Travis Wild: The Place A Tree Should Be, Gebunden

Klappentext

What makes a tree a tree? What makes you a you, and what makes me a me? It's easy to see what makes us different, and that makes it harder to see what makes us the same. Is it where we are or what we've been through? Or is it something small, simple, which comes from deep inside?

The origin of this story comes from living alongside kids in a group home in Colorado. One child in particular often expressed they felt too different and too far from people because of what they'd been through - an experience many of us have in different ways no matter how "normal" or "different" our lives have been. The truth is this child had been through extreme life events which left her far from the norms of society. Society (parents, schools, peers) saw the differences in her and often treated her in a way that was based on their perspective of her vs who she was. They saw a girl in a different spot than them, different from their kids, and everything was a reaction of their worries and hers. In her I saw a story that couldn't be denied as "different", but also a girl who was simply a girl, a person, who desired and needed what we all need and desire - to know we exist in a world where we belong and can be loved. We talked about what makes a person a person, what makes a kid a kid, what it is about people that allows us to grow old and be happy and see the world as a place we belong. How what has happened and where it takes us isn't fiction, but how those things aren't the only facts which define us. We can see in ourselves or others a character who was taken far away from others, subjected to storms, and feels isolated or we can see a character who is resilient, stood strong through adversity, and has lived to have a different perspective of the same world. Likewise we can see ourselves as a skeptic, questioning others, and can make assumptions - or we can see ourselves as curious, wanting to understand, and willing to fly up to get to know the other characters in our lives for who they are vs who we think they are from what we initially see.

In life there are times where things happen that are hard to talk about, painful even, and so we brush them under the rug and miss out on a chance to empathize and truly understand the world around us. This is understandable but a missed opportunity. My hope is to take a note from people like Mr. Rogers, Yann Martel, and Roald Dahl to create stories and characters that make hard topics more approachable for everyone. The characters in The Place A Tree Should Be represent thoughts and ideas resembling self talk as well as interpersonal treatment of each other in the world. Sometimes each of us is the tree, sometimes we are the forest below, and sometimes we are the blue bird - each witness to the storms, sunshine, adversity, and growth that happens throughout life to understand how all those things play together to make us who we are.