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

No Such Thing As Disconnection: The Gemini New Moon and a Message from Valerian

Wild Valierian - From Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis

A New Moon Harvest
This long weekend, I took a little more time to get my New Moon download than usual. Now it is already Wednesday and the moon is a swelling crescent in the sky. I harvested Valerian on Friday, when the New Moon was exact, and my house is filled with the smell of drying leaves. The root, white and tangled, smelled pungent and ripe like Spring. Some people hate how it smells. I loved it, and loved harvesting it. Let us know over at Flack Family Farm if you would like some! You can also just email me. Valerian is wonderful for sleep and relaxation, perfect for these anxious times. In my last post, I talked about how she helps us see the connections between the dark and the light. This week she teaches us how to heal our disconnection from the Earth.

A particularly beautiful Valerian root - you can order some from me or Flack Family Farm

Venus Retrograde in Gemini
Since Venus retrograded in Gemini, I have been social distancing from social media, contemplating how I want it to serve me instead of feeling like a slave to it, and I feel like as a result it is taking me a little more time to know how to share what I want to share. Venus is in her dark phase, no longer in the night sky, completing her 8-year-long flower dance, and like her, I wanted to delve into the darkness of my own sky, to see what there is behind the veil, and disappear for a while.

A Planetary Download
To get my cosmic insight, I took a bath just as the New Moon was exact. I actually took two baths for this one (baths are my grounding portals of planetary intuition - make an appointment with me to talk about how you can tune in!), one the day before, with salts, and one with my Valerian harvest. What came up for me was the theme of disconnection. Choosing to disconnect from the internet may be a way of coming back to ourselves, to draw ourselves within, and this has been particularly necessary at this time of social distancing. Meanwhile, disconnection is another type of pandemic, one perhaps more damaging to our world than the virus itself. Disconnection could be at the root of its spread. How did we forget, in our race to be more connected, the life-giving connections that sustain us, to the water and land, to the plants and the animals around us? When did we forget the care that is necessary to maintain them?

Disconnection
I believe that disconnection is fundamentally an ecological problem. That is to say, because we are disconnected from the Earth - as humans we experienced at some point in our long history the Earth as hostile to us and survival as a challenge - all other disconnection followed. The patriarchy arose, and we became disconnected from the Earth, from the feminine, outside of us and inside of us as well. We reject parts of ourselves, and disconnect from them. We disconnect from feelings, feel overwhelmed by them, and are no longer able to process them in the body. We disconnect from the body. We don’t want to feel the suffering of the past, in our own lives and in the lives of others. We experience “species loneliness”, which Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. As a society of the industrialized variety, we no longer feel connected to beings outside of our own species. I remember the feeling when I first starting working more intimately with plants that I was never alone. My loneliness disappeared. I was surrounded by an abundance of green friends.

Gemini Energy
Gemini is an energy I am familiar with because my natal moon is in Gemini. I want to learn a lot, I want to do everything. I don’t want to focus. You could call it the attention deficit disorder sign, and though I’ve never been diagnosed with that “disorder”, I do relate to how the brain functions with a multitude of sensory inputs. This Gemini energy can make me feel disconnected, with too many choices, and too many things I want to do. I am curious and a fast learner, but I can get overwhelmed by all there is I want to know. This New Moon was illuminating this energy for me. Mercury is also in Gemini, where it was conjunct Venus last week. My mind rattles with questions. What do I want to do? How will I choose? Why am I doing what I am doing? Disconnection is also a mental energy. We disconnect when we activate our rational faculties, when we analyze, when we ponder. And I wonder, do we have to? Is there another way of thinking that doesn’t disconnect but connects?

A Pandemic
Within the context of our current pandemic, many of us have disconnected from our routines, our daily lives of hustle and bustle. I was already pretty disconnected from this mode of living, and I don’t think I could go back to it, but not everyone can choose to do anything else, and this is part of the problem. Our current workaholic world of disconnection is the norm, a fait accompli, without which the economy and the society it feeds would crumble, or so many believe. What are our options? Throw out your TV? Get off the grid? Go local, local, local, that is what the books I am reading say and have been saying for years (see Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy or David Fleming’s Surviving the Future), and I see the signposts in my immediate surroundings too, in a sign in my small town telling us to stay safe and buy local; in the the way people are leaving free stuff out everywhere instead of having yard sales; in those giving away masks and making sure their neighbors have enough to eat. We need to learn how to grow our own food and eat the food at our doorsteps. We need to help and support each other. These changes are now happening in real time, and that must be how we change the larger paradigm. These are my Gemini thoughts, like so many shivering, shaking leaves.

