Nettle

Everything you need is within you.

I have nettle growing in my garden. It’s a pain in the bum to weed and its sting is like an electric bolt through my head. The sting lasts for ages. Nettle is a bitch.

Nettle can be soaked in water for a week or four and made into a tea.

It becomes a very powerful and useful compost. It can heal plants, it helps them to thrive. 

Nettle. 

That bitching, mean, no-holds-barred weed, that mean-looking, pain inducing plant is one of the best healers in my garden.

Hmmm.

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There are places in me I don’t want to go. Pain places. Shame places. Dark and mean places.

But if I gently breath and tenderly choose to sit through the warning sting and the pain, then these places quietly work on me. 

They transform me. They become my teachers, my greatest healers. 

Often I’ve found my shame has been a way to protect me from being seen. Because being seen has brought me pain in the past. 

In sitting with and through this wound/pain/shame, it composts. It encourages me to parent myself, gently care for myself. 

This work invites me to be an adult, not a wounded child.

The answer to my garden’s ill health is growing in my garden. 

The answer to my pain is in me.