My journey of healing from rape has led me from a therapeutic interest in gardening to the search for ways to create a balanced and self-sustaining system for my own small garden to a wider interest in environmental issues. Starting from when I moved into my current house, gradually clearing out the rubbish from the garden and carefully choosing just the right herbs and plants to bring the life back into it, gardening has become an important symbol of hope for myself.
As herbs, fruit bushes and useful native plants take over from the ‘wasteland’ that I’d inherited with the house, I’ve been able to observe how certain plants and wildlife work in harmony together – for example the lovage attracts hoverflies that keep the aphids off my roses, while the large clump of lemon balm also repels many pests from my fruit bushes. It’s been a small-scale demonstration of how nature only needs a little bit of a helping hand to find her own balance. Having seen for myself how it can work, how could I not also care about the wider garden of the planet? How could I not want to see the balance restored on a broader scale than my own tiny patch?
How could I not want to see the balance restored on a broader scale than my own tiny patch?
There’s also no denying that as I’ve become more disciminating about who I want to spend my free time with, the environmental movement has brought me into contact with rather pleasanter, more idealistic people (of all faiths and none), than I often have to deal with day to day. But the only problem with ideals is that they can all too often lead to over-enthusiasm, and a rather one-sided way of viewing the world. I suspect this could be why I so often have to flinch and bite my tongue whenever some well-meaning idealist waxes lyrical about the “rape” of the earth.
It’s not that I can’t sympathise with the underlying message they’re trying to convey. As countless species of wildlife go extinct, as huge areas of rainforest disappear, the words that spring to my mind are words such as destruction, vandalism, or even desecration to say that something sacred and vitally important is being lost to the world. But still, none of these things are rape and nor will they ever be.
In the past, trying to speak out openly about my own experience of rape has come at a huge personal cost to me. I have been met with disbelief, sheepish embarrassment, pity; peoples’ perceptions of me have changed in an instant from an intelligent and capable woman to a victim; and even long-standing friends have ceased to call and slowly drifted away from my life, because my truth makes them uncomfortable. To me, rape is a terrifying word to say out loud because I know all too well the consequences of speaking up. Silence, isolation and frustration have been a large part of my life for fifteen years now, and time definitely does not heal wounds such as these.
Is it any wonder, then, that hearing people casually toss out the rhetoric about the rape of the earth feels like yet another kick in the teeth to me? It’s one more small betrayal, yet another diminishment of my personal struggle to find a life with some meaning and dignity. Granted, the scale of the crisis that looms globally might seem to put my own personal problems into the shade – and yet, deep down I still feel that if those of us in the movement can’t deal respectfully with each others’ individual wounds, how will we ever learn to find a more gentle and balanced relationship with the natural world?
For myself, my journey has revealed to me that my own personal healing will not happen within some cosy, isolated little bubble. As I keep working to find my place within the world, I am learning slowly to see how all of life is interconnected in subtle yet undeniable ways. And thus, learning to reduce my own impact upon the earth isn’t simply some duty that I carry out for future generations – it becomes a task that I must undertake for my own benefit. Caring for the earth becomes something as necessary to me as cleaning and renovating my own home, and my own garden. Of course I couldn’t claim to always get it right, but each small step that I do take makes greater things possible over time.
I would however ask that any environmentalists who read this re-consider their use of metaphor. Perhaps there are many in the movement who would respond to my history, if they were to hear of it, with more respect than certain one-time friends who have drifted away from my life. But each time I hear the word “rape” repeated so easily, and seemingly with so little thought, I become less and less willing to take that risk.
Nemetona was the ancient Romano-British name for the guardian goddess of the sacred grove. It’s also the pen name of a reclusive and not-at-all famous writer and whisky lover who lives in Central England.
