We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been – a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.
“Oregon Grape is the long road home, not a short-cut to bliss.”
Yesterday I harvested Oregon Grape for the first time. Though I have seen the plant for years, and knew of it many uses I never felt drawn to it. But yesterday with a small group of other women I did it. The experience was overwhelming, Where should I start?
I have a long standing bad habit of jumping out of the present and analyzing my every word and interaction, especially with people I am just getting to know. I tend to batter myself if I don’t say exactly what I mean, or if I am misunderstood a small part of me panics. This is not an overwhelming habit but a subtle and useless one nonetheless. Surprisingly, that part of me was silenced yesterday and something entirely different took me.
When we first began focusing on the plant yesterday, I didn’t feel the plant saying “no” to me but more of a push back, a fear perhaps, like the force between two like sided magnets. I began harvesting and singing to her, which is odd in itself, I sing constantly but not within earshot of other people. But there was a melancholy note, I felt softened, as though the props I hold myself up with were removed and I wanted to bury myself in the ground. It was something akin to sadness I almost thought I felt lonely, but that word didn’t fit. It was emptiness I felt, and emotion stemmed from a place of emptiness.
I waded through the emotion and later while scraping the herb I had a heightened sense of presence, I couldn’t seem to breath deep enough, I felt exhausted. Afterwards I got in my car and began weeping, but I wasn’t ’sad’ necessarily. No one had wronged me or hurt me, I wasn’t even thinking of the shit with my parents, I just felt sad.
I came home and continued to feel bad so I walked a length barefoot to the river and sat with that feeling, pulling in all of the healing energy I could from the earth. At some point it became very clear, like a road sign made of a big arrow with the destinations name on it, what I was working with. It showed me the two opposing desires and natural parts of my disposition that try to work together but merely cancel each other out. The inborn strong leader personality, not meant to lead necessarily , but which surely can’t follow. The overwhelming fire, the opinionated, intelligent, decisive side that overwhelms. That side is pitted against the childlike need of mine to be loved, accepted, and approved of. The side that doesn’t want to hurt others or call them out, the empath. In the years since adolescence I have in vain sought some medium ground of perfection, some “balance” between all that I am and I now find myself paralyzed in certain situations. Not wielding my powers, and impeding the empath. By not owning either of these sides fully, and accepting the consequences and outcomes, and realizing that I can’t possibly have everyone like me nor do I really want to them too, they merely weaken me and the my interactions with the world. I was aware of this issue but not really addressing it. I then looked up from my hidden cliff by the creek where it enters the river and surrounding my head was cascading bushes of Oregon Grape.
I must add though that this experience didn’t solve anything, it merely showed me where I needed to go. The cliff side of mahonia behind me didn’t bring me joy or elation but trepidation and a feeling of resistance, I felt scared, afraid to look at it fully. This morning I am thinking otherwise. Perhaps, this plant is not to be avoided and perhaps it is graciously offering me its prickly hand as help up the steep path ahead.
I woke this morning after a difficult night, with the most vivid and terrifying dream where the hens were laying blackened, soft, undersized, deformed, and cracked eggs, where I was sitting in a room with Carrie and my older sister and an overwhelming high pitched noise took over my hearing and I lost my baby, it was clearly metaphor, not a warning of impending danger to the baby. I woke in a state of panic, with an immediate feeling that Oregon Grape had something to do with it.
It seems quite clear to me now, I feel amazingly blessed with the serendipity these events, and the opportunity this plant has presented. It seems it has been shouting the direction I needed to go, but the road seemed so foreign and dark and so, so steep that I tried to ignore it. I know that the path to healing is never easy or likely complete, it seems to be more of a journey than a destination. It has been some time since I have had such and incredible experience with the plants. I am overfilled with gratitude toward them as teachers, I seemed to have found a little bit of the magic I had beat out of me last year. The earth is overrun with gifts
I guess I will not avoid this plant but engage it, welcome it, and thank it for its many blessings.
