Boudicca moments

There are Boudicca moments, when glimpses of energy and clarity appear briefly, and I feel I should have an axe in my hand to deal with this contracts manager of the building company I'm using for this big house refurb project. They sent great workmen, but the contracts manager is a master of obfuscation and passive aggression. Instead, I stay cool and send firm but polite emails. We are not "going all the way". The plan was to do this whole refurb with this company, but it is not to be, and I am calling a halt in the next month. Gathering trades and craftsmen to finish this house over the next six months, I feel back in control of the increasingly slippery budget.

This is about the only thing I am vaguely in control of currently. Off to Germany to a specialist clinic, one of Dr Klinghardt's satellite clinics, who specialise in chronic illness, neurotoxins, lyme, mercury and autism. Having hopped to India and back in three days on a foreshortened trip in November when well, this will be a challenge for a women who currently can make it to the village shop, all of a mile away, every five days. Same with the shower. Increasingly whiffy with hair standing up in strange shapes, it would be hard to explain to anyone how I manage, somehow, to continue to deal with builders but not have the energy to get in the shower.

As soon as you google "mercury toxicity" stories on the internet, you will tap into long tales of misery and illness. What I find tragic is those who are young, having their late teens and twenties totally screwed up by ill health. I've been lucky to have had seven years of good health sandwiched between eleven of intermittent dodgy health under the umbrella of "M.E" chronic fatigue, thyroid, lyme. But under it all...Mercury.

This time I've become more interested in the ancient Alchemy of Mercury, seen as the Feminine to Sulphurs Masculine, together a Divine Union. Sulphur in the form of garlic and thiols etc is needed to bind with mercury to get it out of the body. Instead of raging at mercury, I've come to see it as something that wants to be free, no more trapped in me, than I want it in my body. She was the only element who "refused to take up a final fixed form on the earth following creation". Visions of free flowing silvery rivers...pounded and compressed into a mix with Tin (Tin! she'd hate tin) and jammed into the teeth of humans.

So, she's taken the initiative and seems to spontaneously release now when I have craniosacral treatment, and again recently when a friend stayed, and did remedial geopathic stress work on the site I'm living on. You'll have to google that. The out building I'm living in turns out to be on a badly geopathically stressed line. I felt great for twenty four hours after, then I could feel a big mercury release happening. It is ongoing. This is a good thing, as long as I can keep pace with binding it up with chlorella. The chlorella is vilified and poorly understood in some chelation circles who use other protocols, ones I have done in the past before realising I still had an amalgam filling in my mouth. No one should ever try chelating, getting mercury out, while they still have amalgam in.

Whilst keeping pace with this, it does result in extreme fatigue, depression and some brain fog. I can really notice now that when mercury is moving, I want to shoot myself permanently in the head, and when it clears, I feel happy. No wonder it's the cause of what they used to call Mad Hatter disease, from the mercury that hat makers were exposed to.

I have become used to lying to the workmen when they turn up on Mondays. "Had a nice weekend love, what'did'ya do love?". This initially was followed by my blank face. Now, I tralalala, "oh, hanging out with friends, visiting family, y'know". In reality its "I stumbled about looking for things I've lost, gathered up possessions I have left in strange places, forgot to feed the chickens, tried to do some business stuff".

I still run, in a haphazard manner, previously efficiently, a small holiday accommodation business. So, I paid an employee but actually paid her husband, then paid myself instead of her, sent an invoice to the wrong person, put the wrong dates on someone else booking, made lots of excuses to all these people for late responses, ran out of food because I couldn't get to the shop, and am too proud to ask family who are busy to get food, thought about having a shower, spent two hours weeping, read books, lay on the sofa, thought a lot about shooting myself.

I have six months worth of paper work un-filed, as are my yearly accounts, which is not "me". Post builds up for three weeks at a time. I have learned to live with this. No-body-died.

"Oh, lovely weekend then" "Yes"

Then it clears for a while and Boudicca comes in. This resulted in me booking a two week riding holiday in a wild part of Mongolia end of next summer, on the basis that if I'm not much better they can strap me to the underside of a Yak and cart me about. It's my favourite kind of trip, roughing it. At least no one will care if I haven't washed for days there!

