The Virgo New Moon: The Fungus In My Nails and Giving In to the Details

The Virgo New Moon

Early tomorrow morning, the moon wanes to darkness in Virgo. Here, summer blusters out in a rain storm and I am getting ready to return to the classroom.

Virgo asks us to get real. Are my toes aligned? Do my fingers add up? All the small details of life can feel difficult and disorderly unless we let them fall into place and align.

I haven’t written a cosmic blog post in almost a year! It’s the rain storm that stopped me from rushing home. I got a too-sweet milky tea and a lemon bar in the cafe down the street and I’m sitting in my Flower Essence studio waiting it out, after a day of in-service, meetings and various levels of fear, collaboration, anxiety, sharing and planning.

New Moon Intentions & Messages

Yes, I do have a Flower Essence studio now! Did I last November? I think I was just moving in. I now have a place to see people in person for a Flower Essence consultation, if they are in northern Vermont, and a place to go to write and sit and just be. I don’t come as often as I would like, but a good New Moon intention for me would be to come more often, and to write.

The lesson of this New Moon came to me as I was walking through the door of the building that my studio is in:

“Feel into the way things are, not the way you want them to be”.

Just as the pesky details of life can feel like too much to handle at times, sometimes these very same details can remind us of the contours of a reality that we may be struggling against or denying.

Listening to the Details

As my lack of blog updates suggests, becoming a high school teacher has been filled with many, many pesky details that I never quite feel able to control or manage. My lesson plans, the kids in my class, their needs, my needs. Then there was my wedding: the planning, the people, the flowers, the venues, the vendors, the invites. I never thought I’d do either thing, teach in high school or plan a wedding, but I guess this is where the details wanted me to be.

All last year I was struggling to catch up with myself. Then Summer came and I breathed out. Now, before I begin again, I need to consider what I learned from last year. I am going to ask my students the same thing. We could all journal on it for the New Moon. What did we learn from where we have been?

Fingernail Fungus

My nails clue me in. For about a year I have had what I thought were nail problems on my hands due to gardening. My nails were always dirty and a bit smelly and strange. I tried cleaning them. I got nifty manicures that my teenage students gave me compliments on. This may not have been a good thing, since the last time I went, just to remove a gel manicure I didn’t want anymore, the manicurist, a beautiful woman from Kazakhstan, told me that I have nail fungus, in all my nails! And apparently you can catch it from nail salons. She’d never seen it so bad. How embarrassing. I was shocked and dismayed, but also relieved to finally have a diagnosis. I must have been exposed to it somehow, I think probably in the shared gloves I wore when I worked on the farm a few years ago.

Wedding Bands, a little bird and Fingernail Fungus!

My manicurist was not optimistic. The treatment will be long she said. It might never go away. I’ve been soaking with Epsom salts and apple cider vinegar, applying tea tree and oregano essential oils, diluted in oil of course, and putting my finger tips in lemons, following the advice she gave me, and waiting to see what happens.

I also got curious.

I’ve always been rather vain about my hands, fingers and nails. They taper elegantly and my nails were always short but strong. I liked them. I remember feeling so dismayed when they started to look strange. But I ignored it. Maybe it was just age? I should have paid attention to the details.

Since my diagnosis, I have been looking for the meaning of this particular ailment. Apparently it is pretty common. I like to use Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life book for the metaphysical meaning of symptoms.

For her, what do the fingers symbolize? The details of life. The hands, grasping, holding things. Fungus represents stagnating beliefs and a refusal to release the past, letting the past rule today. The nails represent protection. Putting all of this together, my ugly nails teach me a lesson. With all the changes in my life, I have struggled to release what I no longer need (funnily enough, I will have a yard sale this weekend, the third one this summer, so I can still keep practicing that one). In the past, fear ruled my life, but it no longer needs to. I can work with some new beliefs, which I know from experience will help my fingernails heal when used in conjunction with the physical treatments I am working with.

I am safe. I can protect myself. I am protected.

I take care of the details of my life without worrying and comparing, wondering and stressing. The devil is only in the details if I allow him to sit there and grin at me.

I see that wanting things to be different than they are causes me more worry and stress. Instead, I can step into my current reality like a new dress. The Moon helps.

The Desire for Perfection

When I think of Virgo, I also think of the desire for perfection. Virgo is an Earth sign, and she wants things completed and whole. I have always struggled with wanting things to be perfect. I never feel I can attain perfection, in anything I do. I remember, as a child in school in Switzerland, a country of perfection if ever there was one, when a teacher asked me to draw the other side of a photographed face. My side came nowhere near reflecting the original. I also feel that I can never reproduce something I have done in exactly the same way. I am messy and my life never looks like perfection, even on the channels that are supposed to manufacture it. What if my desire for perfection was already satisfied? The Virgin is whole and perfect because she is the way she is. She doesn’t have to do anything.

Enjoy this precise Virgo energy, your harvests and the beginning of fall!

Are you interested in tuning into the natural cycles and the plant spirits to tend to your life’s details? You can book an exploratory call with me or schedule a flower essence consultation by booking on my website or reaching out to me.

