blackberry bramble

Photo by David Duarte Crespo

The painful experiences we endure — the traumas, heartbreaks, losses, disconnection, humiliation, and shame — feel a whole lot like a hug from blackberry bramble. The injury may have long passed, but thorns and tight vines keep us captive.

We may try to put these injuries out of mind. By holding very still, we might avoid the sting of thorns, but eventually we become too rigid to organically feel the subtle joys of life. We may feel panic, sparked by a new experience that feels ever so slightly similar to the initial injury that wrapped us tightly in bramble. Attempting to wrestle free, we puncture our delicate, already purple-scarred skin, again and again. Maybe we focus only on the fleeting fruit that summer promises. While we may feel the delicious relief of blackberry nectar on our dehydrated tongues, from time to time, the reward comes with the message that sweetness lives outside of ourselves and to earn it, we must endure a relentless bitterness.

How do we break free from the bramble of our suffering?
We ask for help.

The people immediately around us might not have the right tools for the job or don’t know why we’re making such a fuss about being enveloped by thorns — after all, we’ve spent a lifetime making sure our bramble isn’t obvious to others. Adding insult to injury, our confessions may be met with discomfort and phrases like: “don’t be so sensitive,” “what do you have to complain about?” or “look on the bright side, [you’re only inches away from berries.]” Phrases taken directly from the Blackberry Bramble Manifesto.

To heal, we must expand our circle to find people who can express understanding of the stickiness of bramble, who can empathize with the exhaustion of living inside bramble’s hug, and who has the capacity to help us untangle. We need people who will see our rigidity or reactivity and choose compassion over judgment and curiosity over blame. We need people who will recognize our humanity and validate our unique lived experiences, while moving carefully towards us with their shears of liberation, making thoughtful and precise moves, to ensure they do not cut us. We need people to cheer us on, help us back to safety after a fall, and celebrate benchmarks along the way. And, as we step out of our shroud of thorns and examine our scars, we need people to be tender with our inflamed wounds, offering salves for healing, and reassuring us that we are unquestioningly beautiful, not in spite of our scars, but because of them.

These jagged marks of the painful things we’ve been through, represent the potential for generations-deep wisdom to spring forward as medicine, collectively capable of healing the wounded heart of world.

The bramble is not inherently cruel, it’s just bramble.
And — we all need a little help getting untangled.