Despite record colds here at the farm, the greenhouse continues to bloom as if its spring in Bermuda and for that we are most grateful!

As I begin this blog post, I wanted to encourage you to skip the long backstory if you just would like Flower Essence suggestions for the throat chakra. As I look for recipes online, I often want to just skip to the recipe without the long introduction so please feel free to skip this intro and jump down to the Flower suggestions at the end!

BACKSTORY

When I was a young teenager I had many arguments with my maternal grandfather about the Equal Rights Amendment. This amendment was designed to guarantee legal protection for women from gender discrimination. In 1972, after passing in both houses of Congress, the amendment failed to be ratified by the necessary 38 states.

My grandfather liked to see himself as a progressive New Deal Democrat, but he maintained the ERA was an unnecessary bit of legal business, and he was adamantly against the amendment. Women, he maintained, already had equal rights and that was the story he told in the US History textbooks he wrote for high schools across America. His career wasn’t limited to penning textbooks but also included a stint as Ambassador to Chile for the United States under JFK as well as the presidency of Amherst College. Comfortable using the power perks of his jobs, he never paused to consider the backs on which his brilliant career was built.

One back belonged to my long suffering grandmother whose own creative and career aspirations were entirely swallowed by his constant need for her to play hostess at an endless parade of cocktail parties, dinner parties and other social functions that glued together the world he moved in.

My grandmother made one bid for freedom in her late twenties. She wrote and got published a detective story. I recently read a biography of Agatha Christie. She was just a bit older than my grandmother. Like my grandmother, she was shielded from any ideas of having a career or perception of herself as accomplished. In fact, even after writing eighty books, Christie described herself as a homemaker. During the 1930’s when Christie was sharpening Hercules Poirot’s ability to spot a poison, my grandmother joined her with her book, “I’m Afraid I’ll Live.” Set in Paris, a city my grndmother knew and loved, her book is so cynical, bitter and dark that I have always had a hard time connecting it to my warm and vivacious grandmother After reading the Christie autobiography I understand her book better. Women like Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and my grandmother found themselves in a a world that had shifted on its axis after World War I. In Britain a third of an entire generation of men were dead. No one could tell the women to wait in the parlor for Mr. Right to arrive because he was dead. Plunged into the working world when the men were at war, post war there was no going back. The women had seen death, sometimes as close up as the men in the trenches, and the blush was off the Rose. Yet an integrated shift in life goals doesn’t actually happen fast or seamlessly even when world politics have brought radical change. There were still a lot of mixed messages about what women were supposed to do. My grandmother’s career faltered after this first book. She had expressed some of her angst as well as her diverse ambitions in this detective story, but there were inner and outer forces that narrowed her self articulation and defined her worth only in relation to being the consummate hostess and helpmate to a golden husband.

And then in the 1970’s when my grandmother had entertained ten thousand guests for my grandfather, he still couldn’t see the power imbalance in his own marriage nor could he see that there needed to be structures to bring equal rights and equal power to women on a national scale.

And how pray tell does this connect with the throat chakra and Flower Essences? The third chakra orients around issues of our personal power in the world, but to me the fifth chakra, the throat chakra, is the heart of the matter. It’s the seat from which we speak and live our truth, the meeting place of head and heart. It’s the arena in which we work out the alignment process between what is expected of us and what we genuinely feel called to do. It’s where we figure out what we want to do and what we don’t want to do. It is a chakra that takes the hit when we are silenced by powerful forces outside ourselves and lingering conflicts within us, and it is one of the chakras that suffers when we do too much for other people because of ingrained cultural expectations.

It came as no shock to me when someone told me 85% of women in America have a thyroid imbalance ie challenges in their throat chakra. As women, we are frequently in less powerful positions and therefore in situations where we are either not listened to when we speak our truth or inhibited from speaking our truth because of the extreme consequences if we do speak up. We are also expected to do too much. Of course this is going to impact the health of organs in our throat chakra.

