Journal October 2026 Special DISPUK Release_Full Version - Flipbook - Page 51
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It wasn9t the first time he9d rented my summer house. He told me he kept coming
back because it was a place where he found peace and could breathe. A few
months later, when I went up there myself, I felt a quiet sense of pride. As if the
house had actually taken care of someone.
I started thinking about my childhood. When my father sold our car, he was
happy that the new car could do more than the old one. But for us kids, it was
sad. The car held our vacation memories. It had been something and carried
traces of us.
It struck me that things and places are not just things. Through our use and our
presence, they become imbued with meaning. They become co-narrators in our
lives. And in that lies a form of agency—not just within us, but in the relationship
between us and the place.
When Nature Has a Voice
In my therapeutic work, I often experience how people who are struggling
describe how they find peace in nature. Sometimes I invite them to explore their
relationship with a particular place in nature. A place they describe as something
that
