Master your emotions with confidence

The ponderings of a Feral Housewife

Issue # 59 || March 7th, 2025 || Previous issues

Hey Reader,

It's Friday today.

Is it a feral or fun Friday for you?

Maybe it's a bit of both.

Maybe, it's what you make it.

The wind is fiercely whipping up the trees here in the Mid-Hudson Valley (New York). It's a good day to stay indoors, if you can.

It's a great day to grab a cup of tea, sit near a window, and just watch the world go by. No judgement. Just curiosity. Grateful that you have a warm place to just be.

I invite you to do just that today.

Take a break from your work, obligations, and duties and sit peacefully in front of a window. Let all the pain, disappointment, and overwhelm of the week or the day fade away. Picture your sorrows, one by one, carried away by the wind and scattered like ashes that can't hurt anything or anyone.

Take a deep breath from your diaphragm.

Breathe again.

Now take a long look outside your window.

What do you see?

Can you find a tree?

What color is it? What is its shape? Its name? Its purpose? What's it doing?

Is it standing firm and tall or gently swaying in the breeze?

The trees outside my window are energetically swaying to the strong wind.

How do they withstand that pressure? (You know the answer, but we'll explore it a bit more later).

Don't you want to be just like a tree?

A woman standing in the snow in the woods — Have you heard of 'forest bathing'?

I do,

I love trees.

I think you and I are a lot like trees.

What do you really need today?

This question holds complexity and at the same time begs simplicity.

What do you need today besides warmth, food, water, and air?

From a minimalist's raw perspective those are the ONLY things you need to survive the day.

Everything outside of your basic necessities is emotional baggage.

Swallow that thought for a moment.

Sometimes we make life more complicated than it needs to be.

We're carrying emotional baggage from childhood and from experiences in life.

How heavy is yours? Is it serving you?

There's nothing wrong you.

The problem is we don't know when and how to put those heavy burdens down. We don't know where they belong.

Ever notice that trees are light and airy on top?

Their weight is beneath them, they aren't carrying it.

Think about where you might be carrying your weight...or even if you should be carrying it.

This was my favorite tree as a teen. I called him my grandpa tree. I used to sit in his "arms" and talk to him.

Maybe your burdens belong to someone else (whose burdens are you carrying?).

Maybe your burdens belong in the past (do you live in the past?).

Maybe your burdens are things out of your control (what's stops you from releasing them?).

Maybe your burdens bring you comfort (they feel familiar, predictable, or form part of your identity).

Ah!

We humans are such mixed bags of contradictions-we long for freedom and yet cling to the burdens that hold us back.

I invite you to consider, what do you really need today?

I love this question better than, what do I want?

We can't always have what we want, but we can give ourselves what we need.

We can learn to dig deeper and be more aware of what we need beyond the basics.

Maybe you need validation.

Maybe you need rest and self-care.

Maybe you need to be creative.

Maybe you need to set boundaries.

Maybe you need to work hard to meet a deadline.

Maybe you need awareness or education.

Maybe you need to talk to someone.

Maybe you need connection (with God, yourself, or a loved one).

Maybe you need movement or exercise.

Maybe you need to like yourself more (release guilt, fear, or low self-esteem).

Maybe you need wisdom to make a decision or to deal with a difficult situation.

Maybe you need to grieve a loss (and not just because of death).

Yes, we humans can be complicated creatures.

This is why I'm inviting you to stick to the basics.

If you want to up your game...

Get plenty of hydration.

Eat nutritious food.

Find a warm and beautiful place to just be.

Connect with someone you care about.

Do good work.

Know how and when to rest.

Learn to put burdens where they belong, get help, or prune them out of your life.

What can humans learn from trees?

Trees are truly amazing (by design 😍)!

They quietly perform numerous functions for our benefit and for the health of the planet!

Just think about all the things we can do and make with trees!

We could NOT survive without them.

Here are just a few lessons to glean from trees:

Embrace change and flexibility: trees respond to the changes in their environment with grace. They drop their leaves, slumber, dance in the wind, and bend to survive difficult circumstances.

Be patient and keep expectations reasonable: trees grow inch by inch; they don't rush progress. They grow, at their pace.

Support one another: trees share nutrients through extensive root systems and are connected underground via a "wood wide web' of fungi so they can send messages and warn other trees of danger. https://www.cpre.org.uk/discover/facts-about-trees/

brown and green tree during daytime — The deeper the roots the better

Stable under pressure: trees survive storms and fire due to their structure and specific strategies. They have a deep root system, a flexible trunk, and grow beside other trees for mutual support.

When under fire, trees hunker down and endure it. They shed what burns and regrow where they can.

Now that's resilience!

Book Nook

Have you ever read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein?

This book elicited crazy emotions out of me the first time I read it, and I'm not the only one!

Let me know if you've ever read it and what you thought of it.

In Summary

What do you really need today?

Anything other than the basics, is emotional baggage.

Make life simple again.

Live in the present moment (not the past or future).

Go hug a tree, it's good for you!

When life gets difficult, BEND DON'T BREAK.

Until our next feral, fun, Friday adventure,

Anna

www.aferalhousewife.com (Check out my work-in-progress blog for more articles)

https://linktr.ee/aferalhousewife

This weekly newsletter is a labor of my creative love meant to inspire you to intentionally grow in all areas of life, especially emotionally, because what you think and how you feel influences everything.

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Heal your inner world to heal your outer world.

With love,

Anna Celotto

Creative & Digital Writer

Master Your Emotions with Confidence

What do you really need today? (+ how to be more like a tree)