Lessons from a Rock-Stealing Raven
The world sometimes feels heavy. Every sound, movement, and expectation weighing on me. I was born with skin too thin for the world, not literally, but close enough. Sounds can be overwhelming, and crowds are draining. The pressure of modern life can be too much at times, the fluorescent flicker in supermarkets, and the need to always explain myself all make me want to run away.
For some people, this kind of sensitivity goes deeper than it appears. It’s a nervous system that takes in the world more intensely, where light, sound, emotion and even food can quickly become overwhelming. What looks like weakness from the outside is often a body working overtime, or trying to keep up with a world that moves too fast.
Over time, I learned to push through. To try and fit in and to “get over it”. I tried for many years, forcing myself into the normal schedules, social situations, and all the expectations of the world. I masked the instinct to say no, and the refusal to comply with what never felt right to me. But there was always a knowing that this life and this system was not for me. My sensitivities became a badge of shame that I must hide. Until one day, my body said “NO” louder than ever.
The symptoms came fast. Sudden weakness, chronic fatigue, strange anxiety, and foods that once nourished me now made me sick; my gut twisted in protest. Being a nutritionist, my logic led me to blame the food. But the more I tried to heal it by the book, the more my body shut down.
But it was never just about food. Something deeper was going on. The way I had been living my life, pushing through, overriding my limits, not listening to my body. I was in a chronic state of fight or flight. My body hardly stopped, and my brain never rested, so I left.
Out on the land, the silence is different. It may look empty, but it isn’t; it is full. Full of space to feel, to unravel, to rest, and to rebuild myself. As the weeks passed, the land became less like a place I lived and more like something that was teaching me. I began noticing the small lives unfolding around me, carrying on whether I was anxious or not. They asked nothing of me except that I be present.
I didn't realise it then, but the greatest lessons about healing weren't coming from books or experts. They were waiting in the ordinary creatures that shared the land with me.
Chickens clucked in the background, oblivious to my crisis. Ducks left muddy prints on the porch, waddling in circles like my thoughts sometimes. Then a cheeky raven began arriving each morning to steal something he admired. One day, he stole an egg from the chickens. I watched him take the egg in his beak and flap off like he owned the sky. Then a tomato tickled his fancy. But finally, he discovered the smooth, white rocks in my garden. And these were his most favourite!
Each morning he arrives to find a new rock. He sorts through them carefully. Picking them up and dropping them one by one until he finds the one that “speaks” to him that day. Then he takes it home. This is how he earned the name ‘Rocky’. Who knows what he’s doing with all these rocks. I like to think he has a beautiful collection somewhere that he adds to each day, or he’s building Rocky’s castle.
Watching Rocky became a surprising kind of lesson. He wasn’t trying to be productive or understood. He simply followed what drew his attention, what felt right in that moment. In a world that had always asked me to override myself, there was something strangely reassuring about that. A reminder that not everything needs to be explained or justified.
This was the turning point for me, somehow. Rocky the raven with sticky feet and a hunger for something special to keep. There was meaning in the absurdity. In the simplicity of his joy for a simple rock. In the permission to stop making it all make sense. Because what does a raven need with all these rocks?
Somewhere between his stolen rocks and my endless overthinking, I realised I had been asking myself the wrong questions all along.
So I stopped asking what was wrong with me, or how I was supposed to fit in. Instead, I started asking: What if my sensitivities weren't the problem? What if I was never meant to live that way? The world hadn’t been built for me. So I stopped shrinking myself to fit it. And I began building my own world.
I think many people reach this at some point, maybe not through a rock-loving raven. But a body that no longer tolerates the pace of life, or an exhaustion that doesn’t go away with rest. A sense that something about the way we are living isn’t quite right, even when we can’t fully explain why. We are taught to push through these signals, to keep going. But sometimes they are not problems to solve, but messages to listen to.
I learned that there is another way to live, one the world doesn’t often advertise. It’s slower and quieter, and it asks for a different kind of attention. It may not look impressive from the outside, and it doesn’t always make sense on paper. But for those who have spent years trying to fit themselves into something that never quite felt right, it can feel like coming home to a body that no longer needs to fight so hard to be heard.
And when I began to listen, really listen, something shifted. It has taken over a year of quiet living, of stepping back from the noise and learning an entirely different rhythm. But it has been enough to realise that what once felt like weakness has actually been a kind of guidance all along.
I was focusing on fixing the symptoms, and ignoring the actual cause. I was living against who I really am. And now, slowly, I find myself turning back towards the world again. But, not with the same urgency to keep up. With a knowing of what I can and cannot hold.
The world hasn’t changed, but the way I live in it has. And this time, I’m not trying to push through it. I’m learning to move within it, in a way that still feels like home. Maybe there’s a message in your own discomfort. Not a problem to fix, but a direction to listen to.