Nettle: Tough Love

October 24, 2017 6 Comments

As I'm writing this my sinuses are heavy and my head is foggy and dense with a good old-fashioned head cold. Perhaps it's the change in seasons or perhaps it's having three children bringing home a multitude of “school” germs every single day—but in any case it is timely with Nettle being the Soulflower pick for the month of October.

As a medicinal, I turn to Nettle when I am feeling depleted, tired and generally overwhelmed with everyday doings. She is a nourishing and restorative powerhouse and a beautifully supportive ally—a far cry from the stinging enemy my bare legs misjudged as a child when I would do anything to avoid her! Now she is the loving friend I am reaching out to.

Big mug of Nettle infusion in hand, I settle down with my journal to contemplate my symptoms and the wisdom contain therein.

Nettle (Transformation) • Wake up! Nettle helps you transform foggy thinking so that you can respond to prickly or heated situations by speaking up for yourself, in alignment with your own truth, and without harboring resentment or attachments that can leave you feeling tired, congested and irritated.

Conversations with plants require patience, like Nature's pace, and develop slowly over time, like all good friendships.

It’s not like a human to human conversation at all and is more like a rambling series of thoughts and connections, feelings and inspirations that I must somehow make sense of. And more often than not, I can’t make sense of it, or verbalize it at all, (at least in the moment) and instead have to allow it time to evolve into just KNOWING. 

Like steeping a good cup of tea. It eventually becomes a deep understanding, a truth which resonates with my heart and which always ALWAYS comes from a place of deep love, acceptance and trust.

What has been playing out for me personally has been the recurrence of old stories and triggers that connect me to an internal dialogue of negative self-talk. You know—”I'm not doing well enough”, “there’s not enough money/time”, “if I just work a bit harder it'll all work out”, “what am I doing wrong????” etc etc.

The last six weeks or so I have been working long hours most weekends at event after event trying to raise funds to pay for the third printing I have just received of the Soulflower Plant Spirit Oracle deck. And while I have left each event rich in new friendships and experience, my pockets have been mostly empty.

It's super stressful when bills are looming to trust that everything will all work out in the end. LIke most people, I feel the need to DO SOMETHING more, in addition to all that I am already doing. And more often than not the resultant “doings” are never really in true alignment with my heart or soul. They can’t be really, since they most often come from a place of fear and lack rather than a place of love and trust.

Over the last couple of years, our family has lived paycheck to paycheck, with my husband unable to find full time work in his field and our general feast/famine self-employment income schedules resulting in plenty of worry and stress. But somehow, some way that I don’t understand, at bill paying time, even at the very last minute, our money story falls into place with a happy ending...for that month at least. Every single month.

So my experience, the actual TRUTH of my experience, is that we have everything we need and we are fully supported. My mind however is rife with poverty mentality and self-pity and at times even slips into envy that others, off on their vacations or whatever, are doing so much better than we are. Ha! Ha! What a load of rubbish!

And then the shame kicks in and the negative self-talk goes into overdrive…

Slap! (Nettle has a way of doing that.)

Waking up from my daydream, I suddenly realised, with acute clarity, how out of alignment my recent actions, all my pushing and striving and eventing, have been with what actually is my truth, my REALITY, and what nourishes my heart and soul.

I had been so distracted with the potential of extra income, with shiny objects, that I had lost my way in a dense fog—and when you are in a dense fog, it can sometimes be really hard to figure out where you are going! Like sleep walking.

Misalignment + fatigue + foggy thinking = exhaustion and susceptibility to the raging cold germs now inhabiting my head.

Which means... it’s time for quiet reflection and lots of tea. 

Working through the process of self-reflection you have to be brutally honest with yourself.

Brutally honest yes, but I also understand that the whole experience is not something to berate myself over. I am human after all and I had to go through it to realise that my choices, in this case, were not at all in alignment with my highest good. And that while it was somewhat of a setback, growing pains are completely necessary for me to experience so that I could begin to understand myself better. To uncover my truth, piece by little piece. 

The monthly bills came due and we were able to (almost) cover them and I am awash in awe and gratitude and joy once more—for the wisdom and support of the Earth and my plant friends, for the gift of life itself that allows us to experience ourselves in all our humbling glory, and for the overdraft facilities my local bank affords me for when we can’t quite make it.

I’m starting to feel much better already!

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