The Bent Tree

"Until you make the unconscious conscious,

it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

— C.G. Jung

--

There are wounds buried so deep

the mind cannot find them.

Only the body remembers—

curling itself in strange shapes toward the light.

We survived by bending.

We bent toward the ones who could not see us,

twisted ourselves to fit the places

where tenderness did not reach.

We survived by reaching through storms,

through hunger, through nights

where our names were not spoken with care.

And the twisted branches we grew

became the only shape we knew.

We forgot the wound underground.

We mistook the bent trunk for who we were.

We called the distortion personality.

We called the armor our skin.

We forgot that once,

there was a soft seed—

small, luminous, and whole—

before the storms ever came.

Some never look below the surface.

They mistake their twistedness for destiny,

never knowing it was carved by the absence of tenderness,

by the missing hands that should have held them,

by the silence where protection should have been.

It was never your fault.

You bent because you had to live.

But some—

some feel the ache in the roots.

Some find themselves met—

by the kindness of a true other,

or the quiet befriending of their own soul.

And in that meeting,

the long, slow unwinding begins:

the sacred return to the original shape—

not to perfection,

but to love.

The wound does not vanish.

The scar does not erase.

But the living tree remembers:

it was made for the light.