11/05/2025
Before Dian Fossey became known for protecting mountain gorillas, she was an occupational therapist — helping people reconnect with their bodies. Long before the jungles of Rwanda, she understood something timeless: healing begins with presence.
When she entered the wild, she didn’t demand trust — she earned it through empathy, breath, and quiet observation. The same principles guide holistic OT work today.
In my own practice, I see that same truth every day — through myofascial release, craniosacral therapy, and breathwork. The nervous system, like any living being, softens in the presence of safety and compassion.
Healing and protecting the wild both ask for courage — to listen deeply, to honor what’s sacred, and to stand between chaos and calm.
Dian did that for the gorillas.
I strive to do that for the human spirit.
Dian Fossey was found face-down on the wooden floor of her cabin in the Rwandan highlands, December 1985 — skull split open by a machete, lantern still burning beside her journals.
Dian Fossey did not die in the wild.
She was killed for protecting it.
To villagers, she was Nyirmachabelli — “the woman who lives alone with the gorillas.”
To scientists, she was a stubborn genius.
To poachers, she was a threat — a shadow in the mist who tore down snares with her bare hands and stared toward rifle barrels without blinking.
But before she became legend, she was simply a girl from San Francisco, born in 1932, learning to heal children as an occupational therapist.
No zoology degree. No clear destiny.
Then came Africa — 1963 — and everything changed.
The mountains called her, and she answered.
She mortgaged her home, left comfort behind, and built the Karisoke Research Center from mud floors, canvas tents, and sheer defiance.
Day after day she climbed into the mist-soaked forest, crawling on all fours, mimicking chest beats and soft grunts until the gorillas let her in.
And they did.
She saw their playfulness, their tenderness, their grief.
She held their gaze and understood — they were family.
And once she loved them, she could not unlove them.
So when the world hunted them, she hunted the hunters.
She burned poachers’ traps.
She exposed corruption that pretended to protect but profited from death.
“When you realize the value of all life,” she wrote,
“you dwell less on what is past and concentrate on the preservation of the future.”
But that future had enemies.
When her beloved gorilla Digit was butchered in 1977 — head severed, hands taken as trophies — something inside her hardened.
She buried him with trembling hands, then founded the Digit Fund to fight back.
The threats grew. The jungle whispered warnings.
Her diary hinted at what she never said aloud: They are coming for me.
And they did.
No one was ever convicted. Her killers still live somewhere behind that fog.
Yet today, more than a thousand mountain gorillas breathe because she stood between innocence and greed — between nature and a world determined to tear it apart.
Dian Fossey did not just study gorillas.
She shielded them.
She proved that loving the wild is not gentle — it is war.
And sometimes, it is martyrdom.
In the mist, she still walks — protector, witness, and the heartbeat of a forest that refuses to forget her.
