Journal

I can count a million memes I’ve seen like this: Just let it go!  Of course the words might be different. The image of the young woman standing on the edge of a pier might be standing on the edge of a cliff or tossing a hat into the air. You know the deal.  Behind...

I once met a flower who took the great risk of unfolding herself in front of me.  I don’t know why she did it. Her cocoon was safe; the color she was once wrapped in hid perfectly among the lush tropical green. Far different were the streaks of orange, yellow, and...

I had never considered chanting a mantra until one picked me. It didn’t just pick me once, but tapped me on the shoulder daily for weeks, then months. I would sing it like a pop song, albeit one I didn’t know all the words to.  This is how I knew we belonged...

I have killed a lot of babies. (Plant babies, to be clear.) It starts like this: Put a seed in the ground and get all excited when it pops its head up. Give it too much or too little water/light/touch/air and find that the next day my little sprout has slumped over in...

I nursed a tiny stem of a tarragon plant all winter. Somehow it hunkered down and made it, despite being pressed up against the cold window for months. I wish I could say the same for my parsley plant. The parsley needed a bath of sun for six hours a day. All I could...

The notion of a finish line in healing is a trap. There is actually no end to it. Nothing grows at the same rate and nothing matures under the same conditions. Knowing that the nature of healing is endless can also be a trap. Because imagine this being the thought...

The hardest job of the gardener is when too many sprouts come up. Here is the incredible pain of the Great Mama -- deciding who lives and who dies. Even in fertile times, life is built upon a cycle of creation, preservation, and destruction (a more palatable word for...

Sunlight is one of the most direct sources of prana (life force) available. It -- along with the prana available in fresh air, water, and soil -- is the reason vegetables do very good things for our bodies. But every great power has a dark side, even this glowing orb...