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Fireweeds Theory

There are patterns that repeat in nature.  Fractals, Fibonacci sequences, sacred geometry, cycles. Over and over they repeat… like the water cycle, like the seasons, patterns repeat over time and over lifetimes.

In The Beginning...

In Nature...

The Fireweeds Theory is one of cycles and exponential effects.  But stories are easier to understand when there is a beginning.  Our story begins in a beautiful landscape.  Meadows, forests, streams, an abundance of wildlife and plant life all happily cohabitating.

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In Humans...

Humans all happily cohabitating?  Not as likely... but for the sake of storytelling, let's step away from reality for a moment and  imagine a world where a tribe of humans is living in peace and harmony.  Everyone respects each other.  Everyone contributes.  Everyone communicates well, and disputes are all navigated fairly

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But even in a perfect world where everything seems to be working just right, bad things can still happen.  Change is one of the most reliable constants in life.

Trauma Happens...

In Nature...

Trauma can happen in a natural landscape in many ways.  A volcano.  A drought.  An earthquake.  But since we are talking about fireweeds, let's imagine a forest fire.  

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In Humans...

A similar natural disaster strikes the environment of our tribe of humans.  Homes are destroyed.  Culture is uprooted.  Lives are lost.  Just like the rest of nature, the mark left from this devastation has a lasting impact in memories of all who survived it.  These surviving humans will never be the same.

Trauma Brings Change and Rebirth...

​In Nature...

Even in the darkness, there are seeds of hope.  Fireweeds are the exact kind of seeds that best love to grow in such a landscape.  As these new seeds grow, they will bring vibrant colors and vital nutrients to re-create the damaged landscape. 

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In Humans...

Humans create seeds, too.  Seeds that, like plants, are expressed in their genes.  All living things evolve to adapt to their environment.  And genes, we are learning, can change within a single lifetime.  Major traumatic events can signal changes in gene expression.  These traits are then passed on, through seeds (zygots), to new baby humans-new baby humans that can be flexible and adapt to the new environment.  Little human “fireweeds”.

New Life Develops...and Diverges with Each Generation...

Nature and Nurture.  The age-old debate about what influences development of new life.  In truth, it is both the genetic code of nature as well as the quality of the environment that determines the health of new life.  And so, here, our story diverges into a range of possible paths.  We will focus on the best- and worst-case scenarios…

The Path of Growth...

In Nature...

Fireweeds are brilliant in color, and perhaps even surprising, as they grow against a stark, blackened landscape.  Fireweeds can scatter thousands of seeds, and if all goes well, a field of fireweeds will reclaim the landscape and heal it, allowing other new life to return and flourish.

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In Humans…

Some members of this new generation of humans is different from the last.  They act differently and think differently.  They have new ideas.  Their brain’s have grown stronger in certain areas, and weaker in other areas, an adaptation of the chaos experienced by the previous generation.  If nurtured, these slightly-different humans have the capability of bringing new gifts to their society- inventions, art, music, humor, and more.  They may continue to grow into full-size human fireweeds.  They may be just what the environment needs to heal, and what human society needs to flourish.

The Path of Destruction...

In Nature…

Although there are so many of them, each individual plant is delicate, easily crushed under foot.  And even though fireweeds can be seen as resilient, they can still become brittle without the rainfall they need.  As brittle, dried-out husks, they are now at risk of simply being kindling for the next fire, perpetuating the future cycles of damage and devastation, rather than fulfilling the promise of new growth and rebirth.

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In Humans…

Young human children are always delicate.  Along with genetics passed on from their parents, how children are nurtured (or not!) will determine whether a child grows into a bright-shining fireweed, or whether they will simply become additional kindling in the environment. 

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Raising these little humans that are different can be very hard for the previous generation.  Especially in light of all the previous generation has suffered.  Traumatized parents do not, as a rule, offer the healthiest parenting to their offspring.  This pairing of already-traumatized parents, and their more complex, divergent offspring all too often results in a denial (many times unintentional) of the nourishment that a young, divergent human needs.  In the absence of proper nourishment, humans also “dry out” and become hard, brittle “kindling”.  They go on to develop “more serious” mental health diagnoses, and they perpetuate the cycle of trauma to other humans around them- friends, partners, children, co-workers

A Peek Into The Far Future...

As the same patterns and cycles of behavior repeat over the generations, divergences in earlier generations magnify, the changes ripple out, and shape an entire culture.

The Path of Growth...

In Nature…

Building on the reclamation initiated by the fireweeds, new species of plant life have grown in the blackened landscape.  As new plant-life returned, herbivorous animals followed, then carnivorous animals, and the eco system became balanced once again.  Fireweeds still grow, occasionally.  They scatter their seeds as always, but many of those seeds will lay dormant.  They are not as necessary now.  Not until the next catastrophe some day in the future.  But for now, there is life in abundance.

