All My Relations

by Susan Chernak McElroy

In the wild world, it is a fact that the healthiest ecosystems are the ones with the greatest diversity of plants, animals, insects, and soils. That is, the healthiest of systems are the ones with the most varied relationships. Although this science refers to the workings of natural systems, it is a beautiful bit of wisdom for healthy human systems as well. Just as a field planted with nothing but potatoes over the years is subject to depleted soils and massive bug attacks, our own bodies and souls need more than just a “human crop” of relationships planted in the soils of our lives in order to truly thrive. Expanding our vision to include the rest of creation as teachers, mentors, and guides boosts the vitality of our lives—our own inner ecosystem, so to speak.

Sixteen years ago, I was able to heal from advanced cancer in great part because I learned to look at all the world as my relative. Back then, I needed all the good family I could muster. Frankly, is there ever a time when we don’t all need all the good relations we can find? I learned that trees had certain things to teach me that my doctor simply could not. Cats modeled good self care for me in a way that books full of words just missed.

Let me give you the best example I know to illustrate the importance of a life brimming with all kinds and colors of relationship. Let me tell you a story. Through our own stories of relationships with others—all manner of others—our eyes can open to truths we often miss if we remain too exclusively wrapped up in our human monoculture. Here is an excerpt out of my journal from spring two years ago:

“Still, not a leaf on the trees. Still, the wind is brutal. The snow is in the backyard where the shadows are heavy, and the river is still locked up in ice. I feel impatience rise in me like mercury in a thermometer, and wonder if I will ever see a warm day ever again. I don’t mind huddling by a fire, or bundling up in down clothes so thick I look like a walking salami. I just start to mind when it looks like it is never coming to an end.

I grab my binoculars and take the dogs for a walk in the morning chill. There is a mist hanging like a fog all along the river bottom, and it swirls around the trees like cold smoke. Strongheart turns his face to the icy breeze and squints his eyes. His cheeks puff up as he sucks in great, deep breaths, nose held high, ears flapping.

Arrow’s head is in a hole, her long Collie-snout poking and snuffling.

Strongheart stops to offer a quiet woof at the horse in my neighbor’s corral, and I slow down to watch a magpie that is hopping down its back. Every now and again, the magpie stops its downward spinal migration to pick at something on the horse’s back. I fish out my binoculars to watch, and discover that the bird is pulling out tufts of dead winter fur! Now, she moves down to the horse’s broad rump and yanks out a few strands of tail hair. With her mouth completely full, she hops back up to the horse’s shoulder and takes the hair bundle in her feet. Fluttering her wings for balance when the horse moves, she begins carefully pulling the strands of hair into an untangled, well-organized swath of bunting which she again holds firmly in her beak. When she has arranged her materials to her liking, she flies off and dives into a massive pile of jumbled sticks stacked two feet high in an overgrown serviceberry bush. It is her nest.

Unlike me, the dark days do not deter her. She knows that spring is already here. She knows the promise of green growth and fertile eggs in the hollow of her bones and has already begun the preparation for her own new beginnings. “Auwk-auwk-auwk!” Her magpie voice is like an electric drill boring through brick. She is on her way back to the horse, who must love the scratchy feel of her toes in his greasy winter coat. I catch the glance of her black eye as she flies past me: ‘Get your house in order. Spring is here, whether you see it or not...’”

Certainly that dark spring day the Magpie had been a wise friend. Strongheart, with his quiet woof urging me to stop, look, and listen, was a compassionate and insightful relative. I learned something from the horse that morning, too, about living in community and sharing what is easy and natural for us to give.

Mitaku Oyasin is a Lakota phrase meaning “all my relations.” It is spoken at the end of a prayer, or a speech, as we would say, “amen.” It reminds those who have ears to hear it that we are related to all of life, and that our health—physical, emotional, spiritual—blossoms in the vastness and wonder of those relationships.

Susan Chernak McElroy is the author of Animals as Teachers and Healers, Animals as Guides for the Soul, and Heart in the Wild. She offers lectures and workshops worldwide and lives in Idaho.