image by Gypsy Rae Photography

I was all geared up to announce my next project this week, but the not so subtle lessons of nature are pointing me in a slightly different direction. I dreamed up The Nothin But Nettle 30 Day Challenge as a fun way to introduce ya’ll to one of my favorite daily medicines as well as take advantage of the exploring I will get to do for the first time with this plant in the wild when we move to the pacific northwest next month. But this grandmother plant has other plans for me. 

I have been very tired lately, thinking I was getting sick, being impatient with my family, ready to delete HerbMother all together and go hide in a little shell somewhere on the sea. The thing is, this move, this transition is rocking my socks. Being vulnerable about myself, jumping into creating my dream lifestyle/business isn’t quite as glamorous as it seems. I think I’ve jumped over a fence, and am facing the demons of doubt and shadow as everything moves from ideas on paper to real tangible events. I sort of feel like my physical body is morphing into something new as my soul wakes up to a  fuller version of itself. You know, like in the sci-fi movies when the shape-shifters skin gets all distorted and stretched out as they change. My soul is in the battle of its lifetime, and I’m just feeling very tired from it all.

So I’ve been doing tons of reading about nettle energetically as well as medicinally. We know she is a sweeper. The image of the old grandmother with the straw broom sweeping the dirt floors comes to mind. She helps clean us out after a long winter while still providing deep nourishment, which is why she is my go to brew this time of year. And as we are clearing out our home, packing up the remaining boxes, sending most of them to goodwill, I am reminded of this power in her medicine. During our packing I rediscovered a children’s story about nettle that I picked up last year. It is in the book Song of the Seven Herbs by Stan Padilla. In this story nettle is gifted to the people as food and medicine, but the people become greedy and she is over-harvested and left almost to die. But rather than let herself go completely, she desires to remain a gift to the people as she enjoys their company, but to remind them to be grateful and mindful of her presence she grows stickers on her leaves. She continues to offer herself up abundantly, but the stickers remain as a reminder to only take what we need and requiring that they harvest her very carefully.

I think I am over-harvested. Reading this story to my kiddos, felt like reading my own story. I’ve been giving so much of myself lately, all by choice and willingly and joyfully. But, I haven’t taken much time in between to refill my basket. So rather than jump into another project, I’m just going to take it easy over the next month as we make our big transition. So much is happening so fast, I feel like I need to do this in order to stay present with my family in the way they need me. The mama might be the second word but it’s really my first priority.

To honor the lesson of this beautiful plant, however I’ll be blogging a bit less. But I will be sharing the information I’ve found in weekly Nettle Lovin’ Linkups. If you’d like to contribute a guest post, or have a link to share shoot me an email and we’ll get you  in on the party. Perhaps next spring, once I’m all settled in and have located my very own nettle patch, I’ll revisit the challenge again.

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Love and Nettles,
Latisha