I didn’t ask permission because I felt like I owned her. ☹️
It never occurred to me before this, what about you?
Did you know that one of the practices that herbalists have is being in RELATIONSHIP plants as allies?
This is common parlance for our Green Witch friends – plant ALLIES – but those of us new to herbalism may have never considered ASKING PERMISSION of a plant.
Asking permission to enter a wild space, asking to take leaves, fruits, seeds and to harvest.
Asking implies LISTENING.
Listening means RELATING.
And relating means being prepared for a NO.
When you can receive a NO it means that you don’t OWN THAT BEING.
It means that that being is SOVEREIGN. 😮🌿
I’ve just begun an herbalism apprenticeship (and am beyond thrilled 🤓) to be immersing myself in:
🌱 Relating more deeply to the natural world
🌱 Moving at Earth’s pace
🌱 Coming into relationship with the plants, land, and animals as relatable allies that surround me.
One of the early experiences that I’m having – and our classes haven't officially started yet but I’m a read-ahead kind of a gal – is that I feel LESS ALONE IN THE WORLD already...as in more connected, held...a kind of exhale is happening in me.
It's the embodied experience of living in the BIG WEB of a wider natural world.
I’m experiencing effortless, natural prosperity, a quiet thrum of ENOUGHNESS, as I allow in what's been there all along.
I mean, I’ve always been a lover of nature and spend loads of time outside.
But being outside skiing, hiking, climbing, or walking is not the same as BEING IN RELATIONSHIP 👭 with the natural world. It's not the same as deeply listening, hearing and allowing yourself to be SEEN by the plants, trees and the land.
The other day, when I ventured outside in our backyard into what my husband, Greg, and I lovingly refer to as “the grotto”, I realized that I’d never ASKED PERMISSION to enter that space.
Prior to this current herbalism initiation, it had never occurred to me to ask.
When this dawned on me, the next thought was, “But I own this property. I don’t need to ask.” ← This felt simultaneously disgusting and true.
Then I thought, “This isn’t ‘property’ this is Land and until quite recently in our human history NOBODY OWNED THE LAND.”
People lived in relationship with the land.
People asked permission to enter.
People were in sacred and reciprocal relationship with the Land for survival, for connection, for nourishment and for their future and the future of their clan.
This meant people were practiced at HEARING the Land speak and were prepared for the NO which might mean that the hunt would not go on or the harvest wouldn’t happen.
It further occurred to me how the dominant culture’s practice of ‘owning land’ and ‘having rights’ to do whatever they want over the land has extended to our bodies.
☹️Especially women’s bodies.☹️
I won’t get into the myriad of ways that we as women have been hunted and harvested without consent because someone believed that they owned us: owned our physical bodies, owned our time, owned our attention.
I won't get into it here, but I'm standing with 🤚❤️ my hand on my heart in solidarity with you for the immense grief that we walk with regarding this horrific 'fact of life'.
A fact that is a demonstration of how WRONG and WACK the dominant culture is in case you needed proof for how darkly misguided the direction of the populace has become (and no, it's not about this side or that side...the entirety of the train went off the tracks long ago).
What interests me here is how we as women haven’t been taught to ASK PERMISSION of our own bodies and how we’ve learned to turn a numb ear to our own NO especially when what our body needs-wants-hungers-for is inconvenient.
Because women, we've been trained to be convenient, efficient and have thoroughly domesticated ourselves in a culture of straight-lines-deadlines-and-no-panty-lines.
Back to entering the grotto, I set up my altar on the desert floor under a canopy of mesquite trees as the first sun rays peeked over the Santa Rita Mountains. I laid out my green speckled sarong that provides a thin barrier between me and the boney desert floor.
Lighting the single beeswax candle, stationing my drum on the left as is my custom and arranging my two oracle card decks in front of me, I said a prayer as I burned a single white sage leaf welcoming a new day.
It struck me how I’d never asked the Land that I live on and live with, that provides me shelter and safety, permission to be here.
I know that sounds strange from the conventional way of ‘owning land’ but it’s not strange from a more indigenous perspective at all.
And what exactly are the REAL LIFE implications of beginning to relate to the Land as a BEING?
What would it feel like to grow into a relationship with coming to KNOW the energies of the Land that you dwell on? Not only the names of the First Nations Peoples who lived their prior to colonization...but really began to quiet enough to listen to what she has to say?
Who would you need to be to be THAT quiet? That available? That unhurried? That present?
And what if, a first step to relating to the LAND AS A REAL BEING is relating to your own body as a REAL BEING?
Rather than something to extract resources from?
Image if you were to relate to your own BODY through…
Sensing rather than silencing.
Trusting rather than transgressing.
Devoting rather than dominating.
Imagine respectfully responding to the signals that your body trusted you with...because she TRUSTED YOU.
Imagine being so worthy of trust that your body didn’t hesitate to share with you her most valuable wisdom because she KNEW that you would treasure her precious communications?
I certainly spent the majority of my life wholly ignoring my body as a BEING.
I spent most of my life trying to CHANGE my body usually to make it conform to some size or shape that I was brainwashed to believe would be better or make me happier -- it never did. I pushed it, detoxed it, dieted it, was confused-annoyed-overwhelmed by it, ibuprofenned my way through pain or ignored it all together.
NOT exactly a recipe for a love affair is it?
It’s NO WONDER that since I wasn’t initiated to relate to the EARTH OF MY BODY as sacred-holy-sovereign that I similarly wasn't initiated to relating to the BODY OF THE EARTH as sacred-holy-sovereign either.
Therefore, it never occurred to me to ask permission, to listen or to be trustworthy for either one.
It does now though.
I’m changing over here in some big ways...at Earth’s pace. That is the pace that feels nourishing for my body right now so I'm being trustworthy with that information.😌
How about you? Were you initiated into this practice of asking permission with the earth of your body and the body of the earth? What does this message stir in you? Reply to this email and tell me about it.
Grateful for this wild and wily time in life and readying myself for the what’s stirring…because it’s swirly out there which means it's the perfect time to be ROOTED in here,
xojg
P.S. You can still enroll in my Rooted Women Rise (re)Membership that is deeply influenced by everything that I just shared here. ;-) You can join for as little as $97/month.
P.P.S. If all of this "asking permission" stuff feels woo-woo and crazy to you consider this: if you have ever been in a relationship with an intimate partner -- especially a man -- who you felt like TOOK something from you, who didn't ASK PERMISSION or WASN'T AVAILABLE for a NO...well, what I just shared here is the exact same thing.
In other words, you and I cannot expect men or "the patriarchy" to shift into something more sacred, holy, balanced, healthy, anything-but-the-shit-show-that-we-have UNTIL WE DO IT OURSELVES.
NOT because here we are again as women doing all of the the heavy lifting, but because WE ARE THAT POWERFUL. We lead the change. The change will never start outside of your own body, beautiful one.
It will start and end right there with you.
In your own home.
In your own life.
With your own Land.
With your own community.
And then that change rolls-rushes-ripples out into the world around us because remember, we are all connected.