Our big excitement today is the launch of our Sicily and Santorini Flower Essence collection. And this, the flag of Sicily, is the one we wave in celebration!
During the winter and spring of 2010, Emily Sheehan lived in Ortigia, the oldest part of the city of Siracusa, Sicily. Travels in the Mediterranean took her all over the island of Sicily, to Tunisia and also to the Greek island of Santorini.

Emily has always had a deep connection to the Flowers. Flowers were her first language, and the word “Flower” was literally her first word. As a small child she would open her mouth like a baby bird and say, “Flowers” when she wanted Flower Essences. By the time she was four she was asking me to make certain Flower Essences including the marvelous Baby Blue Eyes which has served many generations of children with its wisdom.

Since then she has played a part in many, many Green Hope Farm Flower gardens and bottled and packed thousands of our Flower Essences to ship off to all of you. With this history, it came as no surprise that a now grown up Emily would return from her travels with a wonderful collection of Flower Essences reflecting the heart and soul of this ancient part of the world.

This is Emily’s first collection of Flower Essences for Green Hope Farm and throughout her experience of bringing it forward to share with all of you, it was made clear to me again and again that the Angels of Sicily and Santorini had entrusted into Emily’s hands alone this collection and that she was their guardian and spokesperson.

When Emily chose to go live in Sicily, none of our family had been to Italy or Greece. I’d read much about the Flowers and gardens of Sicily in particular and had felt a deep kinship with the gardens in Taormina. None the less, the Angels kept me out of the project, explaining that it was Emily who had the most profound connection to Sicily, and it was Emily that was meant to bring back this collection of Flower Essences to share with all of you.

After Emily’s return to the farm, when I tried to hurry this collection into the world, the Angels reminded me again that I was not in charge of this collection and that Emily was both the voice of this collection as well as the person in charge of when it was to be released. Emily was very firm and clear about everything to do with this collection and stayed true to her inner sense of what was being asked of her.

My experience of watching this collection unfold has been a revelation of Sicily’s wisdom in particular. Sicily is a place that has been invaded so many times that to read her history is to have one’s head set spinning, and yet, Sicily prevails and is her truest self in a most profound way. Not only that, but she has learned to be her authentic self no matter what happens to her. Benign as well as violent external events leave her core identity undiminished.

And despite forces that would conceal or twist her wisdom, she knows how to express herself with great vitality and skill. Here with this collection of Flower Essences she chose exactly which Flowers she wanted made and exactly how and when they would be presented to the world and she did this by choosing Emily, knowing Emily would listen to her wisdom with great care and integrity.

Throughout the past year, much about this collection remained a mystery to me, especially the timing of our launch. If you have read our home page this past year you saw how frequently I got ahead of both Emily and Sicily about when I expected to share these Flower Essences. Yet now, as we unveil this collection, it feels in such divine order to launch this collection right now as per Sicily’s guidance.

As the winds of freedom sweep across this region of the world, this collection feels deeply supportive of this process of self definition and alignment with our truest eternal selves.

It has been an honor to meet Sicily through her Flowers and through Emily’s eyes and heart. It has been a honor to bear witness to this collection as Emily and the Angels and Elementals of these Flowers, Sicily and Santorini worked together to create and now launch this collection of simply marvelous Flower Essences. May this collection bring you as much joy and healing as it has brought me.

One last story before the four posts about this collection. When I was describing this collection to one of you last week, you told me a story which somehow summed up for me the depths and unexpected power and beauty of these Flower Essences and of Sicily herself. You described a scene in which someone had gone to the home of a Sicilian grandmother to watch her cook a meal to share at her table.

Upon arriving at the grandmother’s home, the way into the kitchen was blocked by one of the men of the household who stood at the threshold of the kitchen filling the airwaves with talk talk talk while in the background, the grandmother of the family cooked in the shadows. When the meal was served, it was the most delicious, colorful and flavor packed meal this visitor had ever had, a meal unlike any other and miraculously prepared by this tiny grandmother in an ancient kitchen.

This story echoes all I have learned of Sicily. No matter what appears to be happening on the surface at the front of the house, the beauty, wisdom, love and heart of Sicily lives and speaks with complete abandon, joy and truth in unexpected and imperishable ways.

With this collection of Flower Essences, she speaks through her Flowers.