Trauma Rising: Blooming Into Change with Grace

The Full Moon in Sagittarius and Eclipse
Friday’s Full Moon was a lunar eclipse, the first of three this season. A lunar eclipse happens when the Moon moves into the Earth’s shadow, and I can’t think of a better way to describe what we have been collectively experiencing since the New Moon two weeks ago. We are all witnessing our emotional selves (the Moon) in the Earth’s shadow. Eclipses generally demand less activity, and I was laying low, resting and cleaning. The last two weeks have brought up a lot of trauma, both collectively and personally, for many if not all of us, and especially the black and brown people on Earth at this time, and I have wanted to step back from sharing. I have been keeping my distance from social media since Venus retrograded in Gemini, and I was pleased at how timely this was. As a person with white skin, it is not the time for me to seek to shine. I am continuing to be mindful of what I put out and take in. This Full Moon was also square Mars, reminding us of our personal battles, and almost conjunct Venus, who would like to soften all this strife, but also must allow it to unfold.

The Sun in Gemini and Black Lives Matter
As I write this, the Sun is still in Gemini, and we can feel all that zapping energy around the events in the United States, as the racist paradigm this country was created within can be more clearly seen in order to be dismantled. My mind has been filled with portraits of George Floyd and images of city streets filled with people demanding change. I am sickened and saddened by how much suffering the institutions in our country perpetuate and I am overjoyed that more black voices are being heard in the media. I strongly believe that we can use the division and pain we are experiencing to move into the change we once thought of as impossible. The Minneapolis police force will no longer be funded, the people in the streets are not just going to go home. Healing comes, as it must, however slowly, rising like a wave, opening like a bloom. I pray for reparations for disenfranchised people and social and racial justice. The plants who taught me how to listen teach me diversity too, equanimity, and how to bloom into change.

Trauma Blooming in the Body
Just like all the plants that are coming abundantly into their green, there is much work to do on a personal and a collective level. Just like the plants show us how to heal the Earth, by allowing what is barren to support life again and clearing the soil of toxins, we can reinvigorate our communities with care and communication. We can pay attention to the people around us and build resilience in ourselves and others this way. We can give of ourselves, our time and energy, to help foster healing. We can take time for ourselves to re-source and re-generate. Both are necessary, and we need to know how to feel into which one we need to do at any given time. Maybe it is time to go out into the street and support the change-makers. Maybe it is time to be a change-maker. Or maybe it is time to stay home and tend to your garden or your house plants or take a bath. Only you can know. But when we are allowing trauma to rise in the body, it is essential to take the time to ground and be with ourselves as well as others. For help in this process, and in the process of healing our collective history around the damage caused by white supremacy, both past and present, I am reading and doing the exercises in the book My Grandmother’s Hands, by Resmaa Menakem. I am thankful to my teacher Asia Suler for putting me onto this vital work and I highly recommend the journey to anyone with a human body.

An Iris Flower Essence with Mary
During the eclipse, I made a new Iris Flower Essence, with Mary. I’ve recently started praying the rosary, reuniting with my understanding of the deep grace and love that Mother Mary offers, and she just happens to be in the garden of the new love in my life, a white and light blue statue, opening her robe to the beautiful blooming of the Earth. Beside her grows some Irises, gentle purple, blue and white, and they called to my love that day and I agreed, yes, today is a good day to make an Iris Flower Essence with Mary. Last summer I made a purple Iris essence which carries a powerful message of healing and embracing our own darkness in order to share our channeled messages. I think this Iris essence will also be in my line of shadow essences, but with the message of concors discordia, a concordant discord or discordant concord, a concept I have worked on a lot in my work on medieval literature. This concept sees the unity of nature as intrinsically diverse, and suggests that we can seek to embrace this complexity in the world around us and in ourselves. This essence carries the message of Divine Unity and the deep truth of the Trinity, which predates Christian teachings. The Iris embodies a three-petaled star, the one made of many, the three stages of life, the maiden, mother, crone; the unity of the body, mind and spirit. Three is also the magical number of fairy tales, the time it takes to learn a lesson and the number that allows a gift to cycle. This essence teaches us that diversity is a constituent of wholeness, that chaos can be harmonious, and that this is the way of the world. If you feel this message speaks to you now or that you need to ground it in your body, you can purchase it here. I’d like to offer it for free to anyone directly affected by systemic injustice, whether black or brown or struggling with the current events, or protesting and in need of extra support. Just send me a message: amy@enosburghessences.com
I’d love to hear your story too and find out how the plants have helped support you in any way.

