Above is a voiceover of me reading the main body of this letter, I haven’t read the poem, or the Nettle seeds part. The voiceover is a little muffly and I haven’t quite got my flow with it, but I’m hoping to improve my technique over time.
Hello lovelies,
THANK YOU again for being here and creating this mycelial community.
How has your June been? I cant believe that summer solstice has gone by and July is nearly knocking at my door.
Here, the elderflowers are on their last days, the foxgloves are still in their blooming, the roses are in their fullness, mallow flowers are out and my lawn is full of tall and beautiful grasses and flowers that gently hum in the breeze.
And I have noticed how my compost pile in the corner of my garden is becoming a huge, beautiful dome that holds both life and death in their ever changing form. I have enjoyed sitting with this shape shifting beast that looks like a green hairy alive creature that shape shifts regularly, every so often in moments of contemplation I walk down to visit them. Enjoying the sweet sickly smell, the pungent decay and the mouldering feeling.
Through childhood, growing up in these times, within the modern western world, we most often, do not have enough contact with compost. With the making of it, the turning of it and adding to it. We do not see enough, the way life springs from death, the way nature alchemises what has been lost, disguarded or no longer needed into magic.
Most schools do not take children out into the forest to see how the dead tree is turned into home and food for many. Nor are we shown how winter is necessary, how spring grows because of it. We are not shown enough how to plunge our hands into the blackness of soil and understand its magic, nor are we shown in a good way, the way weeds try to take over and restore health in concrete spaces. How would it be, if for one year in a school journey, a class was given an area that had been concreted or mistreated, and their task was to learn to rewild it, to watch nature create health from what felt lost and deadened. And how would it be, if we were taught that we were made from that same nature who’s innate power is to restore, rewild, alchemise and transform.
We are not kept in intimacy with the wilds natural processes of recovery and transformation, and I feel this lack of connection with these processes breeds fear into our psyches. Fear of change, fear of letting go, fear of being different from what we were a month ago.
Yet we cannot stay the person we have always been. We are made of wild matter, a soul as rich as soil and full of seeds. We need to grow, change, shift and alchemise just like the wild we are made from. We can think, feel and behave differently, we can morph, reform and rewild. We mustn’t let ourselves or others spray weed killer on our becoming.
More and more, I feel my soul is like the soil, composted lives, a matter made of all that has been, ancient, dark, fertile and full of the want and know how of how to grow me.
I often feel that we are all just like piles of compost.
For we are souls and bodies built on bodies, stories and bones of what has been. We are our ancestors recycled, made up of their different parts, completely unique, yet reformed, repeated, remade from the death and decay of what was. We hold their tales, their experiences, their journeying with the land in our ancestral memory.
We are feelings, experiences and sensations that are continually transmuting and alchemising.
We are made up of natures atoms, reorganised and reused into the shape of human. We are in a constant state of dying and rebirthing.
Just as seasons move and swirl around us, just as compost turns into fertile gold, just as death is eaten and turned into nourishment, as winter turns into spring, so too are we asked to shift and change from within our very core.
Yet we often become to tied up with the same routine, the same job, the same partner the same expectations all jumbled together with busyness, it can be hard to find time to listen to our needs, our inner calling, and it can feel frightening to change when our whole lives depend on us being the same.
Yet our souls, like soil holding the seeds of our own becoming and filled with the wilds life force, will keep trying to push us towards our greatest health, will keep trying to bring us to our right life and dismantle the concrete, even if it means taking us down and deteriorating the life we have and taking it out of our own hands.
When I look out into nature, I have witnessed that nothing is stagnant and still, the only constant in nature is change, yet nothing is wasted, it is always transformed.
And as I have come to realise and understand myself to be nature, to have the same ingredients, spirit and life force inside of me, I see that I too have a desire to be in a flow of change all the time, my moods shifting, me habits changing, my desires shifting depending on the season, the time, the environment, and yet, in the past, and still now to a degree, I fight against it.
In the past, I used to only want to pick the change that looked in my mind, like me walking steadily to a glowing golden light, but not the change that is the unravelling, the decay, the breaking down, the mulching. I wanted change to be seamless, no difficult choices, no grief.
I realise that when growing up, that the story I had been given of recovery, was one of miracles, of some bright angelic light filling a heart and leading them towards brightness and shining.
No real work involved, no meeting one’s demons, no inviting all aspects of self around the table to talk.
These gold, light filled ideas of beginnings can create pressure and unrealistic expectations and there can be confusion when the journey of alchemy, restoration and transforming are full of days where you don’t feel like yourself, times where you realise you no longer fit in, the uncomfortable feelings arising in what was comfortable, and the embarrassing awkwardness of new ways, or a truth that feels as fragile as a blackbirds egg and as fiery as lava.
When I was a kid, I used to love the darkening areas within a forest, where beetle worm and fungi were transforming the carcass of a tree into more beauty, more medicine. I had a fascination with the compost pile under the tree near my grannies lawnmower shed and I was transfixed by the weeds that sprang from the concrete.
There was something in watching the process of alchemy and witnessing its story, that fed me, reminding me of my own power to alchemise away from any situation.
It was a story, that as a kid, I deeply needed.
And it is these stories and teachings that I lean back on now.
Inspired by compost, I have learned to honour my letting go as much as I honour my growth. For both come together, they hold hands, birth and death are reciprocal, a symbiotic relationship like lichen, algae and chlorophyll bound together to create one goal.
Death of something, some old way of being, some habit, some belief, is always the sacrifice we are asked to make on the threshold of becoming. And just as new life feeds on the old, inhabits the space left behind, so too does death open some new beginning.
It is a question I ask myself a lot when Im down by the compost, what is it Im transforming in the compost of my life, in the soil of my soul?
Poem
Be taught now, among the trees and rocks, how the discarded is woven into shelter,
learn the way things hidden and unspoken slowly proclaim their voice in the world. Find that far inward symmetry
to all outward appearances, apprentice yourself to yourself, begin to welcome back all you sent away, be a new annunciation, make yourself a door through which
to be hospitable, even to the stranger in you
- David Whyte (Excerpt from The Colemans Bed)
Interesting things -
Plants - Nettle seeds.
Nettle seeds are another beautiful way to enjoy nettles.
When the plant is in flower and seed, the leaves are no longer recommended for eating and taking. But, when the seeds are ready, the threads of seeds that hang from the plant should point down to the ground. The seeds should be plump and green or dark purple ish and not brown.
You can have them as a way side snack for energy or, gather some, by picking some of the seed threads off each plant, lay them out to dry for a few days, then rub through a sieve to release the seeds from the thread. Place in a jar or bowl and enjoy sprinkled on top of lots of foods.
Nettle seeds are a wonderful energy boost, but start slow, half a teaspoon to begin with and see how they make your body feel. You can go up to about three tablespoons if that’s what suits your body.
They increase energy, supports kidneys and endocrine system as well as strengthening the adrenals and hold vitamins and essential fatty acids. They work well for those who have fatigue, burn out and adrenal exhaustion.
These seeds have a feel good factor that improves mood, heightens sensory perception and can ease feelings of depression.
Aren’t we all blessed, to have such nourishing, nutritious and kind beings such as these growing all around.
My heart & mind have been deeply soothed as I listened to your voice & words. Nourished in every sense, thank you Brigit. You have no idea how much listening to this means to me. I’ll be listening, daily! X
Very beautiful Brigit. Your voice and words touched something very deep inside me. Thank you for your deep and soulful insight! 💗