My encounter with the hare
A short while ago, on the farm where I work, while walking over one of our fields, I almost stepped on a baby hare lying hidden in the high grass. I got startled, and then I got worried, was the little hare all by itself there? Was it safe? Should I rescue him? Or just trust nature? Sharing my worries with my partner, he told me the following:
"Mother hares leave their babies alone on purpose for several hours per day. The babies are born without scent, so when alone, they are perfectly protected as no fox or other predator can hunt them based on their smell. The mother hare at times returns to the spot to feed the baby, thus it is important to not touch or remove them to somewhere else, even though our first instinct might tell us otherwise. For the mother hare this is a natural behaviour, and looking at it from our perspective, they are in tune with life, with their nature, they trust, even when it’s about their offspring."
This story of the hare really amazed me and showed me once more how perfect everything works when we let nature do its work, and if we do our part in it by simply stepping back and trusting...
Around the same time as I encountered the baby hare, one of my good friends Mathilde told me the story of her second birth. It felt like it carried the same 'hare energy', the energy of trusting and surrendering to the natural workings of life, of the body, so therefore we had to share them both together here with you:
Mathilde's story:
Motherhood
With the arrival of my second child, the question of sleep quickly came up. I read Caroline Ferriol's ‘Le grand guide du sommeil de mon bébé’ (The great guide to my baby's sleep) and she explains very well that our baby has known how to sleep since he was in utero. Thus our role is not to make a baby sleep, but to understand how sleep works and to provide the best possible environment for our baby to fall asleep.
She makes a very good analogy with digestion: we have to provide the right nutrients and for the rest, the body knows how to do it on its own.
‘Your baby knows how to sleep! Sleep is an innate function of the body’.
‘Just like sleeping, digesting is an innate function; the parent's role is simply to support, nourish and supervise the body's proper functioning, certainly not to do things for it or hinder it.’
Similar to a patient or a friend, we shouldn't try to do things for them but rather understand what they need and help them find their healing and their path. I believe that in the end, we can adapt this mindset to any subject, but we too often forget this.
The story of the hare encourages us to have confidence in ourselves and life, without constantly having to take action to resolve our fears. Let's discover the wisdom inherent in all beings and all things on this planet.