As we deepen our relationship with Nature and our Mother Earth wherever we have been placed on her, we heal our mother wounds.

Why? Because Mother Earth shelters us, gives unceasingly to us the gifts of food, comfort, beauty and so much more. Mother Earth is a loving mother.

If we find ourselves aware of mother wounds within us, recognizing the gifts from Mother Earth can help us know that there is a mother that loves us. But the healing possibilities go further than that.

My own relationship with my human mother was difficult. It was not a comforting or loving connection. I felt different that others who spoke of their mothers with unabashed affection and a feeling of safety. My mother was not a safe person for me.

As a young child, I pursued friends who had mothers that I experienced as loving. In my teenage years I chose my first boyfriend because I adored his mother. I was always thinking much more about the mothers in people’s families than other people seemed to. When a mother is loving, perhaps it is easy to take the relationship for granted. Isn’t this what we have done with Mother Earth until now?

Finding families with loving mothers and books in which either there was a loving mother or a loving mother substitute gave me hope that this could come to pass in my own life. It restored my faith in the mother archetype. Loving mothers I found in books and real life proved mothers could be loving.

My gravitation to Nature as mother was instinctual and not something I learned in a book. It has been the most profound and healing relationship with mother in my life. Nature was my comfort and solace from the beginning, and she has never let me down. Books like The Secret Garden affirmed my approach to finding the love I needed in Nature, but I would have found myself there in Nature anyways.

Did you read The Secret Garden when you were a child? How I loved that book! In The Secret Garden, a motherless child named Mary is sent from India where her father has died to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, England. She is a sickly, unhappy child and no one in the household knows quite what to do with her, so the housemaid Martha sends outside to explore her new world. While going outside horrifies Mary, her explorations in Nature begin her healing journey. She finds her place in the world and her sense of belonging when she discovers and helps restore a secret garden. She finds this garden when a starling leads her to the long forgotten door into the garden.

Having found this connection to Nature as a way to heal my mother wounds and bolstered by books and experiences in other families, it was inevitable that I would make Nature the center of my life’s work. Specifically the gardens around me both wild and cultivated and books like The Secret Garden brought to light my deep affection for Flowers. And the rest is a Flower Essence herstory…..

Given my experience with my mother, is it any wonder that I sought out Flowers for Flower Essences with a distinctly motherly energy of sheltering, consoling, unconditionally loving, healing, abundantly sharing and seeing the very best in us?

Here are some of those Flower Essences that will mother us when we need this compensatory and deeply healing energy in our lives.

Dombeya Wallichii, Cacao, Redwood– A trio of sheltering mothers so profound to even put their names together is like a song of mother love. Choose one or choose all three, they are wonderful mothers.

Old Blush China Rose– This ancient rose is the mother of all modern roses and that is saying something. She offers her strength, protection, wisdom, perspective and love.

Heritage Rose– This Rose helps us break free from the limitations of our earth family definitions to know ourselves to be eternal, unlimited souls of a much bigger tribe. A release from the mother wound of being viewed as not enough.

THE ENTIRE CRETE COLLECTION– Here is what is written under the topic Matriarchy in our Flower Essence suggestions for Common Concerns list: “Matriachal cultures know we are all born one with Divinity and remain ever so. This means our value is an absolute imperishable truth of our existence. Patriarchy is an alternative values systel based on the idea that we must earn our worth through proving ourselves through accomplishment, acquisition and perfectionism. The Flower Essences from Crete help us break free from patriarchy and refind the experience of Divine Self Worth. Please check out this whole group of Flower Essences listed in the Mediterranean Collection

Wound Healing– Sadly, the high degree to which we carry mother wounds is reflected in how we as a culture treat Mother Earth, but as we heal our individual wounds, we will heal our dear Earth too.