My grandmother expressed some of her complex feelings in her book, but it wasn’t enough, and she died at 65 right before the ERA went down in defeat. As far as I know, the power politics of her marriage were never discussed or even acknowledged by her or anyone else. I wonder if somewhere within her, she assessed the possible consequences of speaking up then decided it was too risky. I suspect she had no place even within herself to articulate her situation. All I know for sure is that to speak up and challenge the status quo might have brought her relationship losses. I know this because it brought losses for me when I took on some of the same power issues thirty years later.

For so many other women, in addition to relationship losses, financial pressures also drive the silence. Sometimes the pressures to stuff our feelings and our dreams go beyond that into life or death concerns.

My grandfather as a person of power and privilege had an obligation to share power with those less powerful i.e. women and other disenfranchised people. His complete failure to see power imbalances in his personal life or the life of the nation left a damaging legacy.

When my unstable and violent brother wanted to kill me and my children during my forties, my family of origin was still anchored in the values of my grandfather. They did not acknowledge that my children, Jim and I were in a less powerful position than my brother or that their decision to ostracize us for calling attention to our “embarrassing” crisis was a move of power politics. They did not see that they needed to help right the power imbalances and work with me and my husband, Jim, to protect us. When I failed to fall in with their world view that these death threats were unmentionable and something to be accepted or ignored even if we got killed, they pulled the relationship plug and removed me from their orbit.

The group had no perception of the situation as an unequal power balance. My own throat chakra took the hit as I felt unheard, felt full of fear and felt the sorrow of being unable to live as I wished in sanctuary with my children. In even standing separate from the view of the powerbrokers in my family, I had been cast off and this too caused grief in my throat chakra.

My grandfather’s sense of the world permeated everything that happened. And this is what so many disempowered folks face today. The views of earlier generations of power brokers still support the privileged few and leave way too many powerless and with throat chakras of stuck energy.

But we can change that, one empowered throat chakra at a time!

FLOWER ESSENCE SUGGESTIONS FOR A VIBRANT THROAT CHAKRA

And so, it has always been of great interest to me to seek Flower Essences that support us to move stuck energy in the throat energy- energies of grief, loss, fear, anger, bitterness. In a chakra that can be a sublime expression of love with and for Divinity, these are just a few of the Flower Essences that come out to get things moving, cleared, healing and flowing.

One place to find a complete list of our Flower Essence suggestions for the throat chakra is here. I highlight a few of our suggestions below.

Breathe– If you only want one to support your throat chakra, this might be the one as it combines a great many of our Flower Essences that support the health and well being of the throat chakra.

Flow Free– This is my go to for keeping energy moving. During the peak of the death threats the Angels had me using copious amounts of this remedy. I still use it most every day. It’s not that we should expect ourselves not to feel but that we need support to feel what we feel and then release the energy versus keep it stuck in our energy field. Keeping things Flowing is the profound strength of this dynamo.

Thyme– This magical Flower Essence brings so much healing to any situation in which we need time and a place of sanctuary to sort things out and find our way. I almost always recommend it for anyone with thyroid concerns. Thyme from Crete and also Thyme from Omey Island ( a tidal island in Ireland covered in Thyme) are also dynamos.

Wound Healing- We struggle with generational wounds and need the support of this complex and deeply healing combination remedy to shift the energies and fully find a new way. As I consider this Essence, I recall how very hard I worked to find the Flowers in this mix. For example, up and down goat trails in St John I searched long and hard for the “weed” Christmas Bush. It was worth every effort.

Cosmos– Among the first if not the first Flower Essence I made, this one helps us speak from the heart, a process essential to throat chakra health and finding our true voice in the world

Authentic Self– The Angels call this a Cosmic Unlock. It is an understatement to say it supports the work of the throat chakra is to help us know and articulate our authentic self despite inner and outer pressures to do otherwise. Authentic Self helps us do this.

Baby Blue Eyes– Our issues with the throat chakra often begin in childhood when we are silenced from expressing ourselves and our truth. This brilliant Essence friends empowers child as well as inner child to know her own value inspite of these experiences.

