Hi friends,

 

I’m writing you from the library today. Being alone at home this week has felt strange - I want to be with people. So I’m here, watching others poke around the poetry section. I’m enjoying seeing what stories people are calling in right now and what books will be keeping them company over the next weeks. I also spent some time wandering around before I landed in front of Ovid, who I always seem to find my way back to. I grabbed a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses off the shelf, a cornerstone book for me & my work. It’s sitting next to me here. I didn’t have to come to the library to read it, we have three different translations at home, but there’s something about being in the village (in both the physical and metaphorical sense) that is right for the newsletter writing practice today.

 

If you are unfamiliar with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it is a sweeping mythological verse that tells the story of the beginning of the universe to present, each story is a transformation that leads into another. The poem begins with the line: Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed into different bodies.

 

Many of the stories are how people change into plants: a body becomes vegetal after a loss. For example: Myrrha transforms into a tree after a trauma (a Myrrh tree, of course, which is why it is said that her hardened tears are the aromatic resin of the Myrrh). In her arboreal form, she gives birth to beautiful Adonis, who is later impaled by a wild boar and becomes a red anemone flower. And the change continues. There is constant transformation in Metamorphoses: the characters become earth and earth becomes itself, over and over again.

 

In a client session last Thursday: I need to soften, I am so tense. They want to recalibrate in the days post-election. I ask about the tension, where it is located. I ask what feels soft and sacred to them: A slow moving river. Moss. Sun on my belly. How does a tense body become a body that softens? This is a story that the flowers know how to tell. In fact, I think the flowers sometimes tell us how we must change. How we must transform. 

 

How do we tell the story of a body becoming a different body? I ask students in Flowering Round this question. We look to the plants for guidance. What plants are our way finders? To release? To grieve? To find presence? To continue on? To find the village? The formula that comes together becomes the guide, a floral transfiguration swirls in the bottle.

 

With each dose of Willow, we turn into Willow:

 

With each dose of St. John’s Wort, we become St. John’s Wort:

 

With each dose of Violet, we change as Violet:

 

Body becoming flower, flower becoming body.

 

**

I am now accepting applications for Flowering Round, a ten month council on working with flower essences & storytelling for practitioners and artists. This is joining a village of folks who dream with trees, who ask plants for support, who become flower. Maybe you want to join us? Take a peek here, if you want to learn more. Applications close December 2nd. 

 

To a floral becoming,

xx Liz

 

p.s. Last week I had the absolute honor of being on The Herbal Highway! A literal dream come true. It felt very grounding to talk about essences on election day. Thank you for having me, Renée! You can listen to our conversation here. 

Paul Tran

 

Where I run naked but for my snakeskin coat

so fast through wind I become the wind.

 

Where the flowers – opened, closed – tell me

things have happened. Are happening. Are about to.