A bath with Valerian

A Bath With Valerian
In my second bath, with Valerian, I asked the spirit of the plant about disconnection. It showed me a bed. There is nothing you need to do to feel connection in this time of separation, it said, except for to allow yourself to pass through the veil, to sleep, to feel your connection to everything that is outside of yourself, to feel connected to the non-human realms. Perhaps this is the ideal time to do so, to acknowledge all that surrounds us, in the dream time and in the forest, in the park and down the street, in the square of grass (for more on this listen to this recent David Abrams essay on the Emergence podcast).

Heart Thinking
Later I felt into the fact that often my feelings of frustration, of longing, of separation, come from my feeling of disconnection. In other words, I wouldn’t feel frustrated if I felt connected and remembered that I am always connected. What kind of thinking allows me to remember this? I feel this when my thinking is not just mental but heart-centered. Some say the heart thinks too, some argue only the brain thinks, but whatever science decides, I know that my understanding grows along with my capacity to use both in my daily life. My feeling of connection is only as expansive as the size of my own heart.

An Expansive Heart
Lately my heart has been expanding. Venus’ dance has brought to me a unique experience of love and balance, and that is what I am seeding with this New Moon, balance between the heart and the brain, the masculine and the feminine. I am reminded of how potently the world can reflect our own cycles of healing and growth, and that we are not separate from the Earth. She is always reminding us.

As long as we see the earth as something other than ourselves, we forget that Gaia herself is conscious and intelligent, carrying the instructions we need for restoration and healing, for creating a human presence here on earth in service to all life. - Chameli Ardagh

How do you get connected when you feel disconnection? Write to me, I’d love to know! I’m observing, loving and releasing doubts about my purpose and self-worth and moving beyond the idea of disconnection in my head and my heart, thanks to the flowers.

If you’d like to discover how flower essences might help you do the same, make an appointment with me here. With a flower essence consultation, you will receive your own personal essence, but you can also browse my flower essences and their beautiful messages here.

During this cycle the plants helped me understand that as we live sometimes in duality, we may find ways of embracing our polarities and those around us or in others. For another good read on the separation that currently surrounds us, and how to transmute it, see Charles Eisenstein’s latest article, “The Conspiracy Myth”.

I had lots of reading and listening suggestions for you this week! Maybe that is also because I am spending less time thinking of what to share on social media. The internet is a magical place when it comes to in-depth and inspiring content. I hope you enjoy them.

Would you like to discover how the flowers might help you on your own creative projects? Make a free appointment with me here to talk to you about it creative coaching with me and the flowers. I only have a few more weeks of an open calendar before I begin some temporary summer work, so book an appointment with me now. Here’s a testimonial from a satisfied writer I am coaching:

Imagine if you had your own personal guide to help nurture your creativity, build your resilience, pursue your passions, and address the challenges standing between you and your goals? As a creative coach, Amy is unlike anyone you've ever met. She combines ancient wisdom with cutting-edge practices. She distills her deep connection with nature into a tonic for the human soul. She has an extraordinary intuition for what we need to hear, how we should learn, who we can call on, and where we can go. 

Guided meditations with Amy have breathed new life into my creative process, and she has helped me to remove obstacles in my daily life that were impeding my progress. Her gentle suggestions, practical guidance, and astonishing insights have changed not just my creative output, but the way I approach my life. Amy's respect for her clients' dignity, privacy, and trust is a reflection of her grace, humility, and values. 

If you find yourself at a crossroads, at a stop sign, in a dark tunnel, or on a long and winding road, Amy will light your path -- and help you go farther than you could imagine going alone. 

- Amanda in Geneva, Switzerland

That’s all for now I think. I can’t wait to see what this cycle will bring for you and for me. With green love,

Amy

Finding Inside Outside: Softening into the Magic of the Cold Moon in Gemini

The snow that has been here all month melted in a single day of rain and higher temperatures. When I awoke yesterday I was sad to see that the sparkling landscape had vanished overnight, but I loved seeing the patterns the melted snow revealed, brown and green grass, a carpet of flattened, dried leaves and moss peaking out amidst the stones, still frozen. I feel excited for this Full Moon in Gemini, as though it holds some secret. After an afternoon nap, curled up like a mouse, I went out to see the Moon rise, but the wind told me to go back inside. Now the ground is hard and white again, the wind still vocal, and I’m sitting by the wood stove waiting for that exact moment of fullness.

Full Moons are points of culmination and as I sit here I’m looking back at what this last cycle brought me. Where did all my arrows of desire land? I took action and though I don’t yet have the desired outcomes, I feel full and satisfied with what is. I had a bath and I’m warm inside. The energy of this moon feels all pointed inside, towards my core, which is warm like the fire I am tending.

