by Jenn Carroll
The first month of school I made a “To Meet” list with a list of herbs that I wanted to meet or get to know better throughout the year: linden, chamomile, lemon balm, calendula, tulsi, marshmallow root, yarrow, schisandra, ashwagandha, reishi, rosemary, hibiscus, chaste berry, elder flower, blue vervain, gotu kola. Some, like chamomile and calendula, felt like prior acquaintances, but most felt unfamiliar to me in September. I went back to the list during virtual classroom days throughout the fall and then forgot about it entirely. When I looked at it again towards the last month of school, I realized I’ve met them all and more. Never once did I need to cross them off the list or force myself to seek them out. It’s been an unfolding.
The year has been a practice in trusting my intuition and recognizing the magic around me. I’m in the same physical space with the same people and objects but I feel more present, grateful, and grounded in the experience of being there. I’ve had a gratitude and meditation practice for some time, but it feels as if I’m peeling back another layer. It’s deepening. I tend to be quick to try to figure things out, solve them, or put them in boxes. I hear Rich asking, “What do you see? What do you observe?" Don’t evaluate it yet, just notice. This reminder is helping me see more clearly and sense in new ways. I’m learning to trust myself more deeply in the process.
The day after our May wrap-up weekend, I garbled nettles at my kitchen sink with my five-year old, Cora. Slowly. At a time when I would usually be watching my phone or email for a notification to pop up. Just a day prior, I had dug them out of Claudia’s garden so that she could make room for Angelica, feeling overwhelmingly lucky to be there. A ‘pinch me’ moment.
Cora and I stood in the kitchen and made nettle soup on a Monday morning. I thought about how Claudia’s eyes look when she smiles and how when she pauses to find her words, you can feel the warmth of her message and intention radiating in the space in time before she finds them. I thought about how that love and warmth and intention was in the nettles and therefore in the soup, and so a part of Cora. We ate that soup for days.
The day after that, on my husband’s birthday and the new moon in Taurus, he told me that he wants to become a Master Gardener. It helps him feel connected to his dad who loved gardening. In truth, I don’t have much of a green thumb but everything he touches thrives. Then, he planted the nettles from Claudia and the schisandra from Hortus out back. Watching him weave schisandra through a trellis 11 years into our marriage, I fell in love.
To the left of schisandra, I noticed bull thistle peeking out from underneath the Japanese euonymus that I planted years ago after a pregnancy we lost, and I am filled with instant joy. Bull thistle is here, in our yard! We met earlier this year when Claudia dropped a single drop of flower essence on my tongue, and I sat in meditation trying to connect to the energy that I had never felt and didn’t yet know the name of. After many quiet moments, I saw in my mind an image of outstretched hands holding a spiky pinkish purple flower. Now it’s here, reaching its spiny arms and offering joy from underneath a memory of grief and healing. Was it always there?
I am rooting into my life, both past and present. Recognizing the ways plants and herbs have always offered their magic. My eyes and spirit are open to receive it now or, as Sam and rosemary would point out, “remember it.” And I notice, too, the way that my friends and community members expand and how their eyes sparkle when I tell them about ArborVitae. Herbalism gives us a new way to relate, rooted in light.
In February, calendula reminded me that this light is there even when I feel disconnected from it. I keep the salve I made on my desk and while I couldn’t ground into the experience of its impact on me in February, it’s been a slow, steady, warm hug ever since. I’m massaging it into my hands during a staff meeting one day when my friend Brigit texts me, and I glance down to see a beautiful message about how the salve is helping her eczema better than anything else she’s tried. I often think of her and scribble down “Brigit?” in the margins of my notebook next to plant names during our in-person weekends.
Later, at our kid’s school pick-up, I hand her a fresh pot of the calendula salve and see she has brought me a nettle plant that she discovered in her garden the day after I told her about Claudia and the soup. It’s not lost on me that these exchanges wouldn’t have taken place a year ago.
The interactions with my physical environment have changed, too. On walks, I look for plants and herbs to see how and where they grow, rather than lean into my tendency to scan for risk. It’s been oddly grounding to move with curiosity, pulling me out of the monotony of my daily routines. I feel more frequently throughout the day like I’m expanding into every molecule of the moment rather than operating with tunnel vision, shrinking my periphery, or grinding my feet to the pavement. Where curiosity and gratitude have felt easy, the desire to conquer “The Facts” has felt hard or daunting. I need to keep in check my ego, my tendency to view everything through my own trauma history and lengthy healing journey, and my well-intentioned desire to “Learn It All” so that I can share it with others.
I learned at a young age how to be with and really listen to people, how to notice and cherish their unique qualities. Now, I want to develop my ability to listen to and build relationships with plants. The practice of being with plants feels so satisfying and supportive, but I know I am not doing them justice when I’m so focused on understanding them through the lens of myself. Still, I needed to peel back some layers to my own healing before stepping forward.
Last week, my older child, Violet, asked me some hard hitting questions about the tooth fairy and Santa and the spark in my chest told me it was the moment we cross over that threshold and release a little piece of childhood. I saw the sadness, grief, and anger in her eyes and cheeks and remembered my own experience with this 30-years earlier. I did what felt instinctual and what I often do for my younger self when I have something I need to heal, and I took her outside. We walked and walked. And because of plants and herbalism, we talked about magic and how it is very much real. Because of Seán Pádraig O’Donoghue, we talked about Celtic traditions. Because of Claudia, we talked about hawthorn trees and the fairies that live in them.
Violet spotted linden trees and told me she knows how to find them now. You just look for the heart shaped leaves. Then, we saw the mugwort growing next to us, and so we talked about her magic. I told her that just a couple weeks ago, I noticed that there was no mugwort in our yard and said to my husband that I wish there was. And how later that evening when we went outside to water the plants, I saw two big bunches of it right where I had been standing, to the right of the Bull Thistle. Her name is Artemesia Vulgaris, Violet, how could that not be magic? We walked for hours and named the plant friends that we saw, using their common names but deciding that we’d learn the Latin ones together.
Later, before bed, we made chamomile and linden tea and I sat in a circle drinking tea with my kids who were engaged, calm, and relaxed. I realized that a year ago, we didn’t know linden. Before bed, Violet asked if we could sneak outside and pick some mugwort from the yard to put it under her pillow and we ran through the grass barefoot.
I see so much more magic around me now. And I see, too, how none of this has to do with me. The plant magic is there and within me, of course, but it exists with or without me. In ways, I feel like a conduit for the energy to pass through so I can direct it and radiate it towards people who may be open to receive and remember it, too.
Jenn Carroll is a first-year student at ArborVitae.