Am I angry at the dentist who caused this? who spent an hour drilling through amalgam exposing me to a huge amount of mercury vapour, so often the cause of this. No, not any more. It is nineteen years ago. You can't stay angry that long. I did go and see her a year later when I realised this was the cause of the sudden plummet into ill health. Prior to that I was working part time, doing a degree, circuit training, running a family home with two children just into their teens, cycling twelve miles into work sometimes, just because I loved to cycle on a spring morning, digging over a huge organic vegetable plot. Full of beans and full of life.

The week after the dental work happened, weird rashes appeared, chest infections, weird digestive stuff started, thyroid lump appeared as did a flock of lipomas. I thought I might be turning into one of those warty dinosaurs. Then the crashing fatigue. I did go and see her once I realised mercury was the problem. Told her she'd totally f****ed my life up. She looked blank. Maybe her brain is shot to pieces too? Dentists have a high suicide rate and studies show them and their dental nurses well loaded with mercury.

So why is this allowed if it is so dangerous? Mercury amalgam fillings were invented in 1819. By 1830 numerous problems were reported. This extract from a holistic dentist site explains.

> The American Society of Dental Surgeons denounced the use of amalgams due to concerns about mercury poisoning. Members of the society were required to pledge to avoid the mercury amalgam fillings. But many dentists continued using amalgams, since they were cheaper, faster and easier to place than gold materials.

1859: The pro-mercury amalgam faction in America formed its own dental society, first called the National Dental Association; it was later re-named the American Dental Association (ADA).<

It's cheap. Simple as that. It made Dentists a lot of money in the drill n'fill years. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this won't come into the mainstream as an issue until that drill n'fill generation have died off.

So, if you are now freaking out about amalgams you may have, firstly I would say if you are well, leave well alone, or do your research really really well, and have money to deal with it.  If you want to deal with them, there are protocols for removal and chelation. Research Dietrich Klinghardt and Andrew Cutler. Cutler has a big online following, who can be less than open to other modalities. In truth, there is more than the one proverbial way of skinning the cat. If you have any kind of chronic fatigue, auto immune problems, neurological problem, lymes then you would do well to research mercury toxicity. It is fat soluble and has an affinity for the brain, so it's tricky to get out. Do it wrong or too much at once, with not enough preparation, you are going to get much sicker.

So why didn't I get rid of the mercury all those years ago when I knew about it, you may ask. I thought I had. I though I had safe and total removal of all amalgams in 2000. This was a different and supposedly holistic dentist. With hindsight, there weren't enough precautions taken and she left one in. I did some chelation, fortunately not much, in the belief all amalgams were out. I then over the next five years developed hypothyroidism, intermittent chronic fatigue and lymes disease.

I researched and treated the lyme, got well 2006 and was pretty well until 2014. The last three years have been a mystery until a month ago, with illness and extreme fatigue for six months of the year. So, I really am one of the lucky ones. I know what's wrong. The clinic in Germany hopefully can find what else may be wrong, as mercury brings many friends to the party. I may still have lyme, who knows. I'm hoping this clinician can help. Mostly I haven't found the right help. It would be good to have an objective outsider with the right knowledge who can assess this, because I have had to do so much research myself. My medical sciences degree in herbal medicine has enabled me to research it all pretty well, but I've had it really with endlessly having to get myself through this stuff.

There are improvements with taking mercury binders. I no longer have the three year old mild tremor in my right hand. I no longer have my fingers flying up off the keyboard of the computer, like a puppeteer has control of them, I no longer have the mouse jerking about under my hand like some old black and white movie flicker frame. Neurologically things are better. I no longer have extreme brain fog. I just feel poisoned and weak and exhausted. Hard to explain. It's like you slept in a room where a car engine had been running all night whilst getting over flu.

But, this time next year, realistically, I hope to be well enough to do that trip. It's something to aim for. The worst that can happen is I have to cancel. The best that can happen is I'll be doing something I love again, being physically active, washed or un washed, and with horses and people, having fun!

Meanwhile, the upstairs ceilings are now deemed to need to come down. This would have had me weeping a year ago. Now, cavalier, "who needs ceilings, sure, take 'em down baybeeee" . Long post. If you made it this far, I salute you. If you are sick, I hope it helps you.

Still Alive!

Long time. Long time. Lone-Time-No-Blog. The short version is, since my last blog, I sold my house and embarked on a single life and bought this.



