I never know what will spill out when I respond to your questions. Yesterday’s questions about resistance to Flower Essences took me in an unexpected direction. I found myself writing about what happens when we resist the gentle encouragements from the universe to change, be they Flower Essences or some other soft nudge. What happens when our personality’s desire for things to stay the same comes in conflict with our soul’s desire to move our lives along spiritually?

Whatever willingness I now have to let go and change is a consequence of traumatic events. Most big changes in my life were either precipitated by trauma or informed by them. Early in my life, I thought I would be spared pain, aging, bad hair days, and cellulite just because I was, well….. so special. Now…….let’s just say I laughed aloud as I typed that last sentence. Experience encourages me to let go earlier in a change cycle since I know that if I hold out longer, I am asking for those professors from the 2′ X 4’ school of learning lessons to come on back. Pain or memories of pain. It seems to take a lot to shake us humans loose from our cages, including the cage of wanting things to stay the same.

One seminal traumatic experience is my primary encouragement to let go and let change have its way. This was the birth of my second child, that dancing daughter, who was born deaf and with a cleft palate. Out of the pain, confusion, and grief of my experience during her early years came this life at Green Hope Farm. I credit her with jump starting my true life on True Road as well as being the mover and shaker of her own amazing dance.

Even as I have used this as a paradigm of trauma to encourages an optimistic, go with the flow attitude, I cannot say that I greet traumatic events at the door with a welcoming smile and a snack. It usually takes me months, sometimes years, to surrender to the truth that everything God does, even the latest trauma, is for the best.

With the latest big trauma in my life, the situation of death threats from a family member and the loss of connection to my family of origin as part of the fall out from these threats, it’s five years in and I am still accommodating the experience. I probably will be doing this for the rest of my life. When I try to explain to people the gifts I’ve received from this drama, they usually look at me as if I’ve been smelling a bit too many opium poppies. However, this trauma has made me a more loving person. It has helped me love God more. I may not return to joyful life with the same innocence but I return with a more sturdy and sillier joy. Odd but true. I begin to be able to hold this trauma with gratefulness, not just sorrow.

So, I acknowledge and continue to experience both the human condition of being comfortable with the discomfort of our cages of illusions and also a gratitude for the traumas that shake us out of our cages, even if I cannot always experience this gratitude during the traumas.

Sometimes, even with whatever willingness I have to let go and change, traumas hit broadside and require more than seems reasonable or possible. During these times, in fact during any traumatic time, Flower Essences are my steadfast friends, helping me feel confident I will survive and eventually even manage to process and move through the tumult.

When the brown stuff hits the fan, it is the vibrations of Flower Essences including Emergency Care, Anxiety, Grief & Loss, Feverfew, Sarah Van Fleet Rose, and Old Blush China Rose that become my constant companions. Depending on the trauma, I sometimes work with this crew of Essences for months or years. They help me feel physically safe and help calm my freaked out nervous system.

One of the wonderful friends I have made kindness of Green Hope Farm Flower Essences is a grief counselor who first connected with us to get Flower Essences for one of her Tibetan terriers. As the years have unfolded, she has helped me to understand that when a trauma occurs, we really cannot process the emotions or the spiritual underpinnings of the event until we get support to feel physically safe. This may be why the Angels said that Old Blush China Rose was the most important individual Flower Essence we had to offer to people after 911. It helps people feel physically safe during traumatic events. Her perspective has been very helpful in throwing out expectations about how I “should” move through any difficult experience.

I also reach for Essences such as Arbor Garden, Pink Tecoma, and Pink Water Lily. They help me feel comforted amidst the turmoil. Taking these Essences is part of that vital process of doing what I can to take care of myself. More and more, I realize that if we are all one, it’s crazy not to take care of the part of oneness close to home. That would be me. Bring on the Pink Tecoma.

Borage and Nuuphretia Lavarissa help me find the inner courage to keep on going. The Sunflower Spiral and Joe Pye Weed help me surrender my burdens to those there to help. Self care includes asking friends to help!

Later, often a lot later, I depend on all sorts of Essences to support me in processing the trauma and grounding its gifts into my life and consciousness. My water glass becomes pink with helpful friends such as Grounding, Yellow Water Lily, Corn, Maple, Eyes of Mary, and Shrimp Plant. I really love Yellow Water Lily. It’s a cheerleader that helps me feel rooted in my divine identity during very emotional times.

Eventually, I am ready for Essences like Phoenix Rising or New Beginnings to support me to orient myself in the terrain of my new life. One thing I have grasped more fully from my most recent big trauma is that grief takes time. When I first went to therapy after Elizabeth was born, I thought I was supposed to clean everything up really, really fast and then put a smiley face on. I would walk into my therapist’s office each week wearing a hundred watt smile and tell my therapist that I was all better. Three minutes later, I would be sobbing my heart out. This would continue until our fifty minutes were up.

It has been an experience of grace to accept grief takes time. My only job is to be present to where I am. Everything else, including my spiritual growth (whatever that is!) will take care of itself.

Like on most days, one of you asked us some wonderful questions yesterday. The questions came from a woman using the Essences in her healing practice. She wanted to know how to work with people who resist Flower Essences. She mentioned clients who want to take the Essences but are aware of their own resistance to the life changing support the Essences offer. She noted one client‘s comment that she felt more comfortable with the discomfort of being stuck than letting the Flower Essences help transform her situation. The practitioner asked us for Flower Essence suggestions for this situation and also our thoughts on this topic.

