Staff Goddess Lynn grew up on Bermuda when it was a sleepy island flush with fields of Bermuda onions. Her parents had a house across the harbor from the city of Hamilton. From her bedroom Lynn could watch all the boat traffic in and out of Hamilton harbor. She took a ferry across the harbor to go to school, and on weekends she captained her small sailboat with her dog as crew. It was an idyllic and happy childhood.

When she invited me to visit Bermuda in the 80’s and 90’s, she was a grandmother living in Vermont. Her job at Green Hope Farm was writing the labels for our Flower Essences. We called her our Lady of the Labels.

Lynn’s mother was still alive, so Lynn went out to Bermuda every two months to check in on her. One day she invited me to go with her. I had three little children at that point but also a very helpful husband who said he would cover for me for a week away. Off we went. Little did I know how much I would love Bermuda or how often I would return in the years to come. Tropical flora, pink sand beaches, colorful houses with white roofs all mixed together with a British twist. Lynn knew just about everyone on the island, and once we explained our mission to make Flower Essences from Bermuda Flowers, her friends welcomed us into their ancient gardens to wander and pluck to our hearts content.

Our days were continuous fun. A gorgeous morning walk topped off with a blissful swim would be followed by afternoons in one glorious garden or another, always with our glass jars at the ready. In the days before 911, we knew we would be waved through customs by friends of Lynn. They had no problem with our “potions” so we made a lot of them. And I mean LOTS.

We would finish our afternoons with tea at various old fashioned resorts that served scones strawberries and clotted cream. Something about our days searching for Flowers made us feel like teenagers again. A bit of Nancy Drew because we were always sleuthing for new Flowers met with a bit of just plain teenage silliness.

One afternoon as we were making Monkey Tail Flower Essence, we were interrupted by a group of British tourists that didn’t know about our quest for Flower Essences. The look of horror on their faces as they saw us with our tweezers carefully lowering a two foot long fuzzy red thing into a jar of water struck us as so very funny. Some of our delight came in shaking things up. Lynn’s friends also seemed to like how we were turning their understanding of their gardens on its head. The veil is thin in Bermuda. Both Lynn and I had unusual dreams, saw unusual things in the gardens and got very specific messages from the Devas of the various gardens. We were happy to share all that we were learning, and Lynn’s friends embraced it all.

The reason I thought to write this blog today is because yesterday I mixed a batch of Watch Your Back from the many Bermuda as well as GHF mother Flower Essences in our collection. As I was working my way through the Palm Essences, I remembered the particulars of finding each Palm in bloom. At one lovely lunch in the garden of one of Lynn’s old friends, I noticed a Palm blooming twenty feet over our heads. No sooner had I mentioned this to our hostess than she whipped out an enormous step ladder and I found myself climbing up to meet and greet and then harvest Queen Palm blossoms for a Flower Essence.

Bottle Palm, Chinese Fan Palm, Coconut Palm, Date Palm, European Fan Palm, Figi Fan Palm, Fishtail Palm, Golden Areca Palm, Manila Palm, Queen Palm, Royal Palm and Travelling Palm all go into our Watch Your Back Flower Essence. All have a story and came to us due to the generosity and interest of Lynn’s childhood friends. We collected Palm Flower Essences so assiduously because the doctrine of signature and our eyes and then our experiences revealed the profound strengths of these Flowers with their energetic support for our backs, the central nervous system and the chakra system.

Bermudians are serious gardeners so every garden friend knew their Flowers or had reference books for when we were stumped. I learned so much about tropical and semitropical plants from this learned group. On one trip we focused on Flowers we delicately called P plants to support Lynn’s husband with his urinary tract and prostate problems. This was how Flow Free came to be (and why we were lowering Monkey Tail into a jar).

Oddly enough, many Bermudians used to get their tropical plants from a mail order place in Connecticut named Logee’s. It is no longer possible to mail Logee’s plants to Bermuda, but back in the day, the plant tags in people’s gardens on their tropical specimens often sported a Logee’s logos. Once I had befriended plants in Bermuda, I filled my greenhouse with these same plants purchased by me from Logee’s. This bringing Bermuda to New Hampshire proved essential as we often need to have tropical Flowers for Flower Essences at the ready here at the farm.

But for the Palms, we are still grateful to Bermuda friends who shared their gorgeous Palms with us with total generosity. And of course, I will always be so very grateful for my now departed dear friend Lynn who introduced me to Bermuda, its glorious Flowers and made our adventures there so much fun.

I have often written about how orders for our Flower Essences come in waves with Flower Essences that have been relatively quiet on our shelves suddenly having a big moment.

One beloved Flower Essence friend had quite a week last week- Canna Indica. This dynamo from the powerhouse Taiwan collection sailed out of here as fast as we could pack orders. Here is it’s description on the website:

This essence is a beacon for restoring vitality after physical or emotional violence, war, and terror. This is a lifeline, steadily tugging us to shore. Working with this Flower Essence is like undergoing a deep thaw. Like coming in from the cold winter, hands and feet tingling and itchy as they begin to feel the warmth again.

Our Flower Essences have a short phrase illuminating their purpose before their longer descriptions and for Canna Indica the phrase is, “It’s going to be okay.” That phrase really speaks to these chaotic times. We are so depleted by the pillaging and brutality of those who think themselves in charge, and yet underneath there is a current of truth that can revitalize us by reminding us we are going to be okay. The light is going to prevail because the light is infinitely bigger and more powerful than the darkness. We just have to find a way to hold on, stay warm, keep going until the light in all of us dissolves this ugly moment.