A house being eaten by wisteria, and previously occupied by two adults and twenty two dogs. You read correctly. Twenty two dogs. That is a lot of dog pee and poop. Enough to saturate floors, walls and, it turns out, ceiling joists.

I knew it needed a lot of work and money, but not that it would be uninhabitable.
I live in the garage. It's a very nice garage (I like saying that to shock people) as most of it was insulated and converted. Adding in a shower, loo, sink has meant I can live well here, with two dogs in a small space. Conveniently, I can turn the portable induction hob down whilst sitting on the loo. Small space living. It was an interesting moment when we had a flea infestation. Dealt with by neem, essential oils and diamataceous earth. The mildly funky odour in here is like a moroccan steam room used only by dogs.

From last June to December I was well. Hurrah! and thinking that I'd cracked it by having the teeth work done. This time was spent, energy returned, emptying twenty four years worth of family home. Many trips with my trailer to the dump and charity shops. I interviewed builders, sucked my teeth, had plans drawn up. Apart from the heart break of ending my relationship (far too much wine drunk. Far too much time clinging to Tree friends in the garden, weeping, until even the Walnut whispered "it's done") it was a productive, energised time.

Moving into the Ark (the garage. but it's keeping me and dogs afloat in lieu of a house) mid December, with no water connection, but water in the house and a bath there, I immediately started that slow slide into ill health, which has been the pattern the last three years. Quite happy in many ways though, trogging over to the ark with watering cans for the loo, sleeping in all my jumpers and hats. Peace.

Gradual slide from February into increasing ill health, brain fog, huge fatigue, and depression.  Not so happy. Didn't see Magical Horse for months. Had a Christmas Card from her saying "Quite happy without you in herd. Get your shit together, you human you. Bring Hay".

Thyroid results were bad. Anti bodies high. Building project started but I had no brain to look at the figures. All a bit grim really. I've come to realise most people are happy when you say you have depression. They can get their heads around that. They can't really get their heads around you telling them about thyroids, auto immune and chronic fatigue. That has to be a solitary journey.

I decided to do two things. Firstly I started the autoimmune protocol diet. It's easier to say what can be eaten: lots of offal, veg (but no solanacea) fruit. No seed spices, grains, eggs, dairy. My fridge has been looking like an abbatoir for weeks now, but funnily I don't get sick of eating liver and kidneys for breakfast, lunch and supper.

Nettle has again been helping me. Her seeds. The best kidney, adrenal and thyroid tonic there is. Tricky to get down. Patience. Sieving then grinding then putting in water seems to do it.

The second thing was to get some help. This took energy, from my permanent residence on the sofa with barely the energy to shower most days, I found a cranio sacral therapist. Upon treatment, I became much worse and felt very very poisoned and as if mercury was pouring out of my mouth.

With this came one of the answers. When they did all the teeth work last year, they found one remaining mercury amalgam. It was mercury exposure nineteen years ago which triggered all my cfs etc, having been fit and fine before then. I thought it dealt with. There is a reason that Mercury is know as "The Great Trickster". Re reading research, it is about six months after the last amalgam is removed, that mercury starts leaching from deeper tissues and bites you on the arse again. Because of everything that happened last year, I hadn't stopped to think about mercury. So, despite feeling poisoned, my brain was working again. I started to take chlorella about ten days ago, which binds mercury, and felt a lot better and the depression lifted. Alleluhia!

So, its going to be a road now. Mercury detoxification. They reckon at least two years with a mercury protocol minimum for healing. Needs careful handling, and I am trying to find the help I need. I have found that most people want you to "go to the doctor". Heavy metal toxicity and environmental illness are way outside the reach of conventional medicine. Again, this has to be a solitary journey.

The house very much mirrors my journey, on all levels, at this stage in my life. Stripped out. Dangerous wiring removed (nails in live wires? rats nests under floors?), areas of rotten timber frame exposed. But...she is structurally sound. She has held up. Made of mud, a clay lump house, she is of this land, this place and still she stands. This despite two sets of DIY wiring owners, removal of support stud wall enthusiasts, who also put in a saniflow toilet upstairs,  to drain through the roof of an extension, where the pipes freeze up. If they make it to their destination, they go into broken drains, which run back under the house. And so on.