Pink Flowering Almond– Many years ago I made friends with a Flower Essence practitioner in Spain. She sent me my first bottle of this Essence, and it rocked my world with its immense healing vibration. I felt it was transmuting painful memories of my earth mother and flooding me with an experience of our Divine Mother that loves us always. I found a Pink Flowering Almond Tree that was hardy to northern New England and planted one so I could offer this Flower Essence to others. I consider it a most sacred tree, Flower and Flower Essence and am so grateful to have this Flower Essence to share.

The Sacred Feminine– As mentioned, patriarchy, still so dominant in our world, tries to enforce a values system based on ideas of productivity, goal orientation, intellectual and spiritual perfection at the expense of being human. This powerful Essence floods us with vibrations releasing, unwinding, transmuting this old garbage and restoring a deeper more expansive truth.

Motherwort– This Wildflower helps us experience a true accounting of the value of mothering and womanhood in all its diversity without sentimentality or discount so that we see all the ways we mother in the world as significant and eternally imperishable.

Queen of the Night– Not all gifts from Mother Earth are Betty Crocker matter of the fact gifts. In fact many of them are inexplicable. This is a Flower that welcomes us into deeper relationship with the great mystery.

This is not a complete list of Flower Essences for healing the mother wound. Every Flower brings a gift of mothering and healing the mother wounds as all come from our dear Mother Earth. However this is the bouquet of Flower love that called out today to invite you into relationship with it. May these Flower Essences help to heal your mother wounds.

Today a Green Hope friend and mental health counselor asked us how we might explain Flower Essences to mental health support groups dealing with great challenges and very much in need of support from Nature. She wanted to know what Flower Essences we might suggest she share with the fifteen groups she leads each week.

First of all, to this woman I want to say thank you for the precious work you do. Running fifteen groups a week sounds like a very full plate. I salute you.

I went for a walk to ponder her questions. At the beginning of the walk, I thought mixes would be the way to go because they offer so much support. Then I thought about how Flower Essences are like music. I considered that in an introduction to Flower Essences it might be helpful to hear a few individual notes of several Flowers’ music before hearing a blend of Flower Essences.

I also thought it might be a good idea to choose individual Flower Essences from different kinds of environments. Each would have very different strengths because of where they come from. I liked the idea of folks savoring the healing energy of every distinct Flower. I wondered if there could be one Flower Essence blend at the end of the sessions to deonstrate a sense of the music of the blends, and I wondered which blend would be good to include.

Before I offer suggestions for what these Flower Essences might be considered, I have a few other things to offer.

I am going to encourage this counselor get a bottle of each Flower Essence she settles on and an empty 2 ounce spritzer bottle for each of these Essences. Then she can put a few dropperfuls of each Essence in an empty bottle, fill the bottle with water and then let people spritz themselves to their heart’s content with the Flower Essences they want to try.

This counselor asked how I would explain Flower Essences in simple, clear language. Whew! That’s the question of questions. I might begin by saying that Flower Essences are a way to experience the loving and healing energy of a Flower when it is not in season or when we don’t live where the Flower blooms. If we could always be in a garden soaking in the love of the Flowers around us, we might not need Flower Essences. However when we live in a climate with winter seasons or in an environment where there aren’t many Flowers, Flower Essences are a great way to get Flower love and healing energy when we want it.

I might add that sometimes we might want support from a Flower that doesn’t easily grow in our part of the world and Flower Essences are a way to solve this problem. I have made Flower Essences from Flowers all over earth and these are now available all the time to people. I often think of our Flower Essence inventory as a global library of healing energies.

If anyone wonders if it is possible for Flowers to share loving and healing energy, I would ask them to consider any experiences they have had with Flowers. Sometimes as adults we have forgotten the joy of Flowers. I’m not thinking of the weird commercial bouquets of half dead Flowers imported from South America that we see in the grocery store. I’m thinking of Flowers we brush by in a meadow or see in a cluster on a river bank or even those coming through the cracks in the pavement. I would encourage people to think back to their childhood and see if they have any memories of Flowers from that time. Even a weed like a Dandelion is recognized as a uplifting friend to a small child.

