more leaves and another hack

Today was a mellow day with our friend Ari.  Not much was required at me than that I laugh at a few jokes, heat up some lentil soup that Ani and Sarah made yesterday, and supply the crayons for some more leaf-rubbing for our growing wall of thanks...

And now I want to direct your eyes to the photo above.  See Ari's bandaid? I have a handy trick for you, and it's late, so this is going to pass for a well-written blog post and we'll call it good for November 22, all right?  She arrived this morning with a splinter and asked for our tweezers.  I quizzed her on what she'd already tried.  "Well," she said, "We did epsom salts, plantain, and we dug and dug in there with a needle.  And glue." Wha? The idea is that you put glue on and hopefully it sticks to the splinter and when you peel the glue off the splinter comes too. Or something like that. I've never tried it.  So, knowing how Ari does not care for bananas, I hestitated to offer my favorite method for banishing splinters, but I could see she was frustrated, so I went for it.  "Um, how would you feel if I strapped a tiny, very tiny piece of a banana peel to your splinter for the next couple of hours?" Her turn for the Wha?

I don't know why this works (enzymes?) but it does, and it did again today.  We cut a small piece of banana peel and held it onto the spot where she had the splinter with a bandaid and in an hour or two she came and found me to tell me "The banana won!!"  You don't have to believe me, you can just try it for yourself, the next time you have a splinter you just can't get out. I want to call this another life hack, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm hacking really (tweezers?)...it's just a handy thing to know, especially when your child doesn't want you anywhere near them with a needle and the splinter's in the bottom of their foot...banana, overnight, with sock. Done.

(This is where one of my girls would chime in and say, "The banana is an herb, not a fruit!" As the largest herb, the banana has healing properties.  Voila.)

Rockin' November. It's the 22nd...

Mountains, herbs and butter

moon over Asheville

October might be my favorite month, and the true turn of the seasons feels like it happens during the drive south to Asheville, North Carolina, where my friend Jen and I attend the Southeast Wise Women's Herbal Conference.  Every year we go for a bit longer, insinuating ourselves into the inner circle of women who make the conference happen... 

Jen and our fine "camping" food

 This year we arrived, along with our friend Sarah, on Wednesday for our work shift.  I love being on the camp grounds when it is still quietly humming.  Before hundreds of women arrive.

I've started every conference for the past four years welcoming women to the top of the mountain, where there is camping and parking.  I can see the gathering swell from this peaceful spot, and as you can see from the next, oh several photos, I also have long moments to myself.

How about I talk at you while you enjoy these beauties? So, every year I try to arrive with a blank slate and an open mind.  I have attended workshops on conscious dying, herbs for menopause, honing intuition and drumming.  I have sat through classes on stone medicine and adaptogens, and listened to the likes of Susun Weed and Aviva Romm.   This year my intention was to take care of myself through the weekend, be a little self-centered and only do what fed me.  This is harder than you think.

I started off well - I came down the mountain on a path that took me past more stunning fungus than I've seen all year in Ohio, and decided to not rush to make it to the first class, but to treat myself to a shower after 3 days of travel and work exchange.  Self-care.  I ran into another worker who I recognized from years past and together we decided to skip the talk on auto-immunity and made a beeline towards Sex as a Path to the Divine.  See? Open mind. It was awesome.  The 68-year-old teacher is a midwife and healer and was composed and articulate as she talked about brainwaves (beta - your thinking mind, alpha - your zoney listening-to-music-while-drawing mind, theta - your REM sleeping or tripping mind, and delta - your deeply sleeping mind) and orgasms (ok, so it wasn't so much the how, but the why).  This woman takes self-care seriously.

(are you still enjoying the pretty pictures??
or are you distracted because I mentioned what the teacher called "solo cultivation"??)

Did I mention that Eliza came again this year? She saved her money and looked forward to it all year, sweet girl.  Friday night, after the opening ceremony (highlight: hearing that Malala won the Nobel Peace Prize, in a room with nearly 1000 women and girls), we headed to the dining hall to watch Girl Rising which I wish everyone would see.

(Can you believe this sweet village of fungus??
They were living on a woodpile next to me.)

oh, those eyelashes...

Jen, our friend Kylene, and I had the pleasure of having Monica Corrado sit down at our table to eat her lunch one day.  She is a nutritionist, chef, student of living healthy and being well, and was there to teach several classes over the weekend, including one I attended: Get the Skinny on Fats.  We grilled her for a while there during our meal, and the upshot of everything she had to say (while making us laugh every other minute - this woman is charming) was "Eat butter".  Eat fats, preferably animal fats, because they are good for healing your gut, they are extremely good for optimal brain function (your brain is made of fat! so are your lungs and 50% of your cell walls!), your adrenal system, your immunity and they do not make you fat.  So there. Stop eating margarine and bring on the butter.

