Two Trees: On resilience, remaining mindful, and discovering who we are becoming

| July 2026

4 minute read

A few weeks ago, I had dear friends as house guests for four nights. A couple, both in their forties, who had traveled a long way to visit — and I mean that in more than one sense. I have known her since she was a girl, and over the past decade have watched her blossom alongside the man she loves. Somewhere along the way I became a surrogate auntie — one of the true blessings in my life. By the time they arrived at my door, they had moved cities, changed jobs, weathered family ruptures, and faced losses that don’t have easy names. They had waited a long time for the baby now growing between them. They were two weeks away from marrying. What struck me was not their story, remarkable as it is, but rather how they were with each other: their connection, courage, resilience, and the intimacy of two people deeply in love.

Witnessing their partnership during our time together, I kept returning to an image: two trees growing side by side. Not fused at the trunk. Each rooted in its own ground, reaching in its own direction. And, close enough that when the wind and turbulent conditions come — and they always come — they move and sway with whatever the storm brings. Whatever life brings.

Watch a tree in a storm. It does not stand rigid against the wind. It sways. Its branches sweep and bend in many directions. And close enough that when the storm passes, some trees are still reaching upward. Some are not. A split trunk, a fallen giant — these too are part of the forest’s story. What falls becomes the ground for what grows next. This is the intelligence of the tree. The ones that survive adversity are the most resilient. They have grown because of all the seasons. They transform over years, ring by ring, a whole life takes shape.

Stand in an old forest on a windy day and listen. Beneath the rustle of leaves, you will hear something deeper. A low creak. A groan from inside the wood. The sound of something ancient being tested, and holding.

That sound is a kind of honesty. A tree does not pretend the wind is not there. It registers the force. It says, in the only language available to it: I feel this.

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And like two trees growing in the same forest, this is the story that unfolded over those four days. This couple had weathered many storms. What I witnessed, sitting with them, was two people who became more present, kind and compassionate. They had not calcified into fixed positions. When one of them was struggling, they said so. When something was hard between them, it was named rather than smoothed over. There was no pretending that the wind had not blown. These two had grown soft instead. Soft enough to be changed by circumstance, and by each other. Each of them still becoming — still being shaped by the life they were living together. Open to what it was offering them.

Through all they had been through, what I never witnessed was an impulse to simply bounce back. They were walking a path of resilience: the capacity to adapt, recover, and stay present to what is emerging. They were carrying their wounds, allowing each challenge to deepen their insights rather than diminish who they are. Their choices were less about returning to who they once were and more about discovering who they are becoming.

Mindfulness asks something very similar of us. By learning to acknowledge our thoughts, emotions, and experiences with awareness rather than reactivity, we strengthen our capacity to learn, unlearn, rethink and reflect. To remain, true to our experience, (as much as we are able), available to the full experience of being alive. If resilience is the tree that weathers the storm, mindfulness is the root system that anchors it. The deeper the roots of awareness, the more gracefully we can bend without breaking. And when practiced consistently, mindfulness becomes one of the most sustaining gifts one person can give another.

And as I reflect on partnership, and what I have come to know: the more we remain open and connected to each other’s needs, the more we acknowledge one another’s values and vulnerabilities, the more we bring integrity to what we share — the more life itself becomes something we participate in rather than simply endure.

Every hard year is still inside us. Like rings in old wood — the moves, the losses, the uncertainty of not knowing — none of it erased. All of it part of the grain of who we have become. Remaining mindful asks us to stay present to all of it. Not to rush past the difficult moments. Rather, to metabolize each one and discern how to hold the complexity with a whole heart. Some we carry forward. Some we set down.

And now, a third tree. Tears fill my eyes when I reflect on this precious new chapter in their lives. Of everything they carried to get here. And of the child who will grow up held by two people who know, in their bones, how to weather a storm.

I have not stopped thinking about this couple since they left: what it actually takes to meet life, and another person, one step at a time. That a well-lived life is met with presence, with awareness, with the whole heart. The mindful way.

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