The sound of a wild snail eating

Unfixed quote

Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties. Illness isolates: the isolated become invisible; the invisible become forgotten. But the snail…the snail kept my spirit from evaporating.

Bedridden from a post-infectious autoimmune disorder, unable to get out of bed or sit up, author Elisabeth Tova Baily once found uncommon companionship and solace in a forest snail that stowed away on a potted violet from a friend.

After discovering a tiny hole in an envelope next to the flower pot, Elisabeth decided to feed the snail something tastier—a petal from its violet-hued woodland. It proceeded to munch, quietly, on the petal for over an hour—this tiny, intimate sound offering Elisabeth a distinct feeling of togetherness and purpose, sustaining a small creature in need. She became fascinated by the snail’s feeding habits, its sleep rhythms, its gentle insistence on survival.

Elisabeth spent the following year observing the snail, becoming the inspiration for her memoir, "The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating," and helping her through the most isolating period of her life.

In exchange for daily foliage snacks, the snail fed Elisabeth with life lessons: how a smaller aperture of attention can soothe frayed nerves, that survival depends on “a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility,” and how looking outside our own painful circumstance, out of a limiting “if-only” mindset, we are freed from self-imposed conditions on peace, happiness and contentment.

Through Elisabeth’s gentle, devoted attention, this tiny woodland snail mirrored the miraculous and simple wonder of her own existence—even while pinned to a bed suffering the time-warp of illness. Sometimes presence is the easiest, most accessible balm for all that ails.

Have you offered or received a healing presence lately?

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