The Power of Deer Poop

Years ago, I returned to the Hoffman Process as a student while training to become a teacher. I already knew the exercises and the teachings, so part of me wondered how much I could possibly discover the second time around.

As it turned out, quite a lot.

During one exercise, surrounded by the breathtaking landscape of the retreat site, I found myself drawn to something decidedly less breathtaking: deer poop.

My response was immediate.

That’s disgusting.

And then, almost as quickly:

What does it say about me that I’m drawn to something disgusting?

I felt embarrassed. I even wanted to come up with a different response — something more beautiful, more acceptable, perhaps more spiritual.

And then I saw it differently.

The deer poop belonged there.

It wasn’t separate from the beauty of the landscape. It was part of it. It would break down, return to the earth, nourish the soil, and become part of whatever grew next.

Something about this very ordinary realization stopped me.

What if the parts of myself I found messy, dark, or difficult belonged, too?

For much of my life, I had been very good at moving toward the light.

When something hurt, I could find gratitude. When I felt lost, I could search for meaning. Spiritual practice gave me ways to touch love, beauty, and something larger than myself.

All of that was real.

But I was beginning to see how easily the search for light could also become a way of leaving myself.

I could move toward gratitude before allowing disappointment.

I could search for meaning before feeling grief.

I could reach for the spiritual before tending to the very human part of me that was angry, afraid, ashamed, or simply sad.

I had learned how to transcend parts of my experience before I had learned how to stay with them.

The deer poop offered a strangely simple teaching: nothing had to be removed for the landscape to be whole.

Maybe wholeness wasn't about becoming a better, calmer, more evolved version of myself.

Maybe it was about making room for more of what was already here.

The polished and the messy.

The generous and the selfish.

The courageous and the afraid.

The parts of myself I proudly showed the world, and the parts I worked hard to hide.

This didn't mean celebrating every impulse or pretending that everything I did was harmless. To me, accepting my wholeness also meant becoming more willing to see my capacity to hurt, to defend, to control, and to turn away — and taking responsibility for what I found.

But I no longer wanted to exile those parts of myself in order to believe I was good.

I wanted to become someone who could stay.

Stay with disappointment before transforming it.

Stay with grief without needing to explain it.

Stay with another person's pain without rushing toward the lesson.

Stay with myself when I wasn't particularly proud of what I found.

Years later, this remains one of the simplest ways I understand the work of becoming more fully human.

Not endlessly reaching for the light.

Not making a home in the darkness either.

But becoming spacious enough to hold both.

And remembering, every now and then, that even the deer poop belongs.