Hedgehealing and the Blessing of Return

At the beginning of May I went for a walk in the woods and made a big prayer for healing of my old, old grief and anger. Since then I have written nothing. I had been in the flow of words and then the words left me. I am a writer and I must write. Words have stirred in me and called to be born but, when I have tried to set them free, they have fallen to the ground like broken-winged birds and I have cupped them in my hands, heartbroken. It has not been an easy summer; it has been a beautiful summer of sweetness, radical healing, love that is gentle and fierce, and land that is ever unfolding. It has not been a peaceful summer. And there are no words. This summer, I went for a walk in the woods and made a big prayer for healing. Bored of my excuses, my self-betrayals, I went for a walk in the woods and made a call to life.

'Give me more pain, more pain
Give me more consciousness
Tear open all doors, smash down all walls
Give me more pain, more pain
Give me more consciousness
Tear open all doors, smash down all walls

More love, more love,
that the 'I' in me may drown
More love, more love,
that the 'I' in me may drown
Give me more, more, more streams
of nectar to drink
Give me more, more, more'

-- from Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore

It wasn't conscious or planned but, this summer, I went for a walk in the woods; early summer ~ Bluebells, Wood Anemones, Red Campion, Wood Sorrel, Stitchwort, Yellow Archangel, and I made a prayer for healing that changed everything. 

Greater Stitchwort

Herb Robert

Wood Anemone

Yellow Archangel

The green people are not always kind. They may be delicate in their flowering but their roots are deep, drawing on dark and ancient layers of experience, and when we make a prayer for healing they answer. And so, on that day at the beginning of May, I let myself be pixie-led. I sat exhausted by carrying my bundle of sorrow and I made my prayer. I accepted the invitation and stepped through the gateway of healing.

An invitation to step through the gateway of healing

In answer to my prayer I was gifted with a song;

                                                             Little one, you are loved
                                                            Little one, you are loved
                                                            See the blue, see the green
                                                           Feel the sun, you are seen
                                                           Little one, you are loved
                                                           Little one, you are loved 

It was a simple song that opened me, allowing me to cry tears that had long not been cried. Two weeks later my heart was broken and it healed me.

Held by the Green

Held by the Green

The gift of a 'crow-skull' stone to hold

It used to be that my most powerful, and most challenging, lessons would come at the beginning of February, during the ancient seasonal festival of Imbolc. I have woven a deep connection to Snowdrops, those seemingly fragile spears that find a way to pierce the deadened ground of winter. I had much that needed to be brought back to life and, in that quickening, I stepped into a constellation of Bluebells; a tribe of delicate cobalt-blue wildflowers who establish a poison sea of scilarens which can lower the pulse rate and cause cardiac arrhythmia. It is telling that, soon after the effects of my prayer began to reverberate through my life, I was diagnosed with a slow heartbeat, which I had never had before. Bluebells are delicate but not to be underestimated and sometimes healing feels like dying until the poison leaves our bodies.

Taken to a place of deep heart

Since making my prayer much that was broken has been mended. I was numb and have been coming back to life. I have put down deeper taproots in the soil of my being, sung to crabapples in wild hedgerows, buried my toes in dark sea-silt, loved and been loved, learned much and forgotten more, and my relationship with the man who I first met in a bluebell wood, and who holds my heart in the fire of his being and my life in the clear-as-a-mountain-stream-blue of his eyes, has deepened in ways that I could never have imagined. There has been the snuffle-song of badgers, the still-wing of herons, and the roar of lions, the sting of separation and the honey of returning, and an opening of possibility; of love, of relationship, and of heart. As ever, I am in awe of the journey and, in truth, the journey has only just begun.

Gratitude to the green people