If someone has no points of connection with Flowers then they could imagine how they might feel about the energy of receiving an enormous bouquet of beautiful and fragrant Flowers versus the energy of receiving a bowl of rotten fruit. By considering these two experiences, we can begin to feel that Flowers have a more positive energy than many things and can uplift and support us more than we might think.

For Flower Essences that might deeply serve a community that has seen more than its fair share of suffering, here are a few possibilities. I would encourage the counselor who knows these groups so much better than me to follow her own guidance in choosing Flower Essences if these don’t feel right (and maybe even if they do).

Sunflower– A Flower that helps us know our own inner strength and know our ability to stand tall even when we face a lot of challenges. This is a Flower that most of us recognize and have some experience of as sunny, bright, strong and empowering. That helps us link to its energy as a Flower Essence. It doesn’t seem, like a stretch when I say that a Flower Essence made from 14′ tall Sunflowers helps us be the super heroes in our own life.

Rosa Mundi– As with Sunflower, most people know what Roses look like. They may however feel shut out from the whole Rose thing because the commercializatin of Roses make many of us feel that Roses for special people on special occasions and that doesn’t include us. Rosa Mundi wants to remind all of us that we are ALL included in the Rose Love fest. This Rose supports those who have been through the wringer of pain and suffering and are having a hard time keeping on going. This Rose is ancient, at least 700 years old, yet looks incredibly fresh and young. It carries this energy of refreshing the most world weary among us. It is a consoling, comforting friend.

Wintergreen– Wintergreen is a good one for explaining that Flowers grown in different environments have different healing strengths. Wintergreen grows in very cold climates in very harsh conditions. Think exposed mountaintops in the coldest places in our country. Wintergreen helps us be tough when the going gets tough. It also helps us stand up for ourselves no matter how much circumstances or other people seem to be intent on getting us down.

Calliandra– This is a tropical Flower. Flowering plants in the tropics don’t have to struggle against the climate as much as cold weather plants. This means their Flowers can really take off in dramatic ways. They are like spark plugs of energy and help us find our sass and zip as well. Calliandra has a Flower that is a ball of brilliant red threads. It looks like a fireworks burst of cleansing and clearing energy and that is just what it is. We have found it helps a lot when there has been a lot of painful experiences in our families and our hearts have closed a bit to protect ourselves. This one helps us let the light into our heart again and opens up all those rivers of love that we might not have felt safe to express. We describe it as good for the circulatory system but it is so much more.

Dombeya Wallichii- Here is another Flower from a tropical location, this time Madagascar. When it blooms Dombeya Wallichii smells like baking cake. Our Dombeya spent many years in my husband’s sixth grade classroom where students called it the “Cupcake Tree”. When it bloomed all the kids in the school would come visit it. It has beautiful clusters of pink flowers as well as a wonderful fragrance. Its gift as a Flower Essence is to help us feel sheltered and comforted like the most loving mother embracing us with unconditional love.

Teasel- I like how Flower Essences help us find energetic balance. Yes, Calliandra helps us let the love flow, but Teasel helps us let the love flow appropriately. It keeps others from violating our energy boundaries and taking energy from us that belongs to us. We own our energy system. It is no one else’s, and no one else should be in our energy system. Teasel is a wildflower that knows this. It is all about protecting our energy. You can see this when you look at Teasel‘s Flowers. That is one of the interesting things about many Flowers. They look like what they are for.

Gorse– One of the great things about Flower Essences is that they give us the opportunity to work with Flowers that grow in other places on earth. This helps us balance ourselves with energies from all parts of the world and thus become balanced global citizens. Our Gorse comes from Scotland. Here is how it is described on our website:

Gorse is a Flower Essence that floods us with uplifting light and hope. It is particularly supportive in situations of transition and challenges such as illness, despair or heartbreak. Gorse helps us have a steadiness of hope and optimism within ourselves even in situations in which we are being battered by the winds of change or find ourselves in an environment of pessimism. It is an excellent ally when a feeling of all is lost is prevalent because Gorse knows all is never lost.

