What the Robins Taught Me About Survival
- Jul 12
- 9 min read
Updated: Jul 14
Diana May integrates somatics, applied neurology, and yoga to help clients relieve chronic pain and reconnect with their bodies. Her work empowers people to regulate their nervous system and move with confidence at any stage of life.
For two weeks, right outside my window, I watched a mother robin guard her nest, three soft blue eggs, each no bigger than a thimble. When the babies hatched, they were tiny grey blobs, their hearts beating so hard I could see it through their delicate, featherless skin. My own motherly instinct came online instantly. I felt love and awe, and I began to worry.
Within the first few days of their lives, they faced three trials. A heat wave, violent storm, and a night of fireworks. With each one, my worry rose, and each time, with a wave of relief, I watched them survive. This experience became a doorway into something deeper. Something I contemplate a lot, our connection with nature isn't just essential for our nervous systems. It's essential to our souls, our resilience, and the kind of world I’m trying to build.
What does it mean to reconnect with nature?
Reconnecting with nature is another way of saying reconnecting with ourselves. Nature is hard to define, just like we are. It's both a place and a process. The place is Earth itself, or you can get more specific if you’d like. A forest, a lake, a particular trail, even your own front lawn. For us, the place is our own body.
The process is rhythm. It's the sun rising and setting every day. It's water moving from the ocean to the sky and raining back down a mountainside. It's the mother robin guarding her nest and raising her young. For us, the process is how we live our lives.
Watching those robins is what brought this home for me. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh writes about "interbeing," which is the practice of looking deeply into even the most mundane thing until you see everything it's made of. He teaches us to look at ink on paper. We might see that as a book, but if we look deeper, we can see the paper is the tree. The tree is also the rain and the sun.
I found myself doing the same thing with that nest, the robins, the mulberry bush that shaded them, the rain that nearly drowned them, and the worms their mother pulled from my lawn.
This past Fourth of July, the botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer's reframing of the holiday came to mind. Instead of Independence Day, she calls it Inter-dependence Day. Her invitation is to look closely at ourselves and notice how much of what we call "individual" is actually shared, our thoughts and feelings with the people around us, our bodies with the sun, rain, and soil that grew our food. We are nature. We "inter-are" with nature.
Three trials, three survivals
Watching these baby robins endure their trials, I started noticing what they had in common with what I've endured myself. What could I possibly learn from three small, helpless creatures? As it turns out, quite a lot.
The lesson of heat
The first trial was a record heat wave, nearly 100 degrees, with humidity up around 80%. Miserable, even for a human with air conditioning. Baby birds can't regulate their own body temperature, they depend entirely on their parents. The mulberry bush gave them shade, and I kept fresh, shallow bowls of water nearby in case they needed it.
Like these small robins, we also depend on our parents and caregivers to regulate our nervous system when we are babies. As we age and learn how to tend to our own needs, the need for co-regulation never leaves us. What brings you comfort when you're heated, whether it's from the temperature outside or something that's upset you? What helps you cool down? Who are the people you can turn to when you’re enduring a tough time? Who do you regularly spend time with?
The lesson of the storm
Right after the heat wave came the season's first big summer storm. I was driving home from Lake Huron when the sky went black in the middle of the day. Winds rocked my car. By the time I reached my neighborhood, entire trees had been uprooted. I worried badly about the birds. When I pulled into my driveway, I saw the mother robin with her wings spread wide, shielding her chicks from the impact.
No matter how great our lives may be and how much time we spend cultivating gratitude for what we have, life happens, and it’s not all going to be good. We cannot outrun some storms. Most people have small, fragile parts inside of them that warrant protection. What in you feels precious? What are the ways you might shield yourself from the external storms, whether they be social pressures, an unexpected change, or even an inner critic? How can you tap into the part of you that has wide-open wings?
The lesson of fireworks
The very next night was the Fourth of July, celebrated with fireworks exploding erratically through the dark. While the dazzling fire display is beautiful to witness, it can be deeply disorienting to animals. Songbirds navigate the world through sound, rustling leaves that mean wind or a predator, songs that signal safety, and alarm calls that signal threat. Fireworks are notoriously dangerous for birds, thousands, sometimes millions, are startled enough to abandon their nests entirely, flying too fast without a plan and sometimes colliding with trees. Birds get scared, and I was scared, too.
In the morning, I checked the nest. All three chicks were there, cuddled together. They'd survived. Fear is a powerful force that can make any of us abandon our post. There are many times in my life I’ve acted poorly out of fear and have had to learn hard lessons. Some of my greatest growth seasons have come from facing my fears, sitting with them, and making my way to the other side. What is your relationship with fear? Is it possible to build your capacity to stay with things, even when it’s scary?
Nature is not always gentle or peaceful. It can be harsh, unpredictable, even brutal. These conditions aren't by chance, but they're natural. So is the ability to survive them. Resilience is built in, too.
The extinction of experience
I keep coming back to that surprise I felt, relief, every single time the robins made it through. If I really believed nature was resilient, why did I keep bracing for disaster?
