Embodied on Planet Earth

At Great Lakes Herb Faire! Dimples, so cute, with a folate deficiency of her mother’s! This body~mind~spirit has felt the spin of the planet, the pull of the tides, and the challenge of being human.  I have completed 74 spins ‘round the sun’ and experienced many more full moons.  
 
Being an herbalist who trusted in our ancestors, the plants, while dancing through the seasons and relationships, be they of working or romantic kinds has kept me on my toes.
  
Lately my toes have caught on edges of beds, or steps, or roots.
 
The only way to have balance is to practice balance.  The best way to stay active is to move those pumps and organs.  Change your DNA with good nutrition to skip your inherited flaws. Be Zen and meditate daily.  
 
These are the things we know.
 
Knowing and doing are very different actions.   What is it that keeps us from getting up and doing the stretches, the weights the contemplation? Then add the pressure of being an integrative practitioner, judgement of self! Oh, lightning bolts!
 
Pile on overnight drama in the emergency room, with days on the cardiac ward, prescribed potent medications you have not known, and are inherently opposed to, simply by your forty-year occupation.  So sad.  Learning to place the names of these life-saving drugs on my altar to bring peace into the heart and mind.  
 
Acceptance.   
 
Learning to carry the teeny potent pills in my leather hip bag in case that extra dose is required.   Finding a beautiful vessel, given to me years ago by my mother.  (Did she foresee this need?)  Tiny white pill to halt my heart’s irregularity.

I was so proud of being irregular and now feel like a Muggle.
 
All of this at a time when my memory is like a worn patchwork quilt.   Some squares are so faded they cannot be recognized, and some rubbed so thin they cannot be recalled at all.  Is this post-Covid?  The acumination of years? Or a side affect of drugs? 
 
The unknown is its own murky demon.
 
The wonder being that I am learning to ask for help, to ask for what I really want, to shift out of old patterns.   So much is sparkling with twinkles of clarity.   The sensation of pleasures given and received.   Yes, you can receive unexpected vibrational joy never experienced before at any age!  Yeah baby!

How is it that the love your grandchildren share with a glance of knowing, a sideways smile, or hug that lingers, can inject the soul with absolute crystalline satisfaction.  It is love.  

As John Lennon sang “Love is all there is”.    It is the truth.  The whole point is to love.   

I feel it walking down the street, driving with the wind in my hair, calming my mind with alpha blue skies and stunning sunsets.  Smelling the rosehips blossoms as I pass by.  Sipping a delicious cappuccino with a heart design made just for me.   
 
It is connection.   
 
Great Lakes Herb Faire ~ Arrived with a viscous cough caused by the strongest thing in the Universe… baby mucus.  Gifts offered were hours of the most incredible healing work from Anat, tinctures ~ first Astor, Mullein & Plantain, next Cedar, Plantain and Lobelia prepared by my wild jim mcdonald, sacred Cedar smudge plus a Sweetgrass braid, stunning jacket because Panoka said it looked like me, Evergreen salve for my banged up knee from Stacey Quade, and Tap Root Threads Motherwort leggings to replace the chub-rubbed oldies, Anna Fernandez gifted her car, my charriot taking me to the hotel for hot showers when coughing hard and good good sleep.  Yummy skin cream from Rosalee. Blessed. 
 
So many tangible and intangible presents which make me feel loved and allow me to be present!  
 
Feeling a part of not apart from.  It is hope for doing what I know is best for me!  Hearing the synchronicity of events and shifting my behaviors and actions to allow gentleness.  Allow gentleness to create new strength in me on this evolution on earth.  I am a living revolution!  And, I may need a little inspiration from my friends to walk me, to encourage me, to care for me a bit more than before.
 
Humbling.
 
Be my sherpa, my companion, my brilliant conversationalist seeding this mind with your pearls.  Help empty this home of bottles and extra everything, the gatherings of decades, and love them in your space.  The vibration of my full and fun life enters into all living things, and everything is alive.  Sharing is good.
 
Hug me, hold me, spin me ‘round.

Jim McDonald, Rosalee de la Forêt, Anna Fernandez, Stephany McDonald, Joseph Quade, Stacey Quade