An Angel In The Sunshine

I have always been drawn to flowers- their beauty & colours, & their scents.

I loved making sand gardens & saucers when I stayed at my Nan's in Wairoa in the school holidays as a child & I won prizes at the local Church flower competitions. I have never forgotten the scent of Nan's stock & the beauty of her naked ladies.

Some of my family were gardeners. others not so much, but no-one amongst them ever used herbs & plants to nourish or heal. There was not a skerrick of wisdom or knowledge passed on in these matters. My step-mother's perennial remedy for all ills was to offer two aspirin & walk away. They made me gag & I hated them with a passion.

I always knew that there had to be a better way to heal & was repeatedly drawn to herbs & healing plants, but without real practical knowledge, ended up feeling let down & disappointed by my efforts to engage with plants in order to bring about relief or any kind of healing. Over & over again I tried & then I gave up. 

Until....I became very ill when I turned 50 & menopause took me out to the edge. A long dark & volatile time ensued & homeopathy just never came through for me.

For almost three decades I had struggled with recurring issues with teeth- it was all so extraordinary & very painful until 2 root canals eventually failed & I was in grave trouble.

In the middle of all this I sent for Susun Weed's "The Menopausal Years" & I found common sense, reassurance & some answers. I began to walk back towards herbs on my journey home.

I also began to connect with the landscape.

When a friend shared an interview with the Irish poet John O'Donohue & we listened to it last summer, all the way out to Waipatiki beach- a new kind of remarkable seed was sown & we found ourselves coming home.

When John spoke these words: 

“Well I think it makes a huge difference, when you wake in the morning and come out of your house, whether you believe you are walking in to a dead geographical location, which is used to get to a destination,

or whether you are emerging out in to a landscape that is just as much, if not more, alive as you, but in a totally different form, if you go towards it with an open heart and a real, watchful reverence, that you will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you”.

Something came alive in our souls in that moment & we cried tears of joy & relief.

You can find the interview just here.

For years I have also been drawn to beautiful pictures like the one below by Margaret Tarrant- Red clover & Cat's ear. There is something about them that makes me feel secure & uplifted. A gentle wave of nostalgic memory washes through my soul whenever I see her work, as if I have been in the midst of these scenes and lived the peace and beauty I find there.

Margaret Tarrant, an illustrator and artist, lived in the time of the Golden Era of art in Peaslake, Surrey, around the same period that the pioneer English herbalist Juliette de Bairacli Levy was entering the previously uncharted world of veterinary herbal medicine.

 I adore Juliette's gloriously simple approach to healing.
Here is what she says about having a garden:

"The main purpose of having a garden is to have the garden as a teacher and friend. If you have a problem then the garden will give you the plants you need. You are always learning from you garden. I've had ten gardens and I miss them all. When I start my garden I always start with Rosemary and Southernwood. They are my two favourite plants. My children say I cure everything with Rosemary. It's true. Even if they had very serious injuries, merely bathing in Rosemary bath has cured them. Rosemary is very antiseptic. It is beloved by the bees and the butterflies. Such a lovely name too Rosemarinus- dew of the sea."

My garden is indeed my teacher and my friend.

In the words of the lovely herbalist Brigitt Anna McNeill:

"I feel that to grow into wellness a person needs to come home.

Come home to the two places that are the only homes they have.

These two homes can be the most loyal and loving nooks to reside in and they go by the name of "Nature"- the nature that is outside of themselves and with in themselves.

If you do not make friends and learn to love them then surely you are lost.

If you do not open your heart to those two places then how can you learn to truly heal when the two homes that you inhabit are filled with hate, disconnection, loneliness and shame.

If you chose anything on your healing journey, choose homecoming.

To come back to your body with a great love for all that you are, walking through the junkyard of loathing, through the tattered front door and into the very centre of you, knowing you will learn to love and repair every part of your beautiful home.

Love the place that you were born on to, this beautiful natural earth, for it is such a gift of wellness that offers you so much in the way of medicine and life, even when you have pretended not to see it.

Don't spend your life lost and afraid to come home.For this will only lead you to searching within another's soul for something you are missing, and you will never find it in the pockets of another.

Your home is calling you back, waiting to awaken you to your precious life.

Come home."

And so it was last summer, that we found a meadow of yarrow, usnea in the forest, kawakawa berries along the road side & we both came home to the land that we have come to love.

Since then, we have had one wondrous encounter after another, despite the life challenges that we have faced, as we simply- go...go out in to the landscape. Turning up is all that it asked of us. And when we arrive with hearts open and the eyes of a child and we slow down and breathe, we find ourselves ever welcome, blessed and amazed.

I am so grateful to have encountered the Kiwi herbalist Sapphire Kate- she has most especially helped me find my feet and my rhythm. In great need of healing as I navigated the failure of the two root canal filled teeth (the place where much of my childhood trauma sat), it was Sapphire Kate's mention of the medicine of the riparian Alder that sent me on a quest to find these allies. 

When, at last, I stumbled upon a row of Black Elders along the Karamu stream I immediately recognised them and I will never forget the friendly welcome that they gave me. Their warmth and reassurance was most unexpected and as I spent time with these trees they also offered me a gift of profound hope. I have learnt to make their freely proffered gifts in to medicine and since then we have become the best of friends.

Primarily Black Alder has been "River" medicine to us- medicine that is helping us clean up and restore the river of our ancestral stream.

For a good while now I've understood family legacy as a river. A good family (ancestry) brings life and flow and all the gifts of water, a dysfunctional one poisons and drowns it's own. All the confluence of every tributary leads in to that river- each of our ancestors either adds to the life, or pours in to the waterways rubbish, poison and filth.

The life is coming back to our river now and the birds of hope are at last returning home- where they belong.

 And all at once I comprehend Brigitt Anna McNeill's words when she says
"Harvesting herbs for food and medicine, meeting and seeing the plants is a conversation that holds no words, for it is a conversation older than words, it is one of intimate connection between myself, my body, my senses and the plants themselves."

And so here I am as An angel in the sunshine- right where I was always meant to be.

The late poet Mary Oliver asks in her poem, The Summer Day- "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

What I plan to do- is to live my own sacred purpose- for I have truly found my authentic voice and self. And now I know that I am not alone. I have never been alone. I simply carried (was burdened with) the wounds, traumas and choices of others, all these years.

But, no longer.

My life is found- in having a garden as my teacher and friend, in going out into the landscape and to the wild places through all the seasons, in gathering herbs and plants for nourishment and healing, in seeing with the eyes of a child and knowing that "sacredness is growing right under my feet in the rich earth, it is buzzing all around me and it is living within me". 

I am very grateful to Brigitt for her marvellous reflections and insights- her truth that is also mine.

"Sacredness is not found in temples, heaven or churches.

You need no pilgrimage to where gods and goddesses roamed to feel connection to sacred life source. sacredness is growing right under my feet in the rich earth, it is buzzing all around you and it is living within you. Instead of waiting to met heaven, work at how to recognise the wonderment in the wild life that is all around, held within the seed, the bee, the earth, each plant stem and each breath you take. It is held in nature, your inner and outer.

If you can start to relearn and re-see that precious sacredness is each of your cells, held within each plant and star, each being on earth and each nature's cycles then life becomes magnificent and blessed; a real gift indeed."