Wild Wise Women

Saturday was the International Day of the Girl, and there was a parade through the conference, celebrating the girls who were present and the girls these women use to be. 

The last class I took on Saturday was with Kim Duckett, who runs the Mystery School near Asheville.  I've heard her speak before about the ancient Wheel of the Year and the way it is used as a template for inner work, but it was nice to get a refresher, plus she focused this year on the Autumn Woman, in the middle of her life.  Ahem, it hit home in many ways.  It's a time to clarify what things in your life you are ready to let go of, and what has simply been dormant and is still there, ready to be useful.  What have you harvested, and what is it time to say goodbye to? They were nice reflections for any of us to hear, but I had recently been processing some of this in writing and conversations with friends, so it was interesting to hear it as a step along the path that many people walk through.

Communing with the plants, dancing, playing games...Eliza and I were both exhausted and happy by the end of the day on Saturday, and actually crawled into her bottom bunk together to snuggle and talk about the day.  (Skipping the night-time festivities was more self care for me!)  Sunday morning I attended a talk with Aviva Romm on pediatrics and antibiotics (the bottom line: explore every option before taking antibiotics. They are way over-prescribed in our country, because they are an easy answer, but they are creating drug-resistant variations of diseases and can cause extensive damage to your gut health: learn more directly from the CDC) and then started the packing up for the long drive home.  Tired, happy, content...

annual renewal

It's October - must be time for our annual trip to the Southeast Women's Herbal Conference! So it was...Jen and I drove down last week, early, for the work exchange.  I love arriving early; it's like a mellow hive of bees for a long day of setting up, and then during our 8 to 3 parking shift up on the mountain about a thousand women show up for a great big party!! It's buzzing and beautiful by the time we walk down past the rhododendrons and into the cluster of tents and buildings at the heart of the conference.  

yes, I took this picture in the bathroom

This year there was a focus woven throughout the weekend on reworking the messages that we get in the media about what beauty looks like.  One of our easier jobs (after 5 hours of lifting heavy tables and setting up hundreds of chairs) was hanging up signs on all of the bathroom mirrors with messages like the one above.  I was feeling pretty open and vulnerable already, but reading some of the signs got me teary, because my daughter was coming to join us for the weekend and would be reading some of them while washing her hands and checking her hair in the mirror.  Can you imagine reading loving messages about your inner beauty when you were eleven and just figuring out how you fit in the world? 

how I amused myself while waiting for the first rush of campers!

Everyone finally arrived, the conference began, the knowledge started flowing, the smiles were ear to ear...Within the first hour Eliza had revamped her wardrobe to include a sassy pair of refurbished leggings and a wild scarf and was running around barefoot and grinning.  She quickly fell in love with the woman leading the young girl's program for 10 to 12 year olds, and kept telling me, "it's just what I imagined it would be like."  Ah, my heart.

Vitex, or Chasteberry - a plant I'm getting to know

The Mother of Herbalism, Susun Weed, was the main draw this year, and she is as wacky and wonderful as her books (Healing Wise is a staple).  Some of her ideas were kind of out there for me, but she is quite a storyteller and is as twinkly as she is gruff.

I always try to push myself to learn about something new at this conference.  This year it was stone medicine. It was inspiring to listen to a woman speak passionately about the 450 million year old almondine garnets that are found in the mountains around Asheville, where we were, and to have her explain how they can be used to help blood-related issues in the body.  Stone medicine has a history thousands of years old, but the most useful way to approach it is instinctively.  Have you ever been drawn to collect stones? Or kept one tucked in your pocket?  I was sharing some of the class with Eliza over dinner and she very matter of factly said, well you know you can use rocks to heal yourself - if you lay one where you're hurting, it will help you feel better.  All right. She's in touch with her intuition...

She loved the nature games they played in her Soil Sisters program, and the chocolate-herb truffles and healing salves they made, but I think her favorite times of the weekend were Friday night, sitting in my lap (I know, but it was so nice...), listening to Beautiful Chorus and to Susun Weed tell stories, and the dance party we had on Saturday...

oh yeah, Soul Train

oooh, there she is, back there in the middle, in the green

tryin' out new moves

My last class was about dreaming, and listening to the parts of you that don't get to speak so much when your brain is talking.  So many messages this week about deep listening, about changing the myths in your life ("I don't have enough time for that, wish I did"), about giving focus to the things you want in your life.  In so many ways, nothing new, and in so many ways, what I need to hear All The Time.  Our drive home gave us time to process and share what we are leaving with...Eliza was too tired to share, but told me over and over again, thank you for bringing me here.  I came home remembering that I am a spiritual person.  Grateful and full.

Our Ohio sisters