Dear Friends,

Since our beginnings over thirty years ago, we’ve tried very hard to make our Flower Essences as affordable as possible. We want all of you and the animals in your lives to have access to these marvelous tools

Despite our best efforts, we’ve had to raise our prices several times. Right now is another moment when we must raise our prices to cover our increased costs for seeds, bottles, bottle tops, boxes, labels, office supplies, postage, a living wage for our staff goddesses and just about everything else but the very Flowers themselves.

Sometime in the middle of February we will make this increase. Since there are so many products, it will be a bit complicated to change our online system and in house invoicing system for those who order by phone, mail or email. I will give you a heads up when we begin the change. I expect it will take a couple days. My webmaster son Ben says a couple hours, so I am hoping he is right!

One thing I can count on, since we’re human, we will probably have some snafus! Thank you so much for your understanding the necessity of us making this shift and your patience as we make this shift.

Single 1/2 ounce Flower Essences will be $9.50 with a 2 ounce bottle costing $32. Combination Flower Essences will be $11.35. 2 ounce combination Flower Essences will be $36.00. Sets will continue to be 20% less than the retail price.

One other piece of news is that we will incorporate credit cards into our online system when we make these changes. We hope this will be a real help for those who prefer not to use Pay Pal. We will continue to offer Pay Pal at check out but we will remove the Pay Pal fee.

Thank you so much for your understanding and kindness.

With much love, Molly

I have shared Flower Essences with four generations of family and with many of you dear ones and the beloved animals in your lives. Every experience reminds me how practical and down to earth these tools are and how wise are their gifts.

One way they help is to clear the way for light and healing to be revealed. They are like the chef who cleans and preps the kitchen to be able to effectively and efficiently cook a brilliant meal or like the snow plow person who plows the roads of snow so we can safely travel to where we need to go.

Flower Essences never add to our burdens or make things more complicated. Instead they help us let go of what we don’t need so we can get on with our lives less encumbered and more clear. They work to remove the logs in our path and the tangles interfering with our way forward. They help us remove the blinders obscuring who we are and what matters and what doesn’t.

Here are two recent examples of what I mean. One night this week two of my grandchildren came by for a short visit with their mom, Lizzie. Right as four year old Henry was coming into our house, a very heavy object drop on his big toe. As he entered the kitchen, he was crying in his mother’s arms. Even a quick glance at his toe showed the nail was already black with blood seeping out of the edges of the nail bed. It was a doozy.

Settling him and his mom on the couch, I spritzed then with some Emergency Care that I keep ever handy. This remedy always calms the waters. Henry’s mom was trying to decide if the toe was also broken. The Emergency Care supported the situation to settle so that it was easier for her to know what was going on. The Emergency Care helped Henry release his understandable tangle of feelings and move towards a calm that allowed us to better understand what was going on for him.

After spritzing with the Emergency Care I went out to the office to make Henry a bespoke mix. Among other Essences, his mix had Anxiety in it. After a spritz with this, Henry took possession of the bottle and settled more deeply in the crook of his mother’s arms. Soon Henry and his mom were quietly talking about how he was feeling. Henry had found his center again, and Lizzie was able to assess the situation and establish that the toe was not broken. The Flower Essences didn’t suppress his feelings but helped him release what he needed to release. He continued to feel what he needed to feel, but he could also bring himself to a discussion with his mom about the situation.

At the kitchen table, ten year old Grace was trying to do her math homework with the support of math teacher Grandpa. She was restless and distracted, and no wonder with the chaos of the bloody toe. She asked me to make her a custom mix too, and I went out to the office and made her one. Practically born with a Flower Essence in each hand, Grace uses Flower Essences with great proficiency and confidence. Usually she makes her own mixes, but I was happy to do this while she and Grandpa were at work. When I returned with the mix, she spritzed it on herself and Grandpa. In a matter of moments, they were focused and intent on her math word problems.

One of the things I love about Flower Essences is that they don’t add something more to situations. Instead they help us release all that we don’t need so we find the invaluable that is already within us. They helped Henry find his inner strength to handle a painful experience. They helped Grace find her inner determination and ability to do the dread word problems.

Finding what we need already within us is the point to me of everything. We already are one with divinity. We don’t need to add anything or become something. We already are everything. Flower Essences help us strip away everything obscuring this realization. One Flower at a time they take us to a moment of awakening to who we really are.