Dried Herbs for Sale
I’ve also been harvesting and drying herbs at Flack Family Farm - Valerian for bath salts, Lemon balm and Spearmint for an herbal tea blend - Cool and Calm. You can purchase these here! I don’t know for how long. I’ve felt ambivalent about offering herbal products other than essences, since I don’t really feel this is what the plants are asking of me, but I know that many people need a good supply of organic herbs at this time and an herbal tea might be the gateway to more plant discoveries for you… I’ll be putting more up as they come. I am connected to the plants while I harvest and their message is not only physical, it is also spiritual. Dried herbs and teas are a remedy for the body and the soul.

Talking about Plant Connection
If you want to make an appointment with me to talk about working more intimately with the plants, now is the time! I’ll be busy through the end of June and July so make a free appointment with me here now. I’d love to talk to you about how fostering plant connection can inspire your creative life and help you discover your life purpose. I’ll be sharing my story in an interview on a podcast this week and offering a new free gift soon - a 3 Step Guide to Plant Communication - so look for that too! I’ll also be sharing more of my story with people who subscribe to my newsletter if you are curious about how I began talking to plants and the transformation this brought to my life.

Dear plant whisperers, I think that is all for now! Remember to love and listen to each other, to watch where you walk and to take care of your heart which is the Earth.

Love,

Amy

Flowers Are How a Plant Sees: A New Moon in Gemini and a Guided Meditation for the Seeds of Your Intentions

We have two eyes in our heads, twins on our faces.

Creeping Charlie: Glechoma

To step outside in a world full of blossom
flowers are how a plant sees
to step inside and under the trees
in the buzz that is bees
the breeze is large and forgiving
a gentle landing a posing down
flowers are how a plant sees

I welcomed a new moon this morning, took a walk in the sun along the river here and I’m now sitting by the fire as it has turned cold and wet, in typical Vermont fashion. I don’t mind. I don’t worry about the strangeness of the weather here. I feel safe and protected amidst the green. I don’t think I’m ignoring the problems, just coming back to center, and being as I need to be, growing connections that are meaningful to me, and embodying the change I want to see.

I didn’t write a post for the Full Moon in Scorpio two weeks ago, but I feel like I did a good job releasing all that it wanted me to release: I moved, cleaned out the contact list on my phone, and did everything in between, along with a lot of crying. Here I am now feeling taller and stronger and where I am supposed to be. I’m ending stories I’ve dreamed about ending. I’m making room for the new, and my dreams have been clearing me out too: they have been crowded with lots of stuff to sort and lose and let go of.

The theme for the last month has been clarity, and it rounded off nicely with a week of drinking Ground Ivy, Creeping Charlie, the Glechoma pictured about, a small plant that caught my eye in my parents’ yard, and realizing that flowers are how a plant sees. I suddenly realized how watched we are by them. I came back to Vermont to a sea of Dandelions that I harvested, ate, drank and tinctured. I’m taking Dandelion tincture for support and feeling very supported. I don’t think I would have been able to do all this letting go if I weren’t. I’m feeling very shiny and new, maybe thanks to ingesting the plants, and maybe because with all these new eyes seeing me, I can see clearer too. My plant diet with Chamomile started my journey, a golden road to a new kind of perception, where I know how I am seeing things and I can choose what I see. Then Ground Ivy took my hand and accompanied me, to tell me we have eyes all over our bodies to see things as they really are, unclouded by a false perception, where I am not loved, where I am not love. “We crawl everywhere to see and to show you how your very bones are loved, every ounce of you”. The Dandelion root in my coffee concurred. “You’ll become powder one day too, but we will still love you”. Roots have eyes too.

Eyes to see
all of me
down in the deep
container of soul
I hold elements
encased in darkness,
gold, uniting for change
seeing the truth
embracing the dark
shadow to light
holding both at once
in my sight

I have planted a lot with this new moon, and as I did, a meditation came to me.

I offer it to you:

Ground into the Earth and connect to the sky.
Feel held in their love and give them yours.
Imagine yourself as the new moon, dark and receptive.
Next become a field.
Open to receive seeds: these might be planted by hand (what do you want to grow?) or dropped by a bird or blown on a breeze.
See the seeds of your intentions being sown into you.
Allow them to settle.
Know that you don’t have to make them grow but only need to nurture them with the right amount of sun and rain and soil.
Know that every thought that comes to distract you from your desired outcome, the memory of past difficulty or pain or doubt, becomes excellent compost to feed the soil of your dreams.
See these thoughts becoming leaves that feed the soil.
Come back into your body and thank the moon for helping you grow.

If you are interested in reading more of my Earth channeled writing, I’d love it if you chose to support me on Patreon! By signing up for my email list on my homepage, you’ll know when I post on here and you’ll be kept abreast of my offerings (to be developed and continued soon…) and if you’d like to develop and strengthen your own Earth channel for creative inspiration, I’d love to help the plants help you! You can schedule an exploratory call here.

I wish you a wonderful growing season, powerful clearsightedness and lots of quiet time in natural places.