What Is Your Nature?

Nature is…

I left those two words intentionally unfinished on Tuesday.

It could be an easy answer.

Beautiful.
Healing.
God.
Peaceful.

But I wondered what might happen if we didn’t reach for the first answer.

What if we let it simmer?

One woman wrote:

“Nature is Gods way of saying I love you and to please examine every miracle you see in nature. I planned for you to be fuckin amazed!!”

I loved her answer.

Fuck and all.

It was completely hers.

And perhaps that’s partly what sent me somewhere I wasn’t expecting to go.

Because as I was falling asleep that night, I kept thinking about nature.

Not only the lovely parts.

Nature can be wild. Unpredictable. Destructive. Fierce.

And somewhere between sleep and waking, another thought appeared.

 

Nature. Natural. What is natural?

What is natural to our planet?

What is natural to our environment?

And what is natural to us?

For much of my teenage and adult life, I could be angry, cold, bitter, and defensive. There were reasons for that. Those ways of being didn’t appear from nowhere.

But were they my nature?

 

I don’t think so.

My nature is soft. Nurturing. Loving.

That doesn’t mean I am always soft. Betray me or threaten someone I love and you’ll discover there are other things in my nature too.

Which made me wonder:

How do we know the difference between what is natural to us and what became normal for us?

Nature adapts to its conditions.

So do we.

We learn how to survive the environment we’re in. We develop protections. Roles. Ways of moving through the world that make sense at the time.

Sometimes we carry them with us long after the environment has changed.

And sometimes they don’t even look like protection.

For years, I networked several times a week. Somewhere along the way people began telling me:

“You light up the room.”

“People are drawn to you.”

Lovely things to hear.

Until I began believing that was my role.

If Teresa entered the room, Teresa needed to light it up.

Smile up.

Energy up.

Beam.

I could do it beautifully.

And sometimes I needed an entire day afterward to recover.

Here’s the interesting part: the woman people were seeing wasn’t fake.

I genuinely like people. I care about them. I enjoy connecting with them.

 

The light was real.

 

The effort to keep it beaming was exhausting.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a large business women’s event. I had to remind myself several times:

I am fine just as I am. There is no need to perform.

 

Observe.

Listen.

Respond true.

 

I didn’t have to manage my expression of myself.

 

I didn’t have to enter the room already knowing which version of me everyone else was going to get.

And perhaps that’s one way we begin to recognize our own nature.

Not because everything that comes naturally is easy.

Nature itself tells us otherwise.

Sometimes what is true in us is soft.

Sometimes it is fierce.

Sometimes we have something to say.

Sometimes we would rather observe.

We can laugh loudly, sit quietly, connect deeply, wander away, change our minds.

We don’t have to maintain the version of ourselves someone once admired.

We don’t have to leave an impression, prove our value, or demonstrate that we belong in the room.

 

We get to be there.

 

To experience the experience.

To enjoy being human and interacting with other humans.

To observe, listen, and respond true.

Perhaps returning to our nature isn’t about finding some pristine version of ourselves untouched by life.

We’ve lived.

We’ve adapted.

We’ve grown around things.

We’ve weathered storms.

Other people have shaped us. Experiences have shaped us. And sometimes another person helps us see an identity, expectation, or belief we’ve been carrying and gives us a safe place to look at it differently.

But ultimately, we get to notice what is ours.

What became normal but no longer feels true.

What we’re maintaining because somewhere along the way we decided that’s who we’re supposed to be.

And what moves through us when we aren’t trying so hard to decide who to be.

 

Tuesday’s thread began:

Nature is…

Today I’m wondering if there’s another thread tucked inside it.

My nature is…

I wouldn’t answer too quickly.

Sit with it.

And if possible, sit in it.

Notice what you notice.

Let it simmer.

And see what blooms.