During the pandemic, I heard someone say, “Every day is Blursday, because every day feels like the same day.” As I consider the landscape of Green Hope Farm Flower Essences at the end of this year, I feel like 2022 was morphed with 2020 and 2021 not so much as the same day but as an almost a continuous experience of constant change and adaptation for all of us here and everywhere.

When everything shut down in March of 2020, I found myself alone in the office doing all the jobs that five or sixth people usually did. I vastly overestimated my ability to do everything and dove into marathon days and nights in the office with misplaced confidence. By May I had a bad kidney infection that would not quit.

I always think of kidneys as being about feeling supported. Like so many, I found myself in a situation in which those who wanted to help me were tied up with their own challenges. The staff goddesses with grade school children found themselves home teaching school. There was no day care for the younger mothers so they too were home. I would have drafted the always helpful Jim, but he found himself running sixth grade from the kitchen table via one Zoom meeting after another. In retrospect that worked about as well as he expected. He is not sure his students learned anything except that they could go to the bathroom while on Zoom and enjoy the idea that they were sitting on the toilet while also in class.

After a couple months, we figured out shifts for Green Hope Farm staff to return to work. Vicki and Jen bubbled together and came in during the days. I worked at night. Lizzie bottled at odd hours when her kids were asleep. When summer staff goddess, Anna, chose not to attend college via Zoom in the fall of 2020 and took the year off, she came onboard and worked a full year with us. That was a fantastic help as Sam still couldn’t return to us. After about a year we were all back in the office with masks on.

The upheaval changed things here. I had run the business by staying a part of everything. Basically, I had a finger in every pie. For thirty years I spent my week days in the office and did the gardening in the early morning and on the weekends. One of the reasons why I didn’t ask myself if I could do five people’s jobs in March of 2020 is because I had always done too much. I felt so grateful to be working with Divinity, the Angels and Elementals that I was happy to do everything all the time. Not that they expected this of me. It was my idea to do too much.

When I got the kidney infection, I got the message that I had to do less. As we came back together, I knew it was time for me to let go of various responsibilities into the hands of the capable, trustworthy, sassy and lovable group of women who were here ready to take up the reins. I didn’t let go very gracefully. Frankly, it was disorienting to do less. One thing that really helped was specific inner guidance about what I WAS NOT supposed to do in the office. Being told “No! You don’t need to go into the office. The staff can do it.” over and over and over again helped me let go and settle in to a more humane schedule. Somedays though, it was very hard to follow my “nonmarching orders.” I really liked all the office jobs of visiting with people on email, writing notes on invoices and packing and decorating packages.

With more free time, I began to garden during the day when I fresh and energized. It was bliss to be able to keep going with a garden task when I wanted to versus having to stop until the next weekend. The guidance I received clarified my jobs as designing the gardens, planting the gardens, tending the gardens and of course, making the Flower Essences. The writing was also important. And now I had the time to think about the blog more and ponder long and hard what I wanted to write about. I could get really fired up about a topic!

I loved that I could rise at dawn and stay in the gardens as long as I wanted. I loved that I was still visiting with all of you via the blog. So many of you have been connected with us for decades. You are beloveds to me, and I think of you and your animals so often.

I kept one office job of making all our red shiso tincture, because I wanted some ongoing connection to the life of the office. Most days, I briefly visit the staff to check red shiso inventory, to catch up and to admire the enormous piles of outgoing orders. Order fulfillment is their ship to steer, and they are doing a fantastic job. When the staff goddesses took charge of this, they began to innovate. This has been wonderful. They represent different generations and that is so helpful to the ongoing life of the business. They also enjoy technology in a way foreign to me and love to explore new options for everything. This year, for example, they found a mail program that everyone likes better than Pitney Bowes. It’s called Pirate Ship. After too many years of beating our head against the walls with Pitney Bowes, everyone enjoys the sass as well as ease of using a company called Pirate Ship.