People who live in certain climates tend to suffer from the same challenges both physically and emotionally. In Scotland the weather is chilly, damp and overcast most of the time. This can lead to a similar inner climate of wet, gloomy heaviness, so it is perfect that this Flower of optimism is right there in the fields of Scotland to uplift with its bright yellow blossoms.

Dittany from Crete– Sometimes a Flower Essence will hold the energy of the place where it was made as well as the Flower itself. With this Dittany from Crete there is a healing energy from the Flower that holds the energy of ten thousand years of healing work done by Cretans, especially Cretan women, to bring values of selfless love, generosity, peaceful coexistence and many values that prevailed on Crete before the rise of patriarchy. When we work with Flower Essences from Crete we get deeply rooted support from across time to be our most evolved selves.

After working with individual Flower Essences, I would love to see these groups get support from blended mixes but to work and play with individual Flower Essences first might be a memorable way to open the door to energy healing with Flowers. I asked the Angels to pick one mix for the group to consider and they chose Boundless. I loved this suggestion and this Flower Essence combination made from all the Flowers a garden called Boundless. This Essence has been cropping up a lot as an Essence that reminds us no matter what is going on in our lives, we are eternal spirit having a physical experience not the other way around.

After I wrote this I went back to check the counselor’s email to see if I had answered all the questions she had about offering Flower Essences to her circles. She had asked about how to explain the safety of Flower Essences. Here’s my thought on that. We are out in the world all our days. Some places we go and some people we encounter feel heavy on our spirits and make things more difficult. We keep on keeping on even when we have had that kind of low vibration experience. Flowers however always uplift. They offer the brightest most uplifting vibration of the plant because they are the most evolved part of the plant. AND they wish us well. When we work with Flower Essences we are inviting in the companionship of fellow travelers on our planet who only want to help us and carry only the best intentions. At worst their love and energy feels irrelevant, offering healing love we don’t need, but so often Flowers and Flower Essences are the very gift we most need, reminding us WE ARE LOVED.

Yesterday afternoon I helped the staff Goddesses pack orders. When pulling an order from the stack, you never knows what you’ll get. That’s part of the fun of it. An order for the entire Green Hope Farm Combos collection? A large bottle of Anxiety? All the Rose trios? An order can be a nearly unlimited variety of Flower Essences.

The first order I pulled yesterday was for a Custom Mix. In our bottling room we have a wall that holds a small bottle of every mother Flower Essence. This means we can stand in front of this wall and mix a custom mix all from the wall of Flower Essences. As I stood in front of this wall of Flower Love, I thought both about Custom Mixes and this specific Custom Mix.

Custom Mixes are an excellent way to begin working with Flower Essences. We put a baker’s dozen Flower Essences in each Custom Mix we create for you, your client, your friend, your family member or your beloved animal companion. You tell us what you want the Custom Flower Essence Mix to support, and we take it from there. This is a great way to tap into our expertise. It is especially helpful when you or a beloved is ill or dealing with such a complicated situation that it is a relief to have someone else figure out what you or a beloved needs. I also love it when people choose their own 13 Flower Essences for a Custom Mix. I learn so much from seeing how you put Flower Essences together.

Custom Mixes have such lovely, strong healing energies. As I assembled the first order’s Custom Mix yesterday, I felt how comforting and uplifting the Mix would be for its recipient. I contemplated making a second bottle for myself as it felt so wonderful! With the Mix assembled, I returned to the main office from the bottling room to thank Vicki who had chosen the Flower Essences for the Custom Mix. I felt so grateful for her healing work in choosing the Flower Essences for the Mix.

The staff Goddesses creating Custom Mixes have all been here at Green Hope Farm for a very long time, several decades in the case of Vicki and Elizabeth. All of us take the process of creating a Custom Mix for you very seriously. We often discuss as a group what Flower Essences might be considered for a certain concern or situation. We also ask for guidance from our upstairs staff. Custom Mixes are a collaborative creation and a magical one. We may get a prompting to include a certain Flower Essence, then when we read its description, we get insight why it is included in the mix. Much time and energy is spent formulating each Custom Mix.