I ended up writing two blogs related to these questions. I will post one today and one that is sort of related today or tomorrow. Before I begin, it feels so important to advocate that we be really, really kind to ourselves as we see our resistance. Sometimes it is just really, really hard to relish being supported in the decision to jump off a cliff into the unknown (first blog on the topic) or to be thrown off that cliff by life when we resist jumping of our own accord (second blog on topic).

One consolation
Flower Essences support us even when we resist them, but our resistance can slow their support down or take their support underground.

It is difficult to quantify how much is actually happening when we take Flower Essences in a place of resistance. We may not know exactly what kind of crises the Flower Essences prevented us from experiencing or how they helped us even as we resisted their support. So much of the change may be out of view or marked only by a dawning realization that long standing problems have ceased to be problems, even as we did not completely want the Essences support on this issue.

One out of view change I experienced in my own early years working with Flower Essences was a shift from more than a half dozen bouts of bronchitis a year to only the occasional bout every few years. In retrospect, I think the Flower Essences helped me face some unresolved childhood grief that I had been reluctant to confront, but they did this in such a delicate way that I felt no pain during the process. The grief was gently released from its storage place in my respiratory system, and while I had no awareness of this release as I worked with the Flower Essences, I saw this radical improvement in my life situation after the fact. And of course now get to live in a more healed energy system.

One truth that grows faith
In startling contrast to the subterranean experience of many adults working with Flower Essences stands the experience of children and animals. To say children and animals have much less resistance to incorporating the healing information of Flower Essences is a very large understatement. Often, just one or two exposures to a Flower Essence gives a child or an animal the information to shift a pattern, heal an issue, or make an enormous turn around. Their rapid response suggests one possible reason why some world religions encourage us to become like children in order to grow spiritually. Children and animals help us remember how to surrender to the flow of life. And, if our resistance to Flower Essences has to do with a problem believing that something so simple could really offer support, the example of children and animals can make us a believer.

No kidding!
Kids’ ability to make the most of Flower Essences is perhaps why our Flower Essence combination mix Inner Child might be a good one for helping with inner resistance. Inner Child helps us hear the voice of our young selves who live on within us and remain steadfastly open to growth and change and the possibility that a bunch of Flowers really can make our life better.

Tossing the bindings
So much of our resistance is learned resistance. So much of the mind cargo we carry isn’t even our ideas. It’s stuff that is dumped on us by well meaning but mistaken adults. Later, we step in and dump more stuff on ourselves out of habit and training.

Our combination Flower Essence mix All Ego Contracts Null and Void helps us release ourselves from ideas that discourage us from going with the flow of spiritual growth or feeling it’s safe to let go and trust ourselves, the Flowers, or life itself. This combination mix brings together a number of Flower Essences that offer a blueprint for releasing the trash of collective unwisdom that we pick up from others. The Ego referenced in the name of the Essence mix is often the voices of our parents or other adults from our childhood that live on within us, tying us in knots of don’ts, no’s, and other judgments that don’t always serve our divinity.

Viva the Flow
Flow Free is one of my most favorite Essences for any situation of blockage, resistance, or lack of flow. This is one of our most dynamic sources of information for change, even we keep it listed in our Animal Wellness collection as a combination earmarked for urinary issues and other issues of flow.

The origins of Flow Free is a bit comical. The husband of one of the staff was having prostrate issues so we set about to make Flower Essences from what we politely referred to as P plants. Our understanding of the doctrine of signature led us to believe that P plants would help that part of the body.

On a trip to Bermuda with Lynn in search of P plants, we had a particularly funny experience when we noticed a long fuzzy Flower in the garden of a posh hotel owned by a childhood friend of Lynn’s.

We got the nod from the Angels that the Flower in question was high enough in vibration to make into a Flower Essence. Then, like the well oiled Flower Essence making machine we had become, we whipped out our jars and other Flower Essence making equipment and set to work.

Meanwhile, an ever so ever so British group had begun to notice our activity and was surreptitiously watching our machinations. Eyes boggled as we lowered this very long fuzzy Flower into a glass jar of water with a pair of tweezers. All Lynn’s training in good manners and NOT MAKING A SCENE clashed with her generous spirit about making Essences for an ailing friend. Thankfully for us and for Flow Free, her generous spirit won out over her Bermudian good manners and we continued on with our business of mystifying this crowd of observers.

Eventually, many Flowers later, we had assembled an amazing group of P plant Flower Essences and other wonders for the urinary tract . We then assembled Flow Free. It was only as we began to use this mix that we discovered it was such a powerful ally for all spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical issues of flow.

Feeling Safe
Another suggestion for all of us confronting our resistance to change would be to try and take care of the frightened part of ourselves without shaming or judgment. Flower Essences like Old Blush China Rose, Golden Armor, Broccoli, or Pink Tecoma can help us feel safe enough to accept the inevitability of change and even work with this dynamic.

Finally, I would encourage most everyone to consider working with The Sacred Feminine Flower Essence combination remedy right now. Not only are we all going through our individual rebirth processes BUT humanity is birthing a new paradigm for life on this blue green orb as well……. That TEAM EARTH thing I was writing about yesterday. This Essence combination is there to midwife us through our individual births that will bring about a collective rebirth for all humanity. I cannot recommend this Essence too highly.

And now, if it seems I haven’t answered any of the questions raised, you can pretend that you think I will answer them in the second blog on this topic!!!!!