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In Humans…

New ideas have led to new innovations developed by fireweed humans.  Art, science, mathematics, and philosophy experience a renaissance, and the lives of the tribe are significantly improved as a whole.  The tribe as a whole gradually heals from the trauma that occurred generations ago.  The genes that activated from trauma brought about many fireweed humans begin to gradually adjust back to a time of peace and an environment of greater mental health.  Fireweeds humans still exist, but there are less of them.

The Path of Destruction...

In Nature…

In a dry landscape, the fireweeds that happily germinated in the wake of the fire became starved, hard and brittle.  What could have grown into a field of wildflowers, instead became a field of dry plant matter- the perfect host for another fire.  New life struggles to take hold, and without water, rarely lasts.  There will be no return of other plant-life or animals to this landscape anytime soon.  Not without regular, consistent water.

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In Humans…

In the absence of a nurturing childhood that celebrates the child’s diversity, compensating for the child’s weaknesses while assisting it to excel in the areas where it is strong, the child will struggle.  Upon reaching adulthood, these humans will grow more rigid and inflexible.  They will become extremely hard in some areas to compensate for the immense fragility that is the core of their being.  Ever-experiencing the lasting results of trauma, their pain will compound over the years, and they will perpetuate that damage and pain on to others in their lives.  

There Is Always Hope...

In Nature…

In nature, a plant can appear dead, with dry leaves and brittle stems, but still be clinging on to life deep within.  If that plant is transplanted into fertile soil, given water, and just the right amount of sunshine, it can be healed and slowly begin to grow again.  The more care and attention given to it, the faster its ability to heal and regrow.

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In Humans…

The same is true of humans.  It used to be understood that that brain cells could only be killed and not regrown.  It was only in the late 1990’s that scientific studies demonstrated that neurogenesis was real.  Given the right environment, the right nutrients, the right support, human brain cells CAN regrow.  Studies continue to be done to evaluate methods by which cell transplants, or natural regenerative processes of the human body can create new neurons.  And the rebirth of studies in psychedelic medicine demonstrate the both psilocybin and ketamine are able to regrow the blunted dendrites of existing neurons.  One should also not discount trauma-specific psychotherapy and somatic therapies to re-order the nervous system and re-build healthier neural connections in the brain. 

The length of time to heal and regrow a healthier brain and nervous system varies based on many factors (ie an individual’s age and their commitment to change, the intensity of trauma, how early trauma occurred, and access to care and treatments).  With the right treatments and effort, it feels safe to theorize that no individual is ever a “lost cause”. 

The Tao of Fireweeds Theory

As human beings, we like to see things that are opposite as “good” versus “bad”, or at least “preferable” versus “best avoided.”  But the more one zooms out in nature, the less simple it becomes. 

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In Nature…
It would be easy to say that fireweeds, in their ability to heal the landscape, are “good”; and fire, with its powers of death and destruction, is “bad”.  But fireweeds only germinate BECAUSE the fire is a catalyst.  They are most amazing when compared against the charred landscapes of their birth, and the transformed, lush landscapes that their existence helps bring about. Likewise, too much plant life becomes an eventual catalyst for fire as an overabundance of growth leads to scarcity of water and nutrients.  Plants that don’t get what they need, as we have said, dry out into brittle husks, and fuel the next fire.

On and on and on… the cycle repeats, and will always repeat, the elements of nature constantly in a dance to balance each other out.

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In Humans…
Here’s where things get a little harder to keep perspective.  We ARE human.  And all of us have, at one time or another, been (or will be), hurt by other humans.  Pain and abuse sure feel bad, even if they do help to unlock some gifts.  How can we say that the dry, brittle “human husks”, which push their pain onto others in order to avoid feeling it themselves, could possibly be “good”?  Maybe we don’t have to…

Through philosophy and spirituality, mankind has arrived at similar truths across its rich evolution: that all humans have potential for both “good” and “bad” in them.  Or perhaps, from a less dogmatic perspective, the potential for “growth” and “destruction”, “chaos” and “order”, dancing in a constant cycle of one way of life balancing out another.

Similar to most living species, the human species has regenerative, self-healing properties, and unlike most other species, we can extend these healing abilities beyond just our Selves to other living things.  And while we are often limited in life from accomplishing whatever we choose, particularly when trauma has blunted our mental abilities, human beings, more than most other species, have a modicum of free will. 

Epilogue/ Prologue

Because cycles repeat: there are no endings, only new beginnings.

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Your pain and trauma is probably not your fault, but your journey to healing is your responsibility, both to seek and commit to.  Every human being has a right to be free from abuse.  There is never a good excuse for someone to avoid their pain by pushing it onto another human being. 

 

 As one works towards self-actualization, the ability to empathize with other humans, to see all other humans as just that- “human”, rather than “good” or “bad”, can help us stay centered.    In this work, we are constantly working to empathize with the pain of another individual, while drawing a FIRM boundary at damaging behavior.

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Fireweeds

© 2025 Briana Benn-Mirandi

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