Each Custom Mix offers unique and healing music, a bespoke and harmonious download of vibrational information for you or a beloved. Custom Mixes sing through our energy field with a healing purpose and clarity that takes my breath away.

It occurred to me as I packed up this specific Custom Flower Essence Mix that you might be interested to see what was requested and what Flower Essences were included in the Mix.

This Green Hope beloved asked for a Custom Mix that would help them deal with depression, sadness, no motivation and feeling stuck in anxiety and fear. They closed their request saying they aspired to more self love, hope and happiness.

The Custom Mix which Vicki created contained these 13 Flower Essences: Borage, Gorse, Don’t Worry-Bee Happy, Pumpkin, Anxiety, Be Fearless, Boundless, Meadowsweet, To Thine Own Self Be True, Kapha, Crab Apple, Coral Pink Rose and FJ Grootendorst Rose.

I loved how the Flower Essences chosen addressed all the topics mentioned by the Green Hope beloved and also went deep into these concerns in unexpected ways. Flower allies who have delivered so much healing support were there as were some surprises like Boundless. I felt so happy sending off this mix and so grateful to be here. Each day I learn more about the Flowers and their gifts. Each day you and the Staff Goddesses, upstairs and down, teach me so much.

I’ve had a lot of conversations about grief and loss lately. 2024 has started off for many I know with rocky times and big losses. This has me thinking about what grieving beloveds need. As I share in their grief, I take our Grief & Loss Flower Essence not so much to keep grief from my door or to manage my grief, but so I can be present to those grieving and can be there with an open heart as they navigate their losses.

We have pervasive cultural ideas that our grief is something to be denied if possible and suppress if not. Not only are we encouraged to aggressively manage our own grief, but we are encouraged to do this with other’s grief too. I went to the dictionary to look for other expressions like “stiff upper lip.” I wanted to comment how unfortunate I thought these phrases that inhibit grief are. I was horrified to discover that the following phrases were listed as synonyms for “stiff upper lip:” assured, composed, cool as a cucumber, self possessed, tranquil, unflappable. There it was in the dictionary that we respect those who don’t cry and don’t express their grief and see them as assured, composed and cool as a cucumber. The verbal bones of our world and so many other forces encourage us to close our hearts to grief and the grieving when perhaps most of all grieving folks need open hearted companionship.

I heard two different stories about grief this week. They stood in opposition to each other and spoke poignantly of what can be in situations of grief and what is often the case instead.

This is the first story shared with me. Having recently lost his mother, this young man went to his brother to talk about his deep and complicated grief. His brother put him off. He told him to get his act together and get over his depression. He said to suck it up. As I heard this young man recount his shock at his brother’s response, it brought home to me again that what we most want in our grief is not to feel alone, to have others willing to go there with us and be present with us in our grief.

It would seem a logical thing that a sibling would be open to hearing his brother’s grief, however this sibling was locked in our cultures ideas of grief management, ideas that drain us and lock us in a frozen place. The young man felt compassion for his brother, even as he felt that he needed to make different choices about whom to look to for support in his grief.

The other story involved a beloved but geographically distant friend receiving a very challenging medical diagnosis. Even as I began to worry about the help she would need, many local friends gathered to organize the necessary and ongoing care. My friend had participated in a Grief group after the death of her husband. It seemed that her friends in this group went immediately and fearlessly into the experience of being present for her as she faced her situation and grieved the loss of what had been her life before this moment. It was awe inspiring to hear of this outpouring of love.

In thinking about these two different situations, I realized not for the first time that Grief & Loss Essence serves both those grieving and those who stay present with those who are grieving. Yes, the Flowers in our Grief & Loss mix help us be present with our grief, move with our grief and come to terms with our grief. The Flowers buoy us up in the worst moments but never repress or control or suppress our grief. They also help us bear witness and console the grieving.

