One of the joys of working with Flower Essences is watching how children and animals embrace their gifts.
It has been my experience that children approach Flower Essences with enthusiasm, delight and confidence in Flower Esssences and in their ability to make the most of them.
Children like it when someone spritzes them with a mix of Flower Essences. They will dance around under the spray with joyful abandon. They also love it when they are set loose to make their own Flower Essence mix in their own bottle. They will select and mix Flower Essences with focus and clarity as if they have been making mixes from the beginning of time.
From babyhood, children will seek out Flower Essences when they feel in need. One of my children’s first words was “flower.” As a small toddler, Emily would say “flower” then open her mouth like a baby bird to receive drops of Flower Essences in her mouth. Now her children, nieces and nephews also reach for the Essences as do many visiting children.
It is such fun when a new child visits, looks over our inventory of Flower Essences and then judiciously choses bottles. Children can read the energy of Flower Essences way before they can read their labels. If given a chance, they will flawlessly choose Flower Essences that address whatever is going on with them. I’ve seen so many children confidently choose what they need without a moment’s doubt. I have also gotten to read your many letters about children in your lives and how they use Flower Essences. We treasure all your stories.
I also remember so many instances when Flower Essences brought an immediate and noticeable shift in a child. Children’s work with Flower Essences is inspiring and aspirational. They don’t let ideas of limitation bog them down but recognize what the Flowers offer and embrace this fully.
Animals also approach Flower Essences with an attitude which both indicates they recognize the gifts of Flower Essences, and also that they know they deserve these gifts. Like children, they don’t limit their availability to the gifts of Flower Essences but soak them in fully.
Yes, I have witnessed sniffy cats who have to get used to the gifts of Flower Essences before cozying up to them, but in the vast majority of situations, cats, like other animals, make full use of the Flower Essences that they are offered. Animals recognize Flower Essences as healing energies they would have found in Nature if they were given full range to roam. When presented with these energies in a bottle form, they delight in their arrival.
Rescue animals sometimes take to Flower Essences differently than other animals because the damage done them by the human community has hurt their sense of the unlimited and supportive nature of life. This is one reason I am so grateful that so many of you and so many rescue organizations use our Flower Essences especially Abandonment & Abuse as over time, the shackles of these bindings can be dissolved and these dear ones can find a trusting relationship with life and with people again.
We do much work with the Global Sanctuary for Elephants in Brazil, and it is one of so many projects that bring us to tears of joy as these dear elephants find their true nature again after lifetimes of incarceration.
To come at this idea of moving from limitation to the unlimited, I want to talk about a book I reread and reread. The book is Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher. I reread the book during December each year and try to finish it by the actual Solstice. I have probably read it twenty times and practically know it by heart, but I have no intention of stopping.
I have no other book that calls to me in quite the same way, and I spend a lot of time wondering what possesses me to reread this book year after year.
My current theory is that it has to do with this topic of limits. I love all of Rosamunde Pilcher’s books including her best known Shell Seekers, but I believe this is her wisest book. There is no plot synopsis that could do the book justice, but I offer a short one anyways. The book is about a group of people who unexpectedly find themselves staying in the same house in Scotland during the cold, dark month of December. Some are related and others are strangers. Each person in the book has experienced a shattering blow in their lives. Rosamunde doesn’t belabor this nor do the characters. but each of them must find great inner strength and courage to rise above their personal pain to take care of each other during this unexpected house party. My description may make this book sound trite and maybe a bit grim, but it’s not. The story is told through all the different characters perspective, and the reader falls in love with each of them. Some characters even fall in love with each other, but unlike many of her books (all of which I love), other kinds of love join romantic love in this story.
The characters are plucky and don’t take themselves too seriously. They acknowledge their wounds but try to get on with it using humor as one of their survival tools. Rosamunde always has wonderfully irritating minor characters who do their best to selfishly ruin everything, but in this book these characters are dealt with and move offstage. The people gathered are flawed but trying to accept their fates with grace and selflessness. Again, this sounds BORING but it’s not.
As I dive into Winter Solstice again this year, I have been thinking how each character in the book has been given problems that could limit their outlook and approach to their unexpected new lives. They could rest in bitterness and even justify their bitterness because they have all been through the wringer. However, the difficulties they see each other facing bring out their desire to rise above their own situations and become a sort of unlimited version of themselves. Life has tested their faith and they have consciously decided to embrace life anyways.
I have made this sound much more obvious and reductive than the story actually is. Rosamunde is at her most subtle here, which may be why I have had to read the book twenty times to even begin to have theories about what makes this a magical book.
In any case, Winter Solstice inspires me just as the beloved children and animals do to not get so tied to what I think of as limits in my life or in “reality” or in my view of humanity and just know we all can and will rise above our limits to be more full of love than we ever imagined.