But no regrets. This is a special place, up a back road where, if a car goes past, my two neighbours and I rush out and gawp in amazement. If Miss Haversham had a garden, this would be it. Birdsong everywhere. A peaceful healing energy pervades the whole place. Roses and yet more roses. Willow trees to weep under. And a well, a beautiful Tudor brick well, with sweet earth tasting water in it. I've only sipped it. It hasn't been tested yet. No doubt its high in agricultural phosphates as this is an intensive farming area. But it is beautiful, clear and bright. As shall I be.

All is well. All is well. All is well. 

Nettle, Queen of Plants

“So, what’s this whole thing with Nettles” asks Magical Horse, as she pulls another young Hawthorn shoot from the hedge. I tell her “you do know Hawthorn is good for the heart don’t you? And the flowers, especially, for heart break”. “I just like the taste” she mutters, between bites “and get on with it, about the nettles. Stop showing off. Remember, part of being sick and old is giving up the need to be the expert”. This, with a look over the top of her half rimmed glasses. Nothing like a horse to un-mask one. "I'm only a bit sick now, and not that old" I retort. "Well, if you were a horse, we'd have called the horse ambulance ages ago…and you know what's in a horse ambulance…nothing apart from a twelve bore shotgun" 

“And why do you always call her Mother Nettle, not just nettle”

“Because she told me that’s what she is”. She is a Mother plant. Her roots go deep into the soil, pulling up innumerable minerals, cleansing the soil as she goes, healing the Earth. She has light transmitting silica in the tiny hairs on her leaves and stems, thus bringing in light and energy from the Cosmos and outer planets. This last from Steiner. Nettle was the only soil preparation he didn’t sheathe, and he saw her as the main circulatory plant for the earth. Say that again....The-Main-Circulatory- Plant- for -the -Earth.

She is the plant to turn to if you need cleansing, building up, and healing from just about everything. Rich in chlorophyll (vital if you want to clear heavy metals from your body), protein, 

This from Susun Weed, http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/October08/healingwise.htm one of my favorite Herbalists. “Nettle is amazingly rich in protein, vitamins, and minerals, especially the critical trace minerals: anti-cancer selenium, immune-enhancing sulphur, memory-enhancing zinc, diabetes-chasing chromium, and bone-building boron. A quart of nettle infusion contains more than 1000 milligrams of calcium, 15000 IU of vitamin A, 760 milligrams of vitamin K, 10% protein, and lavish amounts of most B vitamin.

There is no denser nutrition found in any plant, not even bluegreen algae; and nettle is much more”.

 Ask respectfully, (Please Mother Nettle, may I gather you, and thank you) and she will help you build good blood and bones, strengthen your kidneys, guts, lungs, help you detoxify and bring you vavavoom. If you are pregnant or breast feeding, she will nourish you and your child, prepare your body for birth, boost your milk supply.

Magical Horse rolls her eyes in boredom. “I never touch the stuff myself”. “Well” I reply “I’ve seen the native Polish horses on the heath digging up Nettle root to eat in the winter”. “Oh, them” she sniffs, looks down her nose. 

“Maybe you need to give up the need to be Egyptian Arabian aristocracy” I mutter "and, do you realise it costs a small mortgage to keep you here in horse heaven". Shudders and closes her eyes "Hasn't even got a spa dear….". She turns her back on me and busies herself with the hedge again.... “Do you know who I am...” (This is the kind of ego inflation which results when your registered name is Seraphim)

Nettles were one of the Anglo Saxon nine sacred herbs, and a herb of Thor, associated with fire and lightening. She grows on the boundaries, and knows the boundaries. She’ll teach you boundaries if that’s what you need. Here, at my house, she has placed herself at every doorway. An honour. She’s my personal bouncer. She grows either side of the front door, and people have to pass between her and through her cleansing aura before they enter. Much more subtle than smudging visitors with sage. Anyway, we have enough of our own crap to deal with, without more coming in! I did have to relent last year and cut her back a bit, after Lovely Man pointed out the postman was contorting himself and squeaking in the effort of safely reaching the letter box. 

She is also known for “stinging people into action”. There are times when she wants to go to your heart, quite literally. Place her there, when the time feels right. Press her to your chest, breathe through the pain, keep her there until that spreading warmth and vitality comes. Watch your dreams over the next few days, when there will be times you feel her “reactivating”. After I started doing this, I read in Steiner's agriculture course (no I can’t understand most of what he writes) that “Nettle should be around everyones heart”. 