Finding inside outside. One of the hermetic axioms all good witches know about, as within, so without, can sometimes be harder to experience than one would like. It’s an essential realization though for magical experience and for me it is also essential to feeling connected to the land we live on. Amongst other things, it is the realization that my body is the Earth and the Earth is my body. Without this realization we can’t do magic, because magic relies on the realization that my outer reality is a reflection of my inner state, and we also can’t heal humanity’s detrimental wound of separation with the land and its inhabitants.

I live in a rural place and roadkill is common. I always feel so much pain for the small animals caught by our large and lumbering machines as they try to make their way through the world that has become so unsafe for them. I play the scene of their accident in my mind when I pass their remains on the road, sometimes several times a day if I’m going back and forth on the same roadway, which I usually am. I don’t know if it is the land that holds the memory of it or if I imagine it, but either way it is painful. I wish the world were not so dangerous to the animals that we share it with. Which brings me to the mouse that lives in my house. He likes chocolate and the roasted pumpkin seeds I leave for it in the corner by the stove. I imagine its little mouth eating through the hull and finding the inside, roasted and sweet. Its a clean little mouse so I don’t mind it. I’m sure there are others where he comes from, maybe he is a she or many, but I like sharing with him the abundance here, regifting. For what are our gifts if we aren’t sharing? That’s the message of this season. And maybe I’m healing some of that useless death by feeding a little life that isn’t really doing anyone any harm, not in this old house.

I’m also thinking about gifts because I am offering a poem a day for advent on my Patreon page. I hope these little offerings of word patterns find their way to the people that need them. You can sign up to support me on there for as low as $3 a month and receive all of my daily poetic offerings this month. At advent, each day feels like a gift, and it is. Gemini for me brings variety, but not constancy, which can be challenging. My moon is in Gemini, and I’ve always felt this as detrimental to my capacity to be creative in a focused way, but I think it also brings to my writing, and to my life, the joy of variety. I love learning and exploring, discovering the world. My curiosity makes me a good teacher and my varied emotional life makes me empathetic, though I can sometimes feel spread too thin. Do you have Gemini in your chart? I don’t think Gemini energy is superficial, it is abundant, and this moon shines light on all our gifts as well, teaching us generosity and gratitude. Focusing on these aspects of Gemini can be one way to soften into this Full Moon. Another way is to literally soften on a material level by taking a bath.

A Full Moon Ritual Bath

Water is the moon’s element, so nothing feels more relaxing to me on a Full Moon than taking a full, warm bath, and contemplating where I have come from, particularly in the two weeks since the last New Moon. What were my intentions then and how have they come to fruition? What am I grateful for?

For me a bath is an important moment of self care and showing love to my body, so it is ritualistic in its own right. I like using an herb that has special significance to me and an oil or oils that relate to the energies I am working with. For example this Full Moon I used dried Basil flowers - Basil is sacred to Venus - and Rose Geranium essential oil - ten drops in two tablespoons of coconut oil (you can also use olive oil). Both of these help me feel loved and cherished. I wanted to soften the energies of Saturn, which is currently conjunct Venus, and generally feel like a goddess. You can also use epsom salts and/or baking soda for added purifying benefits. My favorite is a mixture of both.

Take your time and really soak 15-20 minutes in the bath. I take this time to intuitively feel into what it is I would like to release with the next cycle, setting an intention of letting something or some things go. When I let the water out (if you used herbs in the bath, don’t forget a drain catcher!) I like to imagine that everything I no longer need is also running down the drain (I think I got that tip from Rob Brezny!). This visualization is extremely potent at a Full Moon when we are getting ready for the waning time, for the release of what has grown.

Releasing all that is not essential

This Full Moon I set the intention of releasing everything that is not truly me, so that I can become more like my wild twin. This may seem like a tall order, but it is the darkest Full Moon night and the light of the Sun is shining on all of my shadows. That is what the Full Moon does, it shoes us what we need to see but that perhaps we would rather avoid. So it is a good time to see ourselves and identify those aspects that we no longer identify with. What parts of me need to go? I don’t really need to make an inventory though. I just need to know that I am moving closer to myself every day, with every breath, and that I can trust this process. What I no longer need will fall away from me.

Here is a poem I wrote today on approaching what is inside, on finding it outside, the heart of the fire I have been meditating with most mornings:

The heart of the fire
the sunset
I’d wear that color
like a cloak to go
and walk the forests in
to keep me from harm
an orange firelight halo
since dressed as a deer
I’d be mistaken
for the fawn colored
leap into shadow
moonrise clear
I’ll keep this fire
burning in my chest
on my shoulders
until we walk back
into harmony
with the world
at one with the darkness
and give birth to light.

Here is to all the small animals, and the one in you too, your inner fire, your outside in. And now I need to put more logs on the fire. Write soon.

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.