I’ll write again soon!

Have a beautiful New Moon!

Amy

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

Healing into Taurus with Uranus: Wholeness, My Lyme, and a Desire to Define

Paul Manship: The Flight of Europa

It is still Taurus season and I'm still in Geneva, weathering the New Moon and Uranus entering the bull's sign rather well. It feels epic, actually. The change and me, all of it in relation to the Earth. I'm riding a bull into the horizon as the sun sets. I'm excited about it. It feels lush and perhaps chaotic, yes, but also genius and creative, productive and juicy, like a big, messy peach. I'm excited to see where it takes me.

We Are All Healers

My friend Mayumi just shared on her blog what she feels about healing and it created quite a response in me (since then she has erased this post but I still highly recommend you read her take on what it is like to be human - basically she said that none of us really need healing), so I thought I would share my thoughts about it too, especially since I call myself a plant spirit healer and I talk about healing journeys. It's true it's a trendy word, but I can't think of a better way to describe my life, a healing journey. I agree that healing is not something that can come from outside of me, but I have had a lot of help along the way. I like to use the word. I think we are all healers healing each other, but I agree that the impetus must come from our own souls wanting to stretch and grow again into the wholeness from which we came.

On Wholeness

On wholeness: After reading Mayumi, I went on a little research adventure to find out about the word ‘to heal'. It comes from the Proto-Germanic word hailjan, a word meaning ‘to make whole', which later was applied to Jesus' holy touch. In Old English he was haeland, a healer, one who makes whole. In French we don't have that word; we have guérir and soigner, which come from, respectively, words that meant “to protect" and “to worry about". But that's what we want to do when we love someone, and love makes whole, as Jesus taught.

Energy Healing

On the Energy Healing I am learning: it is very clear, when we do it, and as we learn to do it, that the person's soul is in charge of the healing that is happening. The healer is a conduit for Source which guides the soul in its healing. The only healing that happens is healing that the soul wants. But still, we need that impetus; our souls do sometimes need that guidance and help, which makes me think that healing is ultimately about connection, and love, even in its harshest and most invasive modern forms. Anytime I practice on someone, I also feel healed, so the healing is mutual.

Paul Manship: Dancer and Gazelles

I also wanted to write about my healing episode that happened just when Uranus entered Aries 7 years ago. I've been thinking about that period because according to an astrologer I like to read, it is the key to understanding the Uranian era that is ending and the one that is coming in. In early Spring, 2011, I got a swollen knee that turned out to be a rather extreme symptom of Lyme's Disease. I don't really remember what happened during the three months that I was healing from Lyme (I couldn't really walk and I slept a lot), but I did heal from it, and I'm wondering why. A lot of people don't. What I do remember is being completely preoccupied with listening to my body, with the healing process. I spoke to and meditated with my knee and my entire body. I took antibiotics which made me want to die. I stopped eating wheat and dairy. I ate six cloves of garlic a day and a lot of echinacea tincture. It was before I had met the flowers, so I wasn't working with them yet, but I wanted to try everything I could. I saw a rheumatologist and got to look at the liquid that he took out of my knee with a huge needle. I also had a lot of help from body workers, several kinds. I got lots of lymphatic massage and regular Grinberg Method sessions. I had a session with Avi Grinberg himself (who is also all about teaching others to heal themselves) who was so completely inappropriate with me, as a “healer" - he rather rudely told me I wanted to die - that I got incredibly angry, and I think maybe that cured me. Incidentally, he was right, I did want to die, profoundly, and it wasn't just the antibiotics, it was a general metaphysical approach to life and it wasn't working.

Learning from Lyme

I learned a lot from Lyme, which got me thinking that illness is a gift that comes to teach us something, whether or not it takes us away. And I did survive, through to this new Uranian cycle. I remember at the time feeling also that my Lyme, which I got from a field in Vermont where the deer roam (I remember the day it probably happened, the desire to walk barefoot out into the field, towards the forest, prime tick territory, in shorts!) was actually a gift from the deer, and they have always been one of my protective spirit animals.

Remembering Our Connection to Everything

The plants have taught me that healing happens only as I can open up to it in my own body with my mind. The plants help me open to it, and since I can speak to the plants, I can help the plants help other people open to it. That's why I call myself a plant spirit healer. But you can become one too, you just need to learn to listen. Maybe it was my Lyme that taught me how to listen. I suppose healing for me is basically about remembering our connection to everything, our wholeness, mending the separation we feel before we go to the place where there is no separation, where we are all going anyways, when the soul is ready to go. In the meantime, I think the soul enjoys learning, in the myriad ways that this manifests, through pain, joy, suffering, health, illness, fatigue, disease and ultimately death. At least that is how I think of it, my healing journey.

Gustave Moreau: Europa and the Bull

I made two new essences on Beltane: Speedwell and... Self-Heal! How appropriate. Descriptions will be up on my Flower Essences page soon.

May all your journeys be sweet and the darkness as complete as you need it to be to integrate your healing!

(Originally posted May 16th, 2018)