Dear you,
Things take over. If you let them, they will. I look out over the back gardens which I have let turn into a meadow. An accidental meadow. One that came out of circumstance, then desire. And now: a gift to the land before I move from North Carolina at the end of December.
I look out over the back meadow, reflecting on the past nine months & this interview I recently read with the Rwandan storyteller, Scholastique Mukasonga, comes into my mind. In it, she shares a proverb she learned from her mother:
Celui ou celle qui conte n'a pas de haine dans son cœur.
I turn this over as I look at the tangles of Ipomoea coccinea, a native Morning Glory, a feast for the hummingbirds. The one who tells their story has no hatred in their heart. The story being told is the meadow I am looking at, is the hummingbird dipping into the orange trumpet of Ipomoea for a split second before moving onto the next & then the next.
The meadow is the story of the past nine months of my life. And it is the story of an end.
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In the winter, when the meadow was the most bleak & asleep, my partner a pris la poudre d’escampette, as they say. After seven years, they simply left. Moved out of the home we shared for the majority of those years in two days. Despite my pleas, they ran away. I lay myself at their feet, I did, because the whole thing came out of nowhere, it came at me like the shock of a cold whip.
There were nights when I was sure I had entirely made this person up. The combination of abandonment & betrayal (a story for another time) was so swift & cruel that it made me question my sanity: I remember staring down a hallway in my mind & down that hallway was the belief that Minori had only been a figment of my imagination, & that everyone in my life had been appeasing me, going along with my madness. It was horrifying & yet, it made more sense to me than any other alternative.
The New Year came & it thrust me to the ground. It brought me to, perhaps, the lowest point I’ve ever been at. Here, I had to learn to lay myself at my own feet in order to hang on, to reiterate the soundness of my spirit, my heart, my mind.
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We each had our chores, the little domestic things you do to tend to the house & home. Minori mowed the lawn. So this spring, when the cleavers arrived & the wild strawberries took over, I just let them. With no one to mow the lawn, I let the white clover clutter everywhere, & the wild carrot go feral.
As the months went by, I kept letting things. Letting them take over. And the more the meadow accidentally situated itself, the more I was able to recognize just how simultaneously heartless & ridiculous it was for Minori to have left like they did. And I laughed.
Cauda, Latin for tail, is what begets couard, the old French word which gives us: coward. One whose tail is between their legs.
The taller the dog fennel became, the more clearly I saw this person who I had once loved so devotedly, who I dropped down to my knees for, bargained with, appeased over & over. Veule: spineless. Unlike the elegance of the dog fennel standing sentinel amongst the blue vervain which escaped from its garden patch & had planted itself wherever its seeds fell.
The story being told is of the gardens rewilding is of the dog fennel is of the meadow which became first out of circumstance & then, out of an unexpected desire to just let things take over.
The meadow being told is of my past nine months. And it is a story of an end. And of what happens when you finally just let things take over.
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For a long time I had a hard time telling anyone what had happened. And even still there are people in my life who don’t know. I had no language for it when it first happened (no meadow). And to be true, I was still protecting them, appeasing them once more. If I was good enough & didn’t tell… oh well, maybe, wouldn’t they, couldn’t they come back? Didn’t I hope for that then, at the base of the apple tree, on the first night of January? And do I now not deeply hope that they never do?
I will look back one thousand more times if it keeps them away. Hades forbids me nothing.
Like all things in late summer, some stories need to ripen to be plucked, to be told. And this is part of one which was so ripe as to be rotting.
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Now for a pivot: as summer hands the reigns over to the fall.
Tomorrow, the 23rd of September, is the Autumn Equinox. Which is to say: we will officially be entering a new season & gosh, I could not be more grateful.
Admittedly, I love the autumn.
I was born in the autumn & I love a good crisp (not too sweet) apple, a cool breeze, a scarf, an extra layer.
Pictured above is one of my beloved Asteraceae’s: Sweet Annie (Artemisia annua).
Yes, it is an artemisia! Sister to mugwort & wormwood. Each have their different personalities & powers. And truly, the three make up the wyrd sisters of the garden. They stir their cauldron, their bitter brew, & make all kinds of strange medicine, useful medicine, potent medicine.
Sweet Annie is one of my favorite plants for this particular seasonal threshold.
A few autumns ago, I made an essence on the Autumn Equinox with the very first Sweet Annie I ever planted in the gardens.
I find it to be a beautiful guide in transitions: knowing how to gently usher us through the liminal spaces in our lives, those in between places where uncertainty lurks & begins to resemble fear. Sweet Annie holds our hands, lifts our feet, & inspires us to keep going. It is an especially helpful essence when we have been stuck in a mould for too long & yet can’t make a move for one reason or another. Usually, I find that this is based on an emotional reluctance, an indecision that is growing sodden. Sweet Annie helps to both balance deficient states & states of excess. It is also nice for those who have consistently taken on roles of service or servitude towards others & do not know how to begin leaving that role or claiming their time back, who are waiting for the “right” time to do so. This essence reminds us that the time now, that time waits for no one, & so: you will have to take it, you will have to follow your hunger to the other side. Sweet Annie clears space for us, she helps us move & disrupt stale cycles, she disperses dense thoughts & says, do not forget yourself.
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Okay dear reader, I leave you with this:
In honor of the change in season, there is a shoppe-wide sale on whatever catches your eye in the apothecary. Sale will be active until the end of the month, so there is no rush.
Donc.
For 25% off your purchase, use this code upon checkout: autumnbreeze
And if I may, my recommendations (in no particular order) for entering into the new season are:
Sweet Annie flower essence
Rhythm/Devotion essence blend
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Enjoy your perusing & moreover: enjoy some time reflecting through the weekend on the past nine months in your life.
The autumn is a season of letting go. Most things will fall away of their own accord. But some things. Some things need a little extra attention to dislodge them, to truly release them from our hold.
Until next time, I am wishing you a beautiful turn of the season.
Faithfully yours,
Chanelle
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PS: Is anyone else having a ~moment~ with this album or this one?
Wonderful. You made me stand in the overflowing gadden with you, full of loss and love and new buds. May the autumn bless us all with renewal of joy and return to self.
Thank you for sharing your heart and wisdom with us.