Trained as a herbalist, I grew used to saying “we use this herb for blah” . Now, a horror of “using” when actually they are helping us, I am trying to train myself out of this. Imagine saying you are “using” your mother for babysitting. So, if you would like Mother Nettle to help you, approach with respect, but not with sentimentality or a grovelling (we awful humans destroying the earth etc) attitude, but with simple appreciation. Find out what she likes. For me, she likes to be stroked. I sit often on the front doorstep and stroke her. She almost purrs. For you, it may be something else.

She will willingly be cooked in dishes where you would normally use spinach, gaily leap into hot water for tea, fling herself into juices, be dried and crumbled into horse feed (err, actually MH you are having nettle in your feed) and for chickens too. Glossy coats and good condition result. She lasts much longer than cut flowers as a table centre piece (how she glories in that), and if you have gathered strangers energies when out in the world, she will gently sweep them away if you swoosh her over your head, or better still leave her on your head for a while.

Finishing with a quote from Hatfields Herbal, from an interview with an elderly lady in Essex.

 “Great emphasis was placed on keeping the bowels open and the pores closed and of cleansing the blood after the rigours of winter, and so in spring we were sent to gather young nettles. Nettle tea we had to drink to purify our blood, Grandpa (unwillingly) for his sciatica and Aunt Rose for her pleurisy. I wondered how it knew which it was supposed to do”

She knows alright, Oh how she knows. (And I love the bit about "bowels open and pores closed". So frightfully British)

Egoic Banana Skins

Magical Horse is convalescing after having her “wolf” teeth (no, the equine denist doesn’t know why they’re called that either) removed. Bored, the Magical Horse has taken the opportunity to look at my CV. Thinking this may be a breakthrough for us, I watch with anticipation as she flicks through the pages. ?Heath visitor, specialist nurse, HIV/Aids trainer....she wrinkles her muzzle and crosses her hooves, leans back. Senior NHS manager, clinical coordinator with post grad course in medicine....she yawns, starts doodling with a piece of hay. 

?Degree in herbal medicine in my forties, whilst running family home, teenagers and managing enormous vegetable plot, Herbalist, has run two businesses, ....uncrosses her hooves and crosses them the other way. “Well?” I prompt. Magical Horse yawns again, says “The thing is, this all looks like very predatorial behaviour to me, whereas you forget I’m a prey animal who already has a boss mare”. She’s quite right. Any worldly achievements have come from engaging my male energy, which in her eyes makes me a predator. “What about being all those power point talks I’ve given to two hundred plus people”...starts chewing her tail, rolls her eyes “I haven’t seen much evidence of confidence, or leadership frankly”. Farts and moves off towards her lead mare in the herd. 

This natural horsemanship method requires, above all, presence and clarity. Awareness of ones energy, of every glance and slightest movement and knowledge that Magical Horse is monitoring every single bit of energy in every single moment. It may have been easier to take up sitting meditation. 

Thanks to my friend, Julie and her flower essence remedies, the confidence, quite badly knocked during this bout of illness, is returning. And the gift of illness always being to learn more about oneself. For instance, my ridiculous difficulty in asking for, no, damn it, even knowing what I need. Allowing myself to be vulnerable and needy (cringe..even to write it!) and to ask people for help.

This got me in trouble the night I came home from the intense two day, total of eight hour dental surgery and crunching out of jaw bone infection, legacy of the sixties “drill and fill” dental ethos.  Arranged at short notice, we couldn’t cancel Lovely Mans’ work in time, meaning he went abroad, and I came home alone in a taxi. I failed to tell my adult children to keep their phones on. Result,  with extreme pain and swelling that night, and unable to get hold of a Doctor, taxi, kids, friends or even ex-husbands various, I ended up driving myself to A and E at two am, high on codeine and in my pyjamas.

My mother would have deeply disapproved of the pyjamas. A sweet woman who role models were Princess Grace and the Queen, she had her hair newly set for the last time, twenty three years ago, in blissful unawareness she’d be

dead by teatime the next day. Having also changed into best clothes before the Doctor called, she then slipped without fuss into a coma, managing to arrive in the resuscitation room elegantly dressed and hair beautifully coiffed.

