The Tree of Life: talking about hard things from solid ground
At a camp in Zimbabwe, a group of children who had lost parents to HIV and AIDS were asked to draw trees representing their lives. In the older version of the exercise, relatives who had died were drawn as fallen leaves on the ground, and problems were drawn as bugs eating the tree. The result was a page of bare, damaged trees, and the children’s identities drawn as broken.
The Zimbabwean psychologist Ncazelo Ncube, working with David Denborough of the Dulwich Centre, redesigned it. In their version, people who have died stay on the tree as leaves, still important. Problems were moved off the tree entirely into a separate conversation about the storms that trees face. That small change meant children could talk about terrible losses while standing on everything that was strong in their lives.
Each part of the tree holds something different. The roots are where you come from: family, culture, the people who taught you most. The ground is your life now. The trunk holds your skills and how you learned them. The branches are hopes and dreams. The leaves are the important people in your life, and the fruits are the gifts others have given you, such as kindness or care. Once trees are drawn, they are put up together as a forest, and only then does the group talk about storms: what dangers people face, that the storms are not their fault, and how they respond to them.
The method has since been used around the world, including in NHS services. A South London and Maudsley pilot with people experiencing a first episode of psychosis found most participants felt more positive about psychological therapy afterwards. As Denborough has written, “Grief is never only about loss; it is also about honouring.”
I have used the Tree of Life in my clinical work and may draw on it where it fits, especially where loss, change or difficult experiences have made it hard to see anything else. Read more about narrative ideas, or get in touch.