There’s a Reason We Don’t Go to the City to Heal

In all my years, in all my time as a therapist and a coach, I’ve never once heard someone say that they are going to the city to heal.

Whenever our souls are in need of mending, whenever we have a big decision to make, or whenever we are faced with a major heartbreak, disappointment, or loss, it’s not the city that calls to us.

It’s Nature.

It’s always nature.

Nature is where we go to rid ourselves of the literal and metaphorical toxins we pick up in our daily lives.

It’s where we go to cleanse our palates, find clarity, and reconnect with the part of ourselves that we can’t hear among the noise of the city.

The noise that comes from the incessant urge to achieve, strive, succeed. The noise that very often comes from ego.

Yes, it’s a place filled with activity, opportunity, and buzzing excitement.

But it’s not where we go when we’re hurting.

When the soul is in pain, we intuitively gravitate towards the mountains, the trees, the ocean, and the rolling hills.

When we need to come home to ourselves, we search for the purity that can only be found in nature, in places untouched, uncorrupted, unsullied by man.

We know that it takes something more powerful than what is man-made to heal what man broke.

I grew up in Colorado, close to some of the most gorgeous scenery you could imagine…and I had no appreciation for it.

By the time I was old enough, I rushed to college on the East Coast like a moth to a flame, thinking that would be a far more exciting life than anything Colorado could provide me.

I wanted more things to do that didn’t involve the mountains. I wanted opportunities to achieve. I wanted a fast-paced, bright light, work-hard-until-you-make-it kind of life.

Or so I thought.

It would take many years before I realized that for me, the city was where my ego went to thrive and my soul went to die.

I spent most of my twenties in the city chasing degree after degree, opportunity after opportunity, only to hit a tipping point around my 30th birthday.

Suddenly everything that I once thought would give me life was actually draining it away.

I stopped craving noise and started craving peace and quiet.

The charm of the city had now worn off and the things I once found exciting I now found grating.

Everything that I once sought out felt like an irritant to my skin, to my mind, to my soul.

One thing was clear…the mountains were calling, and I had to go.

I rushed back home to Colorado and spent every spare second I had hiking in the mountains. It was a balm to my soul more powerful than any other healing work I’d done until that point.

It was in nature that I worked through anger, resentment, fear, and insecurity.

It was in nature where I could quiet my mind and start to hear my soul.

And it was in nature where I started to remember what was truly important.

When we immerse ourselves in the Mother, we’re brought back home. We’re purified. We’re brought back to the basics of what it really takes to make us happy.

The ego hits, the markers of success, the endless opportunities to be something more, do something more, and achieve something more can always be found in the city

They will be there waiting for you, if that’s the path you choose.

But for the women I work with, women like me, that that life will eventually lack the luster it once had. It will stop feeding your soul before it just up and breaks your heart.

And this is when we turn to Nature. To heal, to remember, to put ourselves back together and start again.

After all, what is Nature if not an expert in weathering storms and starting anew?