Once upon a time there was a bunny who liked to hide in trees.

She didn’t actually like to hide in trees, but it seemed better than the alternative of dressing up like an astronaut and wearing one of those gigantic glass globes and a jet pack and zooming through the air at high speeds, like so many of the other bunnies had learned to do.

She would sit there in her tree, on top of a 6-foot mound of kibble she’d collected from various parts of the world.

And she would shake and tremble, her whiskers quivering uncontrollably.

And she would look up at the sky at all of the bunny astronauts who were flying to and fro with their jet packs, and wonder why she couldn’t bear to come out of her tree and strap her jet pack back on.

This bunny couldn’t bear to go back up. Maybe she’d seen too many bunny crashes in the past. Maybe she just couldn’t leave the safety of this tree. It felt so cool and dark and quiet.

She realized she was terrified of heights. Had it always been this way? She couldn’t tell.

Perhaps this fear of heights had made her seem like one of the bravest bunny astronauts, because she was very good at pushing herself to do things she didn’t actually want to do.

Except that one day she realized she wasn’t able to push herself anymore.

And she wasn’t sure whether she was allowed to just hang out on the ground in a tree and eat kibble and perhaps one of these days poke around and have a tiny adventure in the field.

What bunny astronaut does that?

How would anyone take her seriously?

Some of the bunnies would drop letters down from the sky. Letters seemed to constantly be falling here and there. All around the base of her tree was a pile of letters, most of them addressed to her, but some of them weekly or monthly updates with news from the other bunnies’ travels.

She loved getting letters! But the sheer number of letters eventually surpassed even her ability to reflect and chew and respond.

Her regular protocol no longer seemed to be sufficient. Open the letter, scribble your reply below, and find the nearest tree letter suction distribution system. They used those old bank tubes to shoot letters back up into the sky.

Meanwhile, letters kept dropping from the sky, all around her tree.

She didn’t even know which letter to read first, so she stayed in her tree, shaking and eating kibble.
Time passed too quickly.
The pile of letters grew so that she couldn’t even see the ground anymore.
The seasons changed.

This probably isn’t very sanitary, but she was so terrified of being hit by one of these letters, or being spotted by one of the other bunny astronauts, that she remained firmly ensconced in her tree, eating her way through all of the kibble.

She wasn’t sure whether she could teach spaceship piloting when she herself didn’t particularly want to pilot spaceships. Not full-time, anyway.

And so many bunnies seemed so perfectly happy up there, jetting to and fro. They didn’t seem to miss the field at all.

But maybe they did. She couldn’t really tell from the ground.

She really just wanted to find a patch of field that was clear of bunny astronauts flying overhead, maybe have a picnic in the grass, and enjoy a nice butter lettuce salad. With some cheese.

And sometimes she actually forgot she was a bunny.

One week she went to a bunny astronaut conference.

There she took off her spacesuit and hopped around and ate lettuce with other bunnies.

There were so many bunny astronauts she admired there, and it seemed they, too, missed their old trees. And made frequent visits back.

And she felt like she wasn’t alone.

And she resolved to do something about this tree situation. And all of the letters that had piled up so high around her tree.

She didn’t want to hide in trees anymore. Neither did she want to fly through the air full-time.

And neither could she read and respond to every letter, shooting them back up the trees in the little bank cannisters.

So she decided to reflect on this.

And to give herself permission not to respond to the letters, rather than guilt-resistance-guilt-resistance, which also didn’t seem to be working.

(Unless they were active bunny clients who were already enrolled in astronaut school. These she invited into her tree. And they ate kibble. And they did bunny-nata.)

And eventually they became the kinds of bunnies who had field adventures together. And they didn’t mind spending lots of time on the ground.

Once in a while, they flew through the air like they used to in the old days. But this time it felt different, because they were free to choose.

And this bunny became a semi-reclusive bunny who only hid in trees once in a while, evenings and weekends. But most of the time you could find her hopping around, gathering ingredients for blueberry pancakes. It’s her favorite.

You can still find her on a Sunday, making blueberry pancakes.
Or hopping through the field, softly singing through her whiskers, making up fairy tales about bunnies, hanging out with squirrels.

Commenting policy: If I like your comment, it will be approved. I don’t always comment back, but I will nod my head and tent my fingers and say, Ahhh, yes yes yes. Your comment need not bother with fancy footwear or rational undergarments. But it does need to feel comfortable—both for you to write and for others to read. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, and if I decide I don’t want it taking up people’s brain spaces, I will let it softly float away. Perhaps one day it will return to you, and you can tuck it into bed.