Hearing the Grass Grow

I’m excited to feature another story from from Dawn! She has become somewhat of a regular guest blogger here on SMP and I couldn’t be more honored to share this new short story of healing with you.

Thank you again for your openness, and sharing so transparently to help inspire and encourage others Dawn!

Once there was a young girl…. her childhood was not a very nice one…as a matter of fact, there was much pain, hurt, and abuse. The young girl really didn’t know why…just that is the way it was. She really didn’t know any different except that her siblings were not abused as she was. She didn’t understand that, but she was thankful.

She struggled to understand and to survive. One day this girl (about the age of 12) read a book. It was called “If We Could Hear the Grass Grow”

The book is about some children who have mental illness or are in some way emotionally “disturbed”. Their teacher/therapist teaches them and learns from them. One day their teacher announces that they will have show and tell the next day. Each student gets up in front of the class and shows what they brought from home and tells about it. One of the boys in this class brought in his snake for show and tell.

This boy brings his snake to the front of the class and talks about it, saying the following words, words that would stay with our little girl for year: ”

Everything would be ok, if we could hear what my snake hears. If we could hear the grass grow”

Well, that statement hit a chord with the girl because everything in her life seemed not to be ok, everything in her life was hurt and pain. But maybe…just maybe… if she could hear the grass grow, well everything would be ok.

The young girl thought about it very much. She milled over it in her brain, a lot. She read the book again and thought about it more. If we could hear the grass grow, does the grass make a sound when it grows?  Everything would be ok if we could hear the grass grow.

The girl wrote a poem about the grass growing and she made it into a song.

“If only we could hear the grass grow, if only we could see the wind, if only we could hear the grass grow, it’s then our lives could begin.” This stayed with her for years. She would talk about it off and on, ask people about it, but no one had the answer to the simple question, “does the grass make a sound when it grows?”

The young girl’s life did not improve in her teenage years, as a matter of fact it got worse. The girl continued to wonder about the grass growing and what sound it makes.

She became an adult and her abuser died; the girl began to heal from her not so happy childhood. As you may or may not know, healing is difficult and takes great courage. She would often use that sentence when trying to get through the nightmares and the ugly stuff from which she was healing. “everything would be ok, if we could hear the grass grow.”

This girl…now a young woman of about 30 some years old, joined an online chat room for people like her, survivors of childhood sexual abuse. In this chat room, she noticed that a person had a hard time keeping up with the flow; only to find out this person’s first language was not English.

One day she was private messaging this person, who was very sassy indeed. She seemed to have all the answers to everything. Now the Young Woman thought…”dang, if this person knows so much about everything…well…hmmmmm, I wonder.”

• Young Woman: “If you know so much about everything, tell me why the sky is blue”
• Online Person: “Because that is what color the clouds want it to be.”
• Young Woman: “Why do we cry?”
• Online Person: “Because there are tears in our eyes.”
  • Ok good. Wow, thought the Young Woman, that was creative. Maybe, just maybe…with a deep breath, the Young Woman asked the question that had been on her heart and mind for years,
• Young Woman: “Does the grass make a sound when it grows…” and anxiously awaited an answer.
• Online person: “Yes, it does.”
• Young Woman: (now almost holding her breath, asking the question she had wondered about for over 20 years): “What sound does the grass make when it grows?”
• Online Person: “It whispers.”
• Young Woman: It whispers….it whispers…it whispers…of course it …it whispers…IT WHISPERS of course it whispers…she had heard it whisper…of course…wait…wait a minute…another question comes to mind!
• Young Woman: “What does it say? What does the grass say when it whispers?”
• Online Person: “It whispers, ‘we are strong, we are strong”

Yes of course it does! How could she not have heard that?! Oh my gosh! It was the answer she had been waiting for since she was a little girl!

About a year later the Young Woman still friends with the Online person, invited her to come to the States for a visit. They went to Lake Michigan at the Dunes National Lakeshore and sat in the tall beach grass and listened to the grass grow, and whisper…“We are Strong, We are Strong.”

I know this story to be true. Of course the girl in the story who grew into the Woman was me. The Online person, the one who seemed to know everything and was soooo creative… I married her. <3

-Dawn – @SongWarriors

If you would like to be a guest blogger here on SMP, just contact me and let’s share your story! 

Images courtesy of Pixabay.