BECOMING BLOSSOM

Just look at this Amaryllis bud.  It is mind blowing and bewildering to me that inside this one bursting open,  simple bud growing at the top of a single stem, becomes not one but four huge sensual and evocative blossoms that can take your breath away. It is a miracle. My literal mind can't quite comprehend the outcome of a blossoming so abundant, tightly packed away into a single bud. This has been my Amaryllis winter. It started back in November just after Sadie was killed. A friend brought us an amaryllis as a gesture of sympathy at the loss of our girl. It was an emerging bud…fat with life and hidden potential standing about 6 inches tall. Oddly, within 2 days of arriving, the bud fell off unopened. It made me sad…but there was something so right about that blossom never evolving. It seemed a fitting tribute to a life snuffed out prematurely…like our girl, death claimed her blossoming. When I took the 50 lb. bag of unopened dog food back to the Paris Farmers Union, I decided to buy an amaryllis bulb for a replacement. That was back in mid December. It is the amaryllis you see here. I bought it because I had the bulb image in mind after Sadie was buried in the garden. I felt like she was planted there like my garlic, asparagus and rhubarb. I could see her lying in the cold ground after the three of us dug her grave. Imagining her body to be like a bulb gets me past the image of her in the ice cold ground and more focused on the spirit blossoming that is the gift of her life having been taken too soon. The planting of bulbs in the fall is an act of faith…as all gardening is. But there is something about digging into the cold earth in October or November after the last of the harvest is in. Planting fall bulbs is an antidote to the lifeless landscape of January and February. It is a secret between me and Mother Nature. In the darkening of the year, I have planted something that results in a colorful expulsion of joy in the spring and only I know it.  When things feel dark and mean and cold, I know in my heart of hearts that I have set a root into the Earth knowing full well that the warmth and growth will return. Doubt disappears. This act of burial, will inevitably lead to a blossoming when the spring returns. I love that! It's a sneaky way of proving to myself that I do have faith…because guess what. Every time I find myself pressed against a cold icy wall, tempted to believe that "it just isn't worth it", I remember the life being planted in the dark. Having planted becomes my secret with myself…the reassurance that new life will return.

In dealing with my grief over losing Sadie, I did something this year, Ive never done before. I booked myself a Crystal Resonance Reading. A friend from my women's writing group has just completed her training and begun a healing practice. We have shared our hearts in our writing and made some shamanic journeys together. I know her in a way that I don't know many folks. And lets just say…we resonate. Sara Cope. How poetic that her last name is Cope…with a capital C. She has truly helped me cope with the meanest, coldest, iciest, hardest winter in 14 years. I have been using some crystals to get through this process and in the process allowing myself to receive support from the mineral kingdom. As a past Polarity therapist, I am not a stranger to energy work. I wholeheartedly believe in auric energies and realities created by the imagination having substance and meaning. This particular treatment was done across the distance…so it required a little more faith than a hands on, in your face process. I have slept nearly every night with a quartz crystal in my hand. In the middle of the night when my ratty little worst case scenario brain kicks into overdrive, I am comforted by the cool hardness of this crystal. I am also reminded of myself as a young mother …when Sam and Will were plagued with nightmares as children often are at certain times of their development, I gave them crystals to hold as a protection from all they feared in their dreamworlds. I remember soothing them and quietly talking them through the Armor Of Light prayer and now here I am, giving myself the same prescription as I seek a new dream for this time of my life. Sara's reading also included a meditation process that I have been practicing all winter. This particular meditation is a grounding of one's physical body in love. It is a tool to practice self love…and like the Amaryllis bud, there is way more abundance packed into the budding practice and sustaining the blossoming than I can even imagine. Because I suffer with poor self esteem and depression at times, and because I have a tendency to believe the mean things I say to myself sometimes, I have spent a lifetime giving lip service to the power of positive thinking. I often say but do not do. Between the accuracy of the stones telling Sara about me and the use of the Primus Meditation…my bulb metaphor has strengthened and put forth a bud.

At Christmas, I received a 3rd Amaryllis bulb that is now about 6 inches tall and equipped with one big bud. It is becoming very slowly but continues to seem like it will blossom. My first bud told me not to count on it reaching maturity just because it sets a bud. My second bud taught me there is far more life packed into that closed bud than you can imagine based on it's bud…4 times the flowering so to speak. Now, I'm fully curious and awaiting the lesson of this 3rd and final Amaryllis of the year. As it slowly aims for blossoming, I keep myself focused on the already present blooms…this is my heart. It is not about the lost blossom…nor is it about the blossom that has yet to emerge.  THIS is about the bulb I gave myself…the one that hid 4 huge blossoms in its tightly closed bud…the one that is blooming now.
Now is a becoming blossom.