Heidi Marble and Alysa Zalma, M.D., Co-Authors of Pulled By The Root. October 24, 2020

Photograph Courtesy of Joy Photography

In late October of 2020, The Surya Chandra Center hosted a socially distant in-person event to create footage and gather inspiration for Pulled By The Root, a non-fiction book about the story of the traumas as well as the hope and healing processes of adopted children. This population includes a wider audience that includes parents who have relinquished their biological children for adoption and parents who have adopted children. It also includes the foster care system and the health care professionals who collaborate and treat them. 

This Surya Chandra Center Pulled By The Root event brought together myself, a psychiatrist and co-author of Pulled By The Root; Heidi Marble, author, inspirational speaker and co-author of Pulled By The Root Alex Mazurkevich, videographer and event photographer; Stephanie Joy Pipes, portrait, editorial and fashion photographer; and Sean Farley, American singer, songwriter, guitarist and Luthier. 

The Surya Chandra event included filmed interviews about the content and purpose of Pulled By The Root. Portrait photography captured the co-authors in various spaces in the healing gardens. Original music was performed and filmed with the Surya Chandra Healing Gardens as the backdrop for this highly creative endeavor. Mr. Farley, who is presently composing original music for the filming of various portions of the interviews also performed his original music at the event. Mr. Mazurkevich filmed all of the Pulled By The Root interviews within the gardens. Ms. Joy-Pipes photographed the portraits of myself and Ms. Marble, and captured us all coming together throughout the day. 

One of this event’s purposes was to offer all of us opportunities for connection with each other’s talents of writing, film-making, photography and music composition.

Most of us had not previously met except under the auspices of Zoom meetings, due to the constraints of Covid-19. Some of us are from Oregon (myself), from Washington (Ms. Marble, Ms. Joy-Pipes, and Mr. Mazurkevich) and from Pennsylvania (Mr. Farley). We all gathered to tell the story of Pulled By The Root using our own unique talents and ways of “story telling”. 

Not unique to Ms. Marble's story, are the many stories of the traumas, disordered attachments and ultimately the healing processes, which halt the trans-generational traumas experienced by children of adoption. Through our collaboration to tell the story of Pulled By The Root we learned that there is something universal about wanting to use the “languages” of our own creativities to tell this story.

The ability to create stable, healthy, beautiful images of this story, through writing, filmmaking, photography, and music is deeply effective and deeply healing. As people read words, hear music, see film, and see portraits, they are able to create these more stable and thus healthy images of self. We learned that there is something universal about wanting to use the “languages” of our own creativities to tell this story. This is something, which we as professionals from varied venues, already knew, but the bringing of our talents together through the Pulled By The Root project has brought to all of us to a different level of awareness of this phenomena.

We offer as part of this post some of the photographs inspired and co-created by Ms.Joy-Pipes. She notes that when people see portrait images/photographs of themselves, they are able to see that which she has “seen” in them, and has co-created with them-- an image of themselves that has transcended whatever traumas may have been previously part of their story. The co-creation of this portrait image has been a “healing” between photographer and model. Of the new co-created self, seen in the image/photograph, the model may say, “I ‘see’ myself now. The world can now see me in this way. I am seeing myself as if for the first time, as one who is healthy, vibrant, beautiful and whole”. This is also the experience the book Pulled By The Root aspires to co-create and offer.

Alysa Zalma, M.D.

In 2020,The Surya Chandra Center experimented with its first season of sustainability in attempts to become more knowledgable in growing of our own food.   We were able to grow multiple varieties of early and mid spring, and early and mid summer vegetables and will be incorporating the activities of learning to grow one's own food supply into our customized Groups in 2021.

We featured early snap peas, lettuce, arugula, in the early spring and heirloom, cherry and other varieties of tomatoes, as well as brassica, and multiple varieties of kale in the summer.  We also were able to grow swiss chard and beets which were big performers.   The brassica , swiss chard and the kale are still providing crop into the winter of 2020-21.   We also were able to grow many different types of bush and pole beans in the mid-to-late summer of 2020.   Our fruit trees surprised us and bore multiple varieties of apples and pears.   Our blackberries (!) never fail to provide much crop of unsprayed and organic berries as well.

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An arroyo is a "dry" river, found in various areas of the United States and Spain.   In the US, notable areas of arroyos include New Mexico and California.   These dry river beds are frequently found in deserts but may fill with water after acute periods of rain.   We wanted to simulate this Southwestern phenomena and experiment with surrounding plants that are more indigenous to areas surrounding arroyos.  We loved the idea of using rock to create a dry bed that would also help us track and focus the underground streams under the property of the Surya Chandra Center.   We love the tranquility and healing experience of the arroyo, which is now part of the permanent collection of the property, to be offered as a destination point for all Retreats.  Discussion and demonstration of creation of healing spaces is also now incorporated into our customized Retreats.