I Thought Mother Earth Was Mad at Me

my journey with Conditional Love.

I walk in Parqué México, somberly. It is my favorite park in the world and I am blessed to live a few blocks from it. I stare at tree trunks in wonder, with a frown on my face and hidden exhaustion behind my eyes.

Sometimes I wonder if I frown and put my head down to protect myself as I pass men in the dark.

This time, I didn’t feel protective. Only sad.

Depression comes in waves. The waves climax, crash, and then calm into a surface – just like they do in the ocean. Always ending with time. But for some reason, when I am in the point before the climax of the wave of depression, I don’t think of time. Only in the sense that I’ll be in that point forever and it’s difficult for me to believe that it will end… difficult for me to believe that there is another side.

Time feels irrelevant to me. It always does. I actually don’t really believe that it exists, and it’s especially difficult to grasp the concept of time in moments like this one.

Parqué México has a sort of loop in it that you can walk and be lost in thought for hours in, surrounded by dogs and orchestrated nature. The finest kept bushes and trees with wooden benches hidden among them.

I’m nearing the middle of my first lap around this park.

I usually enjoy talking to trees and hugging them. I like feeling their presence and learning the stories they have to share. Recently, I’ve been cautious around trees. I actually don’t trust them all. I’ve convinced myself that there are bad trees and that there are good trees, and that I should beware of the bad trees that can suck my energy or perhaps mold their bad spirit into mine.

What is a bad spirit? Is that even real? Or just something we’ve convinced ourselves exists? Perhaps it is a term that came about during colonization to rip Indigenous people of their noble practices. To keep one from connecting with nature because some of it is “bad” and, therefore, dangerous. To have an “other” that the Catholic Church would promise to protect us from.

I believe that everything breathes. To take the words from Disney’s Pocahntas, I believe that every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name.

I even believe that the desk I write this upon now contains stories of lives I’ve never been able to touch until this moment in which I am sitting with it, sharing its energy, getting to know it.

Where its wood came from. The stories of the people who harvested its materials. Even the metal in the tools that were used to put it together. The delivery man who brought it to me months ago. The truck it evidently came in. The strength in how it holds me and my stories every single day. What do you have to teach me, dear desk?

I digress. You get my point. Everything is alive, sacred, and relevant.

And I believe that inside of everything that is alive is a flame of Light from our Creator. I like to use Mother Earth & Father Sky when referencing Creator. However, if hearing those terms keep you from resonating with this piece, feel free to replace the term with what works for you - God, The First Cell, Universe, etc.

So if all of us - humans, birds, desks, trees - are truly Light at the core of our spirits, how could one be bad?

Regardless, I continue exercising my fear of trees in the park.

I bravely look up at one of the trees with skinny, broken branches. He looks mad at me. I wonder why. What did I do to make these trees so upset with me?

I thought Mother Earth was mad at me. 

And that through her nature, she was sending me signs that I’ve done something wrong.

Mama, why are you upset with me? How can I make you happy? I’ve spent hours offering thousands of Cacao seeds and rose petals to this piece of land that Parqué México rests on. Why am I to receive anger and disappointment in return?

I thought that I did my part and that you would love me in return.

I thought that I did my part and that you would love me in return.

And that’s when it hit me.

I thought Her love for me was conditional. Where did I learn that from? Conditional love…

Perhaps I learned it from my own mother, who would only hug me under 1 condition: the influence of alcohol.

Or maybe I learned it from my father, who would give me the most attention under the condition that I would listen to him vent for hours - also under the influence of alcohol.

Perhaps from high school, when boys would only pay me attention under the condition that I wore a mini skirt.

Or from the years I spent working as a professional dancer, where I was only valued at conditions of height, weight, and age rather than my heart’s talent.

These all played a huge factor, no doubt. But I believe where I really internalized conditional love, especially as it relates to my relationship with Mother Earth, was from my time spent in mentorship with my former Mazatec teacher in Oaxaca.

She was gifted to me to teach me the ways of our sacred medicine los niños santos {psilocybin mushroom} in our ancestral traditions. We spent hours, days, weeks, months, years together as she would help me build relationships with our lands and take patients on deep psychedelic journeys with our voices in medicine songs.

She was very strict with me throughout our relationship, as most good teachers are. She made sure with every ounce of her being that I respected the medicine, the land, and these traditions.

I loved learning from her. She was purely magical. She would offer cacao seeds to Chikón Nindoó, our people’s sacred mountain, and ask Father Sky for rain so that our people could drink, cook, eat, and shower. She would wake up each morning and say greetings , nDhalí to the land & Naskatichili to the bees. Every time she had extra money, she would use it to help others in the village in need. She was a walking representation of Mother Earth.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought.

But, like many of us, she was also human. She made mistakes. She carried her own familial traumas that she took out on those closest to her. And I happened to be one of those people.

I was only loved by her under the condition that she was in a good mood. And if she wasn’t in a good mood, I was often punished - verbally, physically, energetically, emotionally.

One day, I bravely terminated this relationship. Her response to me putting my foot down was that God, Mother Earth, and our entire lineage was upset with me.

Although it sounds ridiculous and it could not be farther from the truth, I convinced myself that it was the only truth I knew. And I proceeded to live my life thinking Creator was upset with me and I had let our lineage, our people, down.

I walk in the park, now entering my 2nd loop. I chuckle at the ridiculous thought that Mother Earth might be upset with me for something I did – my first hint at a smile in hours.

I remind myself of the flame inside of me. I remind myself that I am Light, that I am on a journey of learning how to be human and that within that journey, I only lead with Love for everyone around me - Unconditional Love.

That it would be silly to think that Mother Earth is mad at me and would send these trees to harm me.

It’s wild what spiritual dogma will make you believe - even outside of the context of an official Church.

I walk 4 laps after this, in Gratitude and Joy. I laugh and blush at trees that I was once afraid of just a few moments ago. I accept their kind energy into my heart.

I feel that my offerings to the land have been accepted. Then, I wonder if an offering to the land as justification for the happiness I feel is merely a transference of me only receiving love conditionally. Am I trying to justify my joy with conditions again?

I let the thought go, as I don’t want to get stuck in the brain.

I enter my heart again, and allow it to expand with the smiles the trees offer to me.

Is this what true reciprocity is? Not merely an exchange, but a gift when you need one.

I glow in the park, enjoying my final lap.

A part of me wonders if this is the last time I’ll be happy again. If this depression wave has surfaced only to prepare the sand for another to rise.

I feel it would be naive of me to think that I’ve accepted unconditional love forever now. That I won’t end up in the same loop again someday soon.

But I don’t believe in time. So I’ll allow this moment to last forever.