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You made this place come alive before my inner eye and I could easily imagine myself there as well, not only because I would've had many reasons as well to carve the lessons a foul childhood and youth taught into its walls.

I think I know why your safe haven appeared to be just that. A tree, especially an oak tree, happens to grow very high and massive and it's this display of nature's strength that alone could cause this feeling. When in those knowing branches there is an actual refuge one could go to, isolated from the rest of the world, you can forget for a short time where you have to return to soon.

It was moving how you led you everyone reading this through your last time of being there. It was an act of remembering and also mourning that it is over now, but also one of treasuring a place that made reality more bearable.

The message you carved is maybe very simple, but also very true and also optimistic and uplifting, since it's providing not only other children a physical place to find refuge but also because it shows that refuge mustn't be a physical place. It's our mind that can become our refuge as well and the simple, yet powerful childlike-messages and thoughts that shine
in its darkness and make us hang on to life when the past comes to haunt us.


I did however find some things you might consider. Most of it are tenses switched in the middle of sentences, then some misspelling and forgotten words.

1) ... and a many lifetimes of terrible nights. => as many

2) ... the markings of many of kids... => marked "of" repititive

3) ... in this most amazing of place. => places

4) Unfortunately, there will and has never be a shortage of kids like me. =>
Frankly this sentence read a bit odd. Did you mean: Unfortunately, there will never be
and has never been a shortage of kids like me.

5) Everything looked as it has for decades. => had (attention to tense!)

6) The one had given to me years earlier... => he had given to me

7) ... that leads to my childhood refuge. => led

8) In no, time what to write flowed from my heart, my hands follow suit. => cut comma between "no" and "time"; followed

9) ... so that the next kid finds his way inside. => found

10) ... that made up the floor of the tree house. => make

11) ... others kids have found that place => cut "s"

12) ... a young man or woman that finds his... => find their hope (you're referring to men and women here )

Thank you for sharing this very special place and its story with us all!

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .