Seed & Spore Herbal Apothecary

12/17/2023

I wrote this a few weeks ago, and I held onto it until the perfect time. I finally know when to hold em, when to fold em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. I’ve been running my whole life, so fast that I outpaced my own consciousness, and I’ve been leaving a breadcrumb trail along the way. I finally picked up the trail yesterday and I can finally see, the only real you is me!

Timeless

As a child I remember standing in church singing hymns, body swaying, limbs swinging like branches in the wind, caught up in the rhythm as the sweet crescendo of voices rise and swell. I look up into the faces of the choir, almost all of them female.

It occurs to me years later that my reticence towards this concept of “God’s love” has always been because this is the type of love that costs. This paternalistic, heavy handed love from a god that sees in you first your flaws; and only after submitting, after kneeling in lamentation, prostrate on the floor, weeping for forgiveness, does he offer you acceptance. Only once you deny yourself, does he open his arms to sweep you into the fold. There is a price for his love.
This is the love I chased for many years. I waited patiently to be enough. I waited until the day that my sins would be absolved and I would feel that rapturous lifting of shame, to be worthy of being loved. I waited what felt like a lifetime, only to be told that we are, none of us, worthy. That he is perfect, our father, in every way, and we his wayward children, can never measure up. We, who sin as we breathe, whose very existence seems to be some kind of cosmic transgression for which we may never amend. And I think back to the faces of those women in the choir, pouring out their souls, faces turned rapturously to the sky. No one claps as they walk across the stage in neat and tidy lines. Their praise requires no thanks, no recognition; it is the least they can do. I watch as their faces, rosey and alive with the fervor of belief, are replaced by the stern wrinkled face of the pastor. As he begins to speak, my mind wanders (yet another example of my waywardness). The choir takes their seats, and prudently turn their attention to the man standing at the podium. I imagine I can hear the quiet click and shush as they button up their hearts and voices; mouths shuttering, the light from within smothered until they are once again given permission to shine. It seems, to my child self, a shame; for certainly God would prefer us all to be as these women were while we worship. Enraptured, ecstatic, enlivened.
It took many years for me to realize that God, like most of the men of this world, like their women a little more quiet; a little less alive (italics).
And so I spent years making myself smaller, sure if I whittled away enough that one day I might fit inside the space of some man’s heart. But where does it all go, the pieces of yourself that you discard? Nowhere it turns out. Sure, you can hide them away, under beds and in the backs of rarely used closets; but they are still there. And one day, you will stuff your words back down your throat one too many times. One day, as you try desperately to choke down the fiery smoke of smothered words, suddenly there is no more room. Suddenly you are all split seams and loose thread. Suddenly the thing on the inside becomes more dense than all the things on the outside. And when that happens, oh my dear, how you will burn.
You will burn with the fire of a thousand supernovas, of a million suns swallowed in the space of a second. And you will become, in that moment, something far greater than all that you have taken in. Something greater than the sum of your parts. And you have to decide then and there: do you become a huge, sucking vortex? A black hole, with a gaping mouth, forever hungry, forever cold, eating up everything in its path? Or do you burn. Do you become the next universe? The next big bang? (Because you cannot create something from nothing. You cannot have light without dark, love without pain.)
Do you stand in the alchemical fire of your own suffering and yearning and joy and desperation and come out on the other side somehow transformed? Do you shine? Because you can become something truly beautiful. Something more than yourself, but entirely yourself, simultaneously. Something that words cannot replicate with enough dignity for me to care to try. Something other, and timeless.

10/21/2023

Today was a rough start for sure. I had trouble getting up and getting moving, the stresses of everyday existence weighing heavily on my mind. Papers that need writing, dishes that need washing, appointments to be made, and I was beating myself up for the wasted time I spent in the bed instead of doing these tasks. I trudged out of bed none the less, grumpy and already beginning to spiral into anxious thoughts of not being enough.

I was watering my plants when I noticed this new leaf unfurling. Sometimes nature knows exactly what you need. This little golden pothos plant (devil’s ivy is another name) came to me after the passing of my husband’s grandmother, Edith Austin. She’d kept many houseplants alive during her near century on this earth. I remember bringing it home after we helped clean out her apartment. I thought it was a beautiful symbol of her life, still growing even after she had physically left us; a little piece of proof that she lived and loved something. I placed it near a window in my bathroom with utmost care, positioning its vines just so, to catch the bit of morning sun each day.
I cared for it for quite a few months before promptly forgetting about it.

Oh, I’d remember it every now and then. I’d guiltily water it, promise myself I’d do better, and placate myself with the knowledge that these plants are nearly (nearly being the operative word here) impossible to kill. I’m sure you all know how this story goes. Earlier this year I discovered that I had indeed killed the unkillable houseplant. This seemed pretty fitting for this stage in my life where I’m tearing down and sloughing off so much of what the world (and my own self) packed onto my shoulders over the years. It’s a violent and bloody process; albeit necessary when one reaches their thirtieth decade or so. It’s messy. You can’t help but bump up against those close to you, bloodying them as well. It’s hard not to look at the crime scene of your life and feel like a villain for simply trying to live.

And so I stood there with this tiny dead plant in my hands, and when I looked at it, I saw myself looking back. We were a mess, the both of us. All signs of life seemingly gone, and it was all my own doing. I had taken this precious piece of life and neglected it until it could no longer go on living. And in the space of that moment, I wasn’t sure if I was talking about the plant or myself. I guess it was both.

So I took the tiny pot with not but a stem still poking through the soil, and I watered it. I put it with my other plants. I gave it more sunshine. And I waited. I wasn’t confident that I could fix this mess. In fact I’m not so sure it was all me. I can’t help but think that, when I placed that plant among its own kind, that they, in their mysterious plant ways, rose up and gave a bit of themselves to this tiny sleeping (see! not dead yet!) plant that had been through so much. And today, it has two new leaves. They are small and delicate and fragile, but beautiful.

And so today I see in my own self, the unfurling; this rebirth I’ve been not so patiently waiting for. It’s still small and fragile, but it’s there, and I’m learning more and more how to give myself the care it needs and deserves. It’s not easy, sometimes times it hurts like hell, but it’s better than staying stuck in the same pot, withering away in some forgotten corner. It takes bravery to live each day, whether you spend it in bed or climbing the rocky face of some distant mountain. I think about all that tiny plant has seen. All the things it went through with its previous keeper, and I can’t help but smile. It’s scary, sure. I know that some days it will hurt to simply draw breath; the hurt on the inside, a raging, devouring thing. But also know that those days will make the other days; the ones filled with cool breezes and bright sunshine and crisp leaves, all the more sweet.

And so, today I will cup my hands around that tiny unfurling thing that I’ve kept safe deep inside the walls of myself for so long, and whisper to it gently “Be brave, my dear”.

08/30/2023

08/30/2023

Ok ladies, it’s time

If you wait for the weekend it will already be September, but that's okay;. Please. We're dying here.