One of the most powerful things about Flower Essences is that they help us untangle and dismantle bindings that have been very difficult to resolve.

A letter accompanying an order for Flower Essences sits before me. The eighty years young woman who sent the letter finds herself in an abusive relationship with her older brother who controls the family trust. He doesn’t share her values which focus on being loving, kind and open to new ways of thinking about things. Her hopeful, expansive and sweet point of view drives her brother wild. In response, he has called her a lot of ugly names and cut her off from all but the bare minimum of support from the family trust. As with so many Green Hope Farm friends, I have known this woman a long time. Through the decades she has shared her deep and playful enthusiasm for Divinity sometimes calling the farm to sing a song and always sending us beautiful collages she has created.

This time she writes that her brother has made it impossible for her to proceed with treating her cancer with additional alternative support as well as conventional medical care. You all know how I feel about anyone interfering with our choices about how we take care of ourselves and our health. I am saddened we continue to have people think they should make health care decisions for anyone else but themselves. This Green Hope Farm friend stopped living in the same household in an abusive relationship with this bullying brother sixty years ago, yet he still plays a major role in her life and in her health care decisions.

When someone is in an abusive relationship, there are so many layers to peel away, and so much healing to be done. When the abuse is coming from a relative, the Family River trio is powerful for its capacity to help free us from the ingrained mindset of our family system that might bind us to the situation. The trio empowers us to understand the situation with much greater clarity and frees us to decamp, keeping only the divine wisdom of our family bloodline.

Golden Armor and All Contracts Null & Void are profound for their support to cut the bindings that keep us connected to abusers. The Angels created the Sovereignty Set to support us with this as well. Among many other gifts, this set helps us deconstruct the many ways the group think of patriarchy keeps us bound in unhealthy dynamics. Our bodies belong only to ourselves. No external structure or person should be able to make health care choices for us as this brother is doing with his sister.

Abandonment & Abuse from the Animal Wellness collection is always a go to Essence when someone is in an abusive relationship. It has been used by countless rescue animals and countless people too. There is so much collateral damage done by abuse, and this Essence supports the deep wound healing that must be done. Wound Healing is another go to in this situation. I love this Essence.

In the case of this Green Hope Farm friend, she also made a deep dive into the Additional Flower Essence list to choose some other supportive Flower Essence tools. As always when I look over a group of Essences one of you has chosen for yourself, I learned a lot from her choices.

It is empowering to witness that this Green Hope Farm friend does not settle into a victim stance as she deals with her brother. She makes Essence choices that empower her to whatever degree it is possible to move the situation along to a more humane dynamic. She chose Duchesse de Brabant Rose and then notes its description “I AM an energetic mover and shaker. Consider me to help bring your mind and circumstances into greater order. I AM an excellent remover of inner and outer clutter and offer my services to support you in these tasks.”

While so many have used Ducheese de Brabant Rose from the Bermuda section of the Additional Flower Essence list to help with cleaning our homes, this Green Hope friend calls on this Rose to help bring inner and outer order for other reasons. In her own words she notes that, “The Duchesse is about paring down and getting rid of excess as in “less is more” to reveal the core of simple beauty.” I found it inspiring that she takes this approach to the financial restraints imposed upon her by her brother. She is not going to take it lying down. She is getting legal help, but she is also working to make peace with what is.

In confronting the dynamic with her brother and family of origin, she chose Monkey Flower also from the Bermuda section of the Additional Flower Essence list, once more writing out its description in her letter, “For unraveling dense, dark knotted family issues including abuse, incest, betrayal and for healing wounds suffered from these situations or from any instance in which one person in a family misuses his or her power to control or hurt another. This can also help with relationship wounds.”

Another she chose to resolve this family of origin drama once and for all is Pandorea also from the Bermuda section of the Additional Flower Essence List. Once more she copied the description in her letter, “Helps us to unlock closely guarded issues and reveal old wounds and secrets so they can be healed. This can lift great emotional and spiritual burdens from us as Pandorea helps us to release as well as acknowledge old baggage and things we may have hidden in ourselves that we haven’t wanted to look at. It also releases the negative charge around these hidden matters so that we can “houseclean” ourselves with detachment and calm.” I love how once again she chooses a Flower Essence that empowers her to actively resolve whatever her part in the situation, no matter how small a part this might be.

This discussion is but the tip of the iceberg about which Flower Essences can serve you in breaking free of abusive relationships and healing the wounds that the abusive relationship may have caused you. Please trust your own guidance about which Flower Essences can help you and know we are here to support you in figuring our which Flower Essences to work with and in your journey to wholeness, healing and joy.

Our Flower Essences have connected me with so many people living with such love and clear intention to serve others. Today I thank you all.

One Green Hope beloved who has given her life to serve people in pain and peril wrote today in anguish about communities affected by Helene. While she serves her hometown community each and every day, her heart is also in Asheville.

This woman has been through so much sorrow including the death of her beloved child. Amidst all her personal suffering she has continued to advocate for and take care of so many disenfranchised, suffering people. She truly lives a life of love in action.

If she is upset by the suffering of a specific group of people, she helps write a bill to support them. Then she buckles down and works until the bill gets passed. She has done this numerous times. She has put her money where her mouth is in her personal life as well. When her mother disinherited her sister, she gave her sister her share of the estate after her mother died.

Today this dear woman was trying to figure out why horrible things like Helene happen. I had no answers for her, but her reaching out did give me an opportunity to thank her for the way she lives her life. I don’t think she has any idea the difference her love has made, but it was great to have an opportunity to remind her that her love matters and has mattered to so many.

One of the things I noticed when challenges filled my life was that some people wanted to frame the events as if I deserved them. Patriarchy suggests that if we are good, work hard, do the right things, we will be spared suffering and for those who don’t do a good enough job, well…. the suffering is their just reward. This bogus idea magnifies our suffering by leaving us suffering first from the actual challenge and then from the inner conviction that we deserved the suffering.

This friend does not live with this erroneous belief. She never buys into the patriarchal myth that some people deserve to suffer more than others. She works to relieve any and all from the burdens of their suffering.

The other thing I said to her was that I thought her love was enough. MORE than enough. In fact her love is the only thing that matters. It is what is needed and cuts right to the heart of every situation she finds herself in.

When we are suffering, we need love in action. It doesn’t matter if the person handing us the bowl of soup doesn’t have a theory why bad things have happened to us. The love of the soup bearer is what matters. That and the soup.

All the mind ideas we can gather to explain the unexplainable are just one more thing to let go of. Right now, I frame this as giving these ideas up to the Divine flow of the Eight, using the Eight Garden Essence to help me let go of things that don’t matter and that are not real.

Love is the only real thing. It is the only thing that matters. And so many of you live this truth in loving action every day. You walk your dog even in the freezing rain. You thank the grocery clerk. You tip the waitress even when things haven’t gone well because you know she’s not in charge of the back of the house. You knit for people who need chemo caps. You smile at a stranger who looks like they are having a bad day. You cook for hungry people even when you are very tired. You listen even when a friend is going over the same territory for the umpteenth time. You hug when hugs are needed. You gently take a bug outside when it has wandered in. You laugh at yourself and not at others.

I thank you all for each loving action that fill your lives. I salute you.