Renewed Tree

This piece is intended to be a meditation on the phenomenon of post-traumatic growth. It features the tenuous regrowth of a tree that died after its root system was struck by lightening. Yet, the stump as begun to regrow. The new shoots may be fragile and isolated but they are also reaching for expansiveness. This piece is an expression of that renewal in all its beauty and tentativeness.

As a person living with the cumulative effects of trauma, I have felt that lightening strike moment. I know how easily that experience can feel as though it has eradicated all that came before it. But I have also experienced survivorship. I want to offer others the hope that comes not just from being able to survive but to grow through that survival. No one's life need be one that is limited, truncated or pruned away because they experience trauma and violence. We do survive and have the right to regrow.