I think it's because, even as someone who loves nature, I've grown up in a culture that's almost entirely disconnected from it. The numbers back this up. Human connection to nature has declined by more than 60% over the past two hundred years, according to modeling research out of the University of Derby. In industrialized nations, we now spend the vast majority of our time indoors. Researchers have started calling this "the extinction of experience."
I was surprised because, like so many, I don’t have a lot of experience seeing nature thrive in difficult conditions. My house is temperature controlled, as is my car. I see more concrete than I do trees. The supermarkets sell fruit all year long, even in the winter. While intellectually I know that nature persists, I don’t have enough experience to fully trust it in my body.
Is disconnection from nature the root cause of our suffering?
When we live separately from nature, we may have more immediate comforts like a warm bed, and I am very grateful for that. But we lose something essential. We lose part of ourselves, and we lose connection to our support system. We lose trust in our own creativity and resiliency. We begin to see the world as an object, rather than a subject. We begin to treat the world as something we can take from, rather than seeing the aliveness it carries as something that has inherent value.
It is no coincidence that in the last 200 years, as our disconnection from nature has dwindled, the industrialization of our society has reshaped between 75% and 95% of Earth’s ice-free land surface. Cities and suburbs cover just a tiny fraction, but the impact of how we grow food and extract resources has altered a staggering amount of land. It’s estimated that only about 3 to 5% of ecosystems remain undisturbed. The effects of human-caused climate change are the single greatest threat to our survival, and the ecosystems that buffer the impact of climate change are dwindling.
When we act as though we're above nature instead of part of it, we don't just damage ecosystems, we cut ourselves off from the very thing that makes us resilient. The robins didn't survive because the conditions were kind to them. They survived because they were built, by nature, to withstand exactly what nature threw at them. We are built the same way. We've just forgotten how to lean on it.
How do you reconnect with nature if you live in the suburbs?
You don't need a nature-based retreat to start, though more on that below. A few places to begin, wherever you are:
Start small: There's nature all around you, even in the most urban environment. For me, it was a robin's nest. For you, it might be a squirrel that shows up at the same time every day, an anthill on the sidewalk, a dandelion pushing up through a crack in the concrete. You've probably walked past it a hundred times without really looking. Start there.
Grow something: It doesn't have to be a big garden, one pot of herbs on a windowsill counts. Look up a native flower that's thrived in your ecosystem for thousands of years and try growing it. Watching something rise out of a seed is its own small miracle and can be tracked right in your home.
Visit a local farmers market: You might be surprised to find one nearby. It's a good way to get fresh food, grown in season, and meet the people actually tending the soil around you. Try one fruit or vegetable you've never had before.
Soak in the sun: Even from the most urban window, you have access to the sky. Take a few minutes each day to watch it. Notice what shapes the clouds are taking and how fast they are changing. Can you feel the sun on your skin? Even on a rainy day, get curious about how far that rain traveled to reach you. It's a visitor.
Learn one name: Pick a bird, a tree, or a plant near you and actually learn what it is. Learn the name of your watershed. Go find your nearest stream or creek, even if it's mostly paved over and forgotten. Take a look at what's still moving beneath it, notice the diversity of plants that surround it, and keep your eyes open for wildlife.
What does it look like to build a world rooted in interdependence?
Imagine a world where the people around you understood, really understood, how every person, plant, and animal contributes to the whole. Where trees are revered for their shade and shelter, not just tolerated for their landscaping or timber value. Where berries are shared freely with the birds and insects who, in turn, pollinate everything the rest of us eat. Where your observations and admirations inspire you to write a poem, give a gift, or share an insight that sparks a long conversation over tea with a neighbor.
If we can reconnect with what nature has endured, how it survives, how generous it is even under harsh conditions, maybe we can reconnect with those same qualities in ourselves. I don't know many people whose lives have been only kind to them. Life is full of obstacles, trials, and tribulations. When we face not just what we've endured but how we got through it, we have something real to offer the people around us. We might find we're able to receive their wisdom in return.
Reconnect with nature in community
If watching those robins taught me anything, it's that none of us are meant to do this alone or from a distance. Nature doesn't ask us to be fearless, just present. If this resonates with you, I'd love for you to join me this September at Whispertree in Northern California, where we'll reconnect with the natural world and with each other, in community.
Follow me on Instagram for more info!
Read more from Diana May
Diana May, Neuro Somatic Practitioner & Yoga Teacher
Diana May is a yoga educator and Somatic Experiencing® practitioner who integrates applied neurology, mindful movement, and nervous-system science to help people reduce pain and restore mobility. She holds degrees in environmental studies and urban planning, grounding her work in a lifelong passion for ecology and natural systems. Diana weaves these perspectives into her teaching, connecting the rhythms of nature with the intelligence of the body and brain. Through her classes and 1:1 work, she empowers clients to build resilience, regulate their nervous system, and feel at home in their bodies.
