you. They shaped you into something that can’t be replicated—something that stands out in a forest of straight pines, something worth saving, something beautiful because of how hard you fought to grow.
So, root yourself deeply. Reach for what warms you. Let yourself be charged by the things that give life: earth that provides stability, sun that offers warmth, water that gives nourishment, breath that fuels your life.
