“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”  —  Rumi

 

We understand if you are feeling heavy.

It is okay to acknowledge that there is a weightedness in our world right now, and if you are feeling heartbroken, are grieving, or even feel fear, it is okay.

You are not alone in your mourning.

Our collective is experiencing many things that invoke grief within us. We are witnessing the unfolding of violence and conflict that is resulting in horrific loss for so many innocent families.

The earth mourns with us, and weeps with us as we weep.

The earth also hears our prayers, and casts her own – beautiful whispers to the wind asking for a world that we know is possible.

And we acknowledge that what is happening in the world is deeply complex, nuanced, and at times difficult to understand or articulate. And while we know there are very strong feelings and perspectives as it relates to our modern times, the purpose of today’s blog post is to provide community support, and to help guide us to the herbs that can be such powerful medicine to our weary souls that long for a better way.

 

 

It is in times of grief and instability that the earth beckons to us stronger than ever. The plants long to hold us and breathe into our hearts. Ancient spirits, they want to stand in as the loving grandmother who acknowledges the sacredness of our tears, and who can help us compost energy that is too painful for us to carry back to the earth where it can be recycled anew.

If you are feeling grief, or perhaps are holding anxiety in your body when thinking about what tomorrow can bring, we invite you, with so much love, to join us in this space where the plants can be the most supportive and nourishing allies for us during these times.

And while the plants are here for us and can be supportive, sometimes we may need some additional support. If this resonates with you, know there are resources available locally.

Energetic Support for Grief

While we have the ability to connect with plants in a physical way, such as when we enjoy them in teas or tinctures in our body, herbs can work with us in even more incredible ways, including energetically.

All beings have vibrational frequency, and working with this energy has the ability to impact our mood, emotions, and mental states. When we are invited to work with plants energetically, this is a very soft and subtle, but still powerful, form of healing. They have the ability to shift our consciousness, bringing us from a state of anxiety or stress into a state of calm, a state of presence. There are a couple of ways we can do this:

Flower Essences: If you are curious about flower essences and want to go more in depth, we invite you to check out our previous blog post, but flower essences are a beautiful and potent form of energetic medicine particularly when experiencing emotional impacts. A flower essence is created by allowing the energetic properties and vibrations of a flower (or this can be done with herbs, trees, and even crystals!) to infuse into a bowl of water and activated by the solar energy of the sun. This energetic vibration is then preserved, which is traditionally done by using brandy. Flower essences allow us to come into deep relationship with a plant on a conscious level, and allow them to support elevating our energetic frequency, particularly when we may be carrying heavy emotions or burdens.

Blessing or Smoke Herbs: Herbs that are burned are deeply sacred, and have the ability to shift not only the energy of our space, but our nervous systems. They help to remove energy that may feel stagnant or heavy, and allow us to feel lighter, and yet grounded. The smoke herbs remind us of the medicine that is found in breath and help us to slowly exhale that which no longer serves us. They also help shift our headspace from a place of feeling deeply plugged in to the external, such as our to-do lists, distressing news stories, or other aspects of our fast-paced culture, and help us instead to ground into stillness and mindfulness, bringing us deeply into the present moment and back into our bodies. When we experience grief, we may feel a sort of detachment from our bodies, and returning here can help us return to a sense of wholeness.

 

Mending the Heart Space

The beautiful thing about our plant allies is that they can be multi-functional. Many of the herbs that we called upon to help us to open and expand our hearts are also herbs that can help mend hearts that feel broken, weighed down, or full with grief and sadness. It is their very nature of opening and expanding that helps us to move through this, for when we navigate the world with our hearts closed, we find ourselves disconnected from the beauty that is around us. We feel out of body, isolated.

When working with the herbs as support for grief, they tend to embody the most beautiful aspects of the Crone. They shift into the crinkly-eyed grandmother who always intuitively knows when to whip out her best cookie recipe to lift our spirits or the right wisdom to share to help dry our tears. They not only hold us in our grief, but help us to acknowledge the sacredness of our grief, for the beautiful duality of grief is that we cannot know grief if we do not also know love.

Call upon these beloveds to help you navigate the deep emotions that come with grief: 

• Hawthorn. We invoke this herb often in the blog space, and that is because she is truly such potent heart medicine, and an example of the beauty of the multi-functional ability of the plants. On a physical level, hawthorn is a cardiac tonic, meaning she is deeply nourishing and restoring to the heart and circulatory system. Her flowers make the sweetest flower essences and tea, and also are deeply supportive for a heart that is experiencing pain from loss, whether it is the loss of a relationship, or mourning a loved who has passed on.

• Linden. Another gorgeous tree medicine that has the ability to bring a smile to our face with her beautiful bloom in the spring. Linden has the energy of an ancient grandmother, having been a plant that has existed on our earth for longer than we can comprehend. She has long been used by midwives and healers as a potent and gentle support for people experiencing grief, especially in instances where it can be feel like you may not feel joy again. She reminds us of the beauty of the gentle way the sun shines on our faces and the other subtle and beautiful things around us that are the blessings of our life journey, and helps lift us up and finding peace again.
• Motherwort. This is a beautiful herb that we can call upon to find courage within our heart. Even nicknamed the “Lionheart” herb, this plant helps us to navigate difficult transitions. Perhaps our grief may be rooted in feeling as though we have lost a part of ourselves for some reason. Motherwort returns us to our sense of self, and re-ignites our sense of self. She reminds us that we are fierce, in the way a grandmother only can.
• Damiana. This gorgeous herb can be called upon when we are feeling just so tender and raw. She is a holder of the sacredness that is just holding space. She is like the friend who you need to just listen and honor what you are moving through, without judgment or advice, and yet will slowly stitch your heart back together again in a gentle and minimally invasive way.
• Tulsi. This deeply ancient herb has been revered for thousands of years, as a powerful ally that is so intimately connected to the energy of the divine. Tulsi helps to awaken the divine energy that is within each and every one of us, moving from our solar plexus and spiraling outward. She connects us to our sense of self and helps us to feel our sense of purpose.

 

Support for Heart Space

These are some of our favorite products for supporting your heart space:

• Heart-Full Tea
• Sacred Heart Protection Spray
• Purification & Protection Spray
• Happy Heart Perfume Roller

 

“Weep! Weep!” calls a toad from the water’s edge. And I do. If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart, so we can love it back to wholeness again.”  — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass 

 

Know that whatever you may carry, we send prayers of release for our community. We send you love, and may the plants be a light amongst the feelings of darkness. We are here for you, we stand with you, and we sing into the possibility of a brighter tomorrow with you.