Every time I look at the Flower Essences in Grief & Loss, I learn something more about what we need when we are grieving. Every time I work with this remedy, which has literally been thousands of time, I feel profoundly supported.

I’ve come to respect this Flower Essence combination and its deep wisdom more and more as the years go by. The Grief & Loss Essence is like a parable. The more I experience in life, the more aware I am of this Essence’s many strengths. What I saw in it 35 years ago were qualities that helped me with the uncomplicated griefs of losing a beloved grandmother, step grandmother and companion animals. These were clean griefs without regret or confusion. Later I would discover how this mix had layers of purpose and support as I leaned on it for the much more complicated losses and griefs that came my way as I got older.

How grateful I have been that it was Angels and not me who composed this mix. They always knew the vast complexities of possible griefs and losses and could easily rise above all cutural biases to create a healing remedy with no patriarchal overtones of controlling, suppressing or denying grief.

While every Flower in this Grief & Loss mix has many gifts, I thought I would mention one or two for each Flower acknowledging that it is a woefully inadequate description of the Flower’s strengths but a bit of a shout out in any case. I will always remain grateful for the ways this remedy has helped me live with grief and loss and be a companion as best I can to others in grief.

Alex MacKenzie Rose– helps us find the courage and fortitude to be present in our grief or that of another

Arrowhead– helps us know what we feel as well as bring our most clear eyed and grounded self to even the most murky and overwhelming situations

Arbor Garden– helps us feel our indivisible oneness even when we have been divided by death or other circumstances

Blackberry– a sweet friend untangling our confusion so we have clarity and release from the anguish of our mental tangles

Borage– for the courage to dive into our feelings with calm, a sense of purpose and confidence we are not alone in our sorrows

Camaieux Rose– shelters and consoles us as we accept painful realities (from the Roses on the Additional Flower Essence list)

Coral Pink Rose– uplifts and supports us when we have experienced many losses and griefs and feel worn down, helps us release worry

Crinum Lily– for griefs & losses that call us to heal deep and old wounds of trauma (from the Costa Rica Essences on the Additional Flower Essence list)

Cucumber– confidence that grief is its own perfect expression of deep truth and though painful is itself life affirming

Eyes of Mary– supports us to find a perspective on our losses without belittling our pain, helps us respond lovingly to those who are suffering without a desire to fix things for them

Honeysuckle finding the truth of how we feel about our losses free of nostalgia or sentimentality

Hyssop helps to stay present in our grief with complete kindness for ourselves

Indian Pipe– help to feel the ever present current of peace in all situations even extremely sad and painful ones

Joe Pye Weed– support from spirit who hold us in total love as we grieve

Madame Hardy Rose– for the sorrow when we lose a deeply beloved person or place that feels irreplaceable (from the Roses on the Additional Flower Essence list)

Maltese Cross– helps us find our confidence that we will survive grief that tears us apart

Maple– for knowing our strength and finding our center amidst great suffering

Mustard– support when we feel griefs that are ancient, gloomy and relentless

Old Blush China Rose– for the strength to endure, a very old Rose that helps us find our own ability to keep going

Painkiller Plant– helps us experience the gifts our painful suffering has given us

Pale Pink Rose– support for all involved at the transition of death

Pink Tecoma comfort in our grief, a soft blanket wrapped around us

Star of Bethlehem– confidence the losses will one day bring new beginnings,

Swamp Candles– for dark night of the soul experiences

Trillium– brings sturdy balance and inner calm amidst grief experiences

White Bleeding Heart- solace for broken hearts (from the Green Hope Essences on the Additional Flower Essence list)

White Hibiscus– a mending balm when events have left us feeling broken and empty

Witch Hazel– when in a season of losses, this one helps us find sparks of enduring life

Yellow Water Lily– helps us feel connected to source even amidst difficult losses and deep griefs