Engaging in the current dynamic by being our light is not a passive or pessimistic throw in the towel sort of stance. It is a standing in the truth of eternal verities.

So many of the Taiwan Flower Essences help us with this. They support us to overcome authoritarian behavior and move beyond any habit to submit to bullies or those who would use their power inappropriately. The vibration of these Flower Essences reminds us we are the ONLY authority in our own lives. Their focus on dissolving illusions of hierarchy makes the collection an excellent one for right now, a chaotic moment when a small select few work to either destroy things or steal things.

Golden Armor, the Sovereignty Set, the Taiwan Collection, the Sacred Feminine and the Flower Essences from Crete all remind us ( no matter our gender) that it is vital to listen to our inner Sacred Feminine and act in accordance with this wisdom. This is the path that helps us hold our own in this time. This inner wisdom also gives us perspective. It knows we are okay. It knows we are whole. It knows we have done enough (more likely way too much). It knows that love is the only real thing and we can rise above the haters as simply misinformed and irrelevant..

My definition of December is the month where way too much is asked of us all but most especially of women who have always been the ones that carried the holidays. We need to lean our inner wisdom to help us say NO when too much is asked of us. We need to be kind to ourselves and do less and then cut that less in half and do even less. We can no longer let the bastards wear us down with their demands made constantly in this media culture. So what if they call us names when we speak our truth or simply don’t do what is expected of us.

In the early years of the business a hater could get me down for way too long. The Essences and thirty five years in the saddle here have helped me to not take the haters personally. We have to work around them and not give our power away by believing what they say. Its an inside job to stop empowering their hate and believing it. We had a hater this morning. The staff goddess at the receiving end of a veritable assault asked me what to do. I encouraged her not to pick up the hate, let it sail on past as nothing to do with us. To simply move on.

Yes, we could believe the horrible things being said especially about women and minorities by those who think they are in charge right now. Let’s sail on by. Let’s continue to be the amazing, capable, light filled, sassy, and utterly splendid humans we are. Let’s ignore the misinformed and take back control of what’s left of this month by loving ourselves, being gentle with ourselves, doing a lot less and laughing.

Like most of us, I’ve had conversations with hundreds of thousands of people. The vast majority of my interactions have been positive, kind and sweet. On email here in the office I find you to be earnestly trying to take care of your beloveds and working hard to be a force of love and light in the world. You inspire me and brighten my days.

In truth, it is a very small minority that makes trouble for most of us by behaving as if they are better and more deserving than the rest of us and by pitting us against each other so as to conquer and divided.

The only way we believe that we are a divided country with everyone at each other’s throats is if that is what we are repeatedly told. The vast majority of us want everyone fed. We want education to be available to all. We want health care for each other. We manage to get along at our Thanksgiving dinners regardless of our differences. We are civil to those we disagree with.

Yet constantly we are told this is not so. Dividing us and making us believe we are a warring tribe is the playbook that works for robber barons. A lot more of our resources and peace of mind can be stolen from us when we are in chaos or confusion. Telling us we hate each other is confusing.

A very small minority don’t want us to cooperate or see the good in each other because it serves their greed.

How do we deal with this?

While things seem to exist in a duality of better than- worse than, this is not true. We exist as one energy. So reminding ourselves that no one is better or even separate from anyone else is good to do. This idea of duality is a patriarchal wound. We will become our very best selves when we let this illusion go and never wobble into believing what that small minority is telling us. It is powerful to stand in the truth beyond this illusion of duality.

As we stake ourselves in a bigger truth, Golden Armor and the Sovereignty Set help us hold our own energetically despite the pressure to believe and absorb all the propaganda.

I don’t know about you, but I am finding the AI overview that crops up when I ask Google any question to be bonkers as well as annoying. The weird answers I get when I ask a knitting question alone make for endless head scratching. Even finding a latin name for a Flower has gotten dicey. Discernment about everything we are being told is true is vital.

Spiderwort is one that helps us examine what we are being force fed to see if it is really true.

I have also begun to think of our country as purple not blue or red. Purple is what we really are as we live with people of all persuasions all around us in such close proximity that the two colors blends to purple.

Purple is the color of forgiveness and transmutation. That is a good thing. The Violet Transmuting Flame Violet can be used with the Violet Flame to wash the whole country in this light of forgiveness and transmutation. We will rise up from this time and forgiveness help this process.

It is also time to put our cynicism aside and think of all the instances where despite our differences, we get along just fine.

Our town holds two town meetings each spring to consider and vote on the town budget and the school budget. Our town is not a homogenous group of people, yet we always manage to get through the town meeting and find consensus. The rules of the meeting keep us in order when things get testy, but we also rein it in because we know we will have to see the person we disagree with the next day at our village store or post office.

Just as in our small town, our country and our planet can only move forward together.. It helps to hold fast to the vast majority of kind interactions we have with each other. It helps to question what we are being told is the truth. It helps to know our kindness to others matters.

I for one have appreciated all your loving kindness so much and thank you so much for all you have shown me about human goodness.

PS A day after I posted this the Angels asked me to add Gorse to the suggestions. This one really helps when we feel hopeless or have that ” all is lost feeling.” May it bring you the support you need to feel hope.