As I consider 2023, I know we will continue to incorporate the innovations of the younger generations of staff goddesses, and I am grateful for all the ways they are helping me go with the flow. I am also glad that there is still room for me to write long meandering blogs for those who still like to read something longer than a meme. In this way, I so look forward to continuing to connect with you in 2023.

These last few weeks it’s been challenging to keep all the winter storms straight in my head. There have been storms that brought heavy snows. One delivered 20″ of wet snow overnight. Then there have been storms bringing a deluge of rain and flooding. There also have been wind storms. And like the rest of the country, the temperatures have gone up and down like a yoyo. Since these storms and dramatic weather shifts have piled up fast and furiously, it’s been hard to remember which storm brought which difficulty.

When I went to the grocery store last week in between major storms, shoppers in long holiday lines bantered about how many days they had been without power. The mood was humorous even giddy. People seemed to have abandoned their holiday expectations in favor of just rolling with it. Like so many of us in so many places, the crowd was going with the flow and not taking plans seriously. Everyone seemed happier and more relaxed than in holiday seasons past.

This was a good thing as by the next day, the lights were once more out across the region with everything shut down. We felt fortunate to have our woodstove to heats the house and to warm foods pulled from the freezer. We were especially glad for our stash of staff goddess Emily MacNamara’s enchilada sauce which she makes for her family’s farmstand in the summer. We try to be prepared for these situations, but the dogs were messing with our preparations. They plundered our pots of back up drinking water under the kitchen table which meant these pots got downgraded from potable to water available to flush toilets. Not to worry. There was always snow to melt and eat (just not the yellow snow).

Out in the gardens, the storms wreaked havoc. Trees broke, limbs broke and thick branches broke as the heavy snows bent and snapped garden shrubs and trees everywhere. The lilacs in particular took it on the chin, though things like our gorgeous smokebush were also flattened. A kind neighbor came and chainsawed the broken birch tree blocking our driveway. This left garden paths impassable with broken branches and the gardens in general a bewildering mess. For a day or two I just looked out the window and girded my loins for the clean up ahead.

When a big rain melted most of the snow, I took my handsaw out and began cutting down broken branches. First I tackled the Lilacs in the Arbor Garden, a garden which had already seen so much change in 2022. I hauled enormous limbs out into open space above the main vegetable. I did this until I realized I was just making another kind of mess to clean up.

Jim can’t take these branches to the bottom of our hayfield where they get composted. The whole field is icy from one of the rain storms. He could get the truck down there on some sort of wild sleigh ride, but he wouldn’t get it back up the hill and back to the driveway…… until maybe April. Finally I threw in my hand saw and accepted I have to just wait for spring to clean up the mess.

I had wanted to clean up so I could get a sense of exactly how different the gardens will be in the spring. Now I must let go of that need to know and rest in remembering how resilient living things are in this part of the world. All these shrubs and trees will recovery and grow back. It may take a few seasons, but it will happen.

As I considered this, it made me remember why this is a great climate for growing Flowers and making Flower Essences. Consider the Lilacs. The Lilac Flower Essence we make is vibrant and strong because the Lilacs here, all twenty or thirty varieties, have to be really tough to handle the weather. Broken branches won’t stop them from sending up new shoots next spring which will rapidly become flowering branches.

I take comfort in the fact that extreme weather is one reasons our Flower Essences are so high in vibration. Weak plants just don’t make it around here, only the really resilient and determined ones do, and this translates into Flower Essences that carrying the wisdom of their Flowers and also their great strength, life force, resilience, determination and desire to live and thrive.

I have sometimes wondered why it was here on this land in this climate of so much extreme weather that I was meant to make Green Hope Farm Flower Essences, but these storms remind me why. And when this insight isn’t quite enough to make me completely delighted with our long and gnarly winters of daily wind, snow, ice and cold, I can always pull up closer to our woodstove and leaf through seed catalogues.

Even now as the winds howl, it’s time to start designing the new year’s gardens to plant. Somehow I know the newly “pruned” gardens and all their Flowers will be wonderful and brimming with life force. And I will get to be back in them, free of crampons and barefoot instead, happily making Flower Essences from their abundant blossoms.

In the meantime, Sheba supervises the damage with her usual panache.