In contrast, not only was I in A and E in some cruddy top, pyjama bottoms and slippers, with hair stuck up in a point, but they were my christmas reindeer pyjamas. With snowflakes. Intense pain and codeine will do that to a person. Laying across at least three chairs, I was reminded also how much my mother disapproved of the Greenham Common women, “It’s so unfeminine, all that lying down in the road”. 

Having seen a kind young Doctor (yes, I've reached the age where doctors and policemen, and all authority figures are now young enough to be my children) and attempted to reassure him I was fine to drive (whilst speaking through the codeine at a third of my normal speed), I wasn’t sure how the hell I would get home. I went through the whole process again of trying and failing to get hold of kids, friends and ex husbands various (amicable relationships with previous husbands should surely allow for the occasional collection from hospital in the wee hours?), the got in the car and drove home.

Presenting this ridiculously competent, non needy facade to the world for fifty six years, means you will manifest precisely all that goes with it, as above. Family, mortified, rallied round the next day, bringing pain relief, taking me to yet another emergency dentist for continuing pain, feeding me, but I’m very aware that on that night, I manifested what I’d put out.... ‘ I’m supremely confident and competent, don’t ever really need looking after, I am the rock everyone can lean on”. 

Oh the marvelous banana skins our ego creates for us.......

PAKHET, STANDING IN FOR HATHOR, AMONGST THE NETTLES (GREEN MILK)

NOT QUITE (DIDNT HAVE THE TOP) BUT WORRYINGLY SIMILAR

Ferments

Fermenting food is on trend right now, and I’m relatively new to it. I’ve been making Kombucha (fermented sweet tea) and milk kefir (fermented raw organic jersey milk) for about a year. Why? Because they’re so darned good for you, especially if you are trying to “heal the gut” as its so delicately called. Whilst in the West we are feeling the effects of too much processed food, we have mostly forgotten old ways of processing food, practiced for hundreds of years (home made wines, sourdough bread, ginger ale, cider, unpasteurised cheese).

This is why I’m starting the day wiping bright orange brine off the utility room walls. Opening my first attempt at Kimchi (a hot Korean ferment of cabbage, hot peppers, carrots and garlic) means encountering her full feistiness as she launches forth, creating a Jackson Pollock over an impressive distance, in about a second flat. My milk kefir is like a delicate tangy thin milky yogurt. I was glad to have her on hand when first trying the kimchi. An instantly more-ish addictive flavour, but searingly hot! Racing to the fridge, I plunged my tongue into the kefir and disappeared in the hot steam rising. 

Learning.

Alive food. Very alive. With whole townships of beneficial yeasts and bacteria willing to help us humans restore our downtrodden guts, in return for a warm home with walls for artistic expression (preferably newly decorated). Bacteria are going to save the planet and us. Already learning how to digest plastic for food, biofilms will be the ones to mop up the toxicity we created. And Japanese knotweed (removes copper from contaminated soils) star of soil remediation plants, nettles too of course.

What started as something to help me heal autoimmune hypothyroidism and the concomitant chronic fatigue etc (I’m forcing myself to identify myself this way here y’know...it doesn’t come naturally) has led to a new fascination with fermenting. Disliking labels, but wanting to be honest, for whatever reason (karmic, past life, emotional, spiritual, antibiotic led, mercury toxic, gut dysbiotic) I’ve been ill. In some ways there’s no point looking for why, except to touch briefly into it, lift out what may help and do that. The task to re find my instinct and follow her. 

Fortunately I’m not working, so I can Focus on this healing, and learning to weave gently with it, let it flow towards me, not march out and try to wrestle it down. As with Magical Horse, any attempt to push and shove doesn’t work. The more alarmed I become when really unwell, the more I’m apt to research, then purchase an array of supplements, to which my body simply digs its heels in, like the mare. I could start a health food shop with the stuff out the back, thrust back in boxes, in deep frustration. 

So, a gentle rhythm has emerged, which means necking some kombucha with warm water first thing, followed by whizzing raw organic jersey whey powder in rice milk, then a wonderful wander in the garden with big basket gathering fresh nettle tops and cleavers to juice with organic beetroot and some organic apple juice (this whole shebang supports the liver and gut). I have a deep love relationship with Mother Nettle, who took me in eight years ago, long into my work as a herbalist and has been teaching me ever since. I always ask the plants every morning before picking them, however “established” my relationship with them, thank them, and ask them to heal me. That last bit has been the hardest, asking, asking for me. But its getting easier. 

