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  • Best Self Magazine

    Lessons From Trees on Existence, Peace, Surrender, Acceptance and Hope

    by Malaika Durand May 30, 2018 7 minutes
    Lessons from trees, photograph of oak trees in Houston's arboretum

    Oak trees in Houston’s Arboretum

    The life cycle of trees offer eloquent lessons for us all

    —

    Coming to Houston amidst complete upheaval of the life I knew in New York City has led me to a place of deep surrender. I say this with the grace with which only hindsight can gift us.

    After living in New York for seventeen years, everything there had dried up for me by August of 2017: my marriage, my living arrangements, my job, my relationships. The feeling of alienation had reached such intensity that when I walked amongst the buildings, I sensed the city as a giant mouth with steel teeth chewing up my insides. It spit me out. I had to go. Still, when I got to Houston I wondered: ‘Why am I here?’ To be honest, it was not the first time. Five years ago I had come here, to my brother’s, for respite from the chaos of navigating the world and trying to pay Brooklyn rent as a young mother, reiki master, writer, and deeply sensitive human being.

    The difference between then and now is that at the time, I simply could not see myself ever willingly staying in

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