« And there are gods who would trade their lives
To have a heart that can know human pain,
Because our sufferings will allow us to become
Greater than any world or deity. »

Several months after my mother was killed, I was helping to relocate a pear tree from a learning garden in Vancouver. I spent hours digging around its roots so as to give it the best chance of life in its new home, another garden not far away. As I dug, I recalled the tree in Kabul. The bullet-riddled trunk was more than a reminder of environmental loss. That tree in the historic garden demonstrated something I came to understand in the months following my mother’s death: the resilience of resuming our shape before trauma strikes is an impossible request of our souls and our spirits.

In whatever we do, we do not forget the pain of the past, but rather hold it and the joy of the present, simultaneously. This trunk of a tree, riddled with bullet holes, stood as proof of the shallowness of resilience. To remove it and create a space that had erased the trauma of the garden’s past is akin to asking someone to return to the person they were before a life-changing event. As it stands in the garden, that tree trunk now is a quiet champion of patience, a movement to endure. And it bears witness to all those who have crossed its path.

I think of the tree trunk in Kabul often. The city’s landscape will forever hold the scars of what happened to its people. The holes left behind by bullets stand as witness to the lives lost and the millions of refugees who are no longer home. From this landscape, I take the lesson that I need not be who I once was, that I may hold my scars and my joy simultaneously. I need not choose between bending or breaking but that, through patience, I may be transfigured.