This all topped off with milk kefir....then breakfast.

I’m getting better, the sun is shining on me, and nature is healing me in the way my body finds acceptable. Whoever you are, whatever you need, for whatever healing you are seeking, I send you blessings for the journey. 

KIMCHI

NETTLES AND CLEAVERS READY FOR JUICING

GREEN TARA AMONGST THE CLEAVERS

Wet Hen day

We have thunder and heavy rain, wet hens huddled in the woodshed, and Nettles drinking it all in. They seem to almost vibrate with vitality. For me, it's a "two steps forward, one back" day. I have dropped my thyroid medication too quickly, so whilst the anxiety and shakes of too much, have gone, they are replaced by the slipper shuffle I have come to know so well the last three and a half months. 

The dogs rejoice in a "sofa day", two Jack Russells, brother and sister, Boy Dog is particularly well suited to his role. He likes a bit of a death bed. 

I am starting to trust all this a bit more though. I have always trusted the Divine to get me through, but probably not myself. Those who have had thyroid, or chronic fatigue issues will know well the terror of slipping into that again, not knowing if this time you'll get out of it. Not knowing whats wrong and how to "fix it" too, are a big ongoing stress. 

I've had a few bouts of this in the last seventeen years. This blog is part of fessing up to that, and not ignoring. Mostly I've been well (as long as you don't count the total of about three years with thyroid, mercury, Lymes…). I've had this image of the venus fly trap. You know, when you feel like the fly thats just been caught and is slipping inexorably into the bottom of the plant. The joy though when you start to escape, improve, get better, climb out of the fly trap.

But this time, its a big healing I feel, deep in my soul. I did a lot of Ancestral healing work, which resulted in Blessings, which resulted in plunging into the Venus fly trap again (thought: maybe illness is really the Venus love trap, the trap of lack of self love). This time though, I feel I have got to the bottom of things. That may be a rash statement. Thus, it is a healing. 

This all started with teeth. Bad management of by Dentist. Say no more. Seventeen years later I have had specialist work done to remove root canal tooth, all wisdom teeth, a lingering mercury amalgam (even though supposedly they were all "safely" removed by another dentist sixteen years ago) (mercury is not my friend) and about five areas of jawbone infection crunched out. 

It's not been a quiet spring!

But as soon as the work was done, I could feel a big shift. So, I'm on the up, trying to stabilise my thyroid and recover my strength, energy and stamina.

What's helping: The love and support of my man and family, dogs, good friends, NATURE, SUNSHINE, sleep, tiny walks, avoiding most supplements, good whey powder, raw milk kefir, kombucha, juicing Mother Nettle, Beetroot, Cleavers and Lemon Balm, decoctions of ribwort, ginseng, oat tops, sarsaparilla, echinacea, milk thistle. Strong chicken bone broth, celtic sea salt as a sole in spring water, probiotics, past life therapy, crystal and sound healing, shamanic work

I was well enough to go and see magical horse the other day. Fortunately she is looked after by someone, so I haven't had to worry about her. She, of course, was not particularly pleased to see me. I haven't had her long enough or done enough with her to establish that bond yet. 

All of November last year, full of energy, I worked with her most days, learning the Natural Horsemanship Parelli way. The idea is we'll develop a partnership, and that was coming. Now, we're back to square one it feels. Fidgetting , and stamping her back hoof (her preferred way of letting me know she's unimpressed) and generally having a "f*** you" attitude. She knows. She shoots me a look that implies "weakling" and she also knows I'm ridiculously intimidated by a person at the yard, resulting in me giving off pathetic victim vibes. This intimidation victim thing hasn't happened like this since I was about six. More lessons for me. 

Sometimes I question if I did the right thing, getting this young Arabian mare, un-backed the wrong side of fifty five (me not her)(she may be fifty five before I get this right). Sometimes I think this Magical Horse and me thing is never going to come right. Mostly deep in my core I trust this. She and I are going to work it out, and I am going to learn a lot through her. Thats the script anyway at the moment. 

She's only six and not been handled much before, so we'll see. She has to have "wolf teeth" out this week….if its not me, its the horse…. bloody teeth!