If I were to ask you: Are you well?
What would you think about?
Your health?
Your home life?
Work, income, social standing, finances?
Family and friends?
Would it occur to you that pain caused by wars raging far away, or garbage dumped in Africa, or poisoned soil and dying microbes—might also be part of your wellness?
You may not feel it.
You may push it from your awareness.
You may choose to be numb.
Yet the living field of wellness is one we all share.
The Field of Wellness
“Finding where exactly the outside world ends and I begin—is not so easy.”
—Nora Bateson, Small Arcs of Larger Circles
I never chose Harley Swift Deer to be my teacher.
And yet, the two laws he spoke of quietly rooted themselves in me:
- Everything is born from a woman.
- No one will harm the children.
If we upheld just these two laws, what more would we need?
How would that change how we live, how we relate, how we choose?
Nora Bateson, speaking of cultures that support life, offers a simple, ancient, universal image:
A mother nursing her child.
This image transcends time and language.
It appears at crossroads, on altars, in dreams.
We turn to it in times of great need.
To nourish a child, the mother must first have enough for herself—
Clean air.
Water to drink.
Earth that feeds and supports her.
Safety. Silence. Reciprocity.
The mother’s body is the Earth’s body.
We are Her children.
These are not quaint ideas or poetic longings.
They are principles of life on Earth.
If we truly honored them, we wouldn’t need endless rules and policies.
The Mother would be cherished.
The children would be safe.
And we might remember:
We are not separate from Nature.
We are Nature.
“We are water. We are air. We grow, we bloom, we seed, we wilt, we die.
There is a false separation between humanity and nature.”
—Nora Bateson, Small Arcs of Larger Circles
