Grief & Death: reflection, plants for mind/body/spirit
Grief is an unending river raging out to stormy sea. In my humble rowboat, I’ve been thrashed upon the craggy rocks. I’ve capsized. The storm rages on before momentary eerie stillness. Through the silence I reflect on what I’ve lost and who I’ve become, who I am becoming still. I consider the tools I have at my disposal as I try to navigate this new timeline I’ve been thrust into without my consent.
Early this winter I experienced a traumatic, profound loss: the death of my soulmate, my favorite person on earth. The ripple of shock and grief has completely obliterated life as I knew it and left me questioning all beliefs I once held. In the very early days following his death, I entered what I can only describe as a liminal space. That, I suppose, is a psychological trauma response. That, I suppose, might also be known as “dissociating.” But it is not dissociating I have experienced before. The trauma jolted me into a shift in time/space/reality on a spirit level. Part of my spirit died with him, and in turn, part of his spirit has integrated into me. In a way I feel more intimately connected than ever, yet I can never be held in his arms again. Fumbling I weave these bewildering polarities into the time/space fabric of my life: beautiful transcendental love and intolerable despair, the devastation of his death.
Still in the trenches, I am no expert in understanding the mystery of death and depths of grief. I have been lost through this loss. I seek comfort researching ancestral traditions and rituals around death and mourning, called to Celtic practices like keening, building altars, writing letters and poems, and playing music - all for him. Turning to ancestors and spirit is the only way I can possibly survive. Being in liminal space has made it easy to drop into otherworld journeys, meeting with my guides, ancestors, and even his spirit. I felt him everywhere for weeks, with or without dropping in. Each night I lit a candle at his altar. Tending to his newly departed soul has been a deep honor for me and has, I hope, assisted him in crossing the threshold. I am not formally trained in this kind of work, but have trusted my intuition, my connection to my Celtic ancestors and guides, and the soul level bond we share. I am reminded by the reverence of tending-to that this is the work our ancestors did for their newly departed. This is how one does not completely lose their mind.
Outside of my spiritual experience, the grief has taken a toll on my mind and my body. I am a soul having a human experience after all. For weeks following his death I spiraled deep into the mystery: why had he left me, how could this have happened, what could I have done to prevent it, where he was now? I lost track of time. Hours bled into days into weeks. I became a ghost in my own life. I was not sleeping, or sleeping too much, not eating, and generally unable to do anything I used to do. When I was finally able to remember to tend to myself, I turned to trusted plant allies: hawthorn, rose, kava, tulsi, linden, drop doses of sacred ghost pipe, and lots of homeopathic arnica. Though I have still not fully come back into my body, the plants provide deep medicine in helping me slowly step into this new reality.
First and foremost, I tend to my broken heart. For the first eight weeks following his passing, the pain in my chest was unrelenting. I felt a constant crushing sensation in my heart. Hawthorn and rose are a classic duo for the heart, which has been shown to have impaired function during periods of grief. Hawthorn feels nutritive while energetically holding my heart and protecting me from my pain. I simmer the berries on the stovetop, creating a potent decoction, or sometimes I simply cover them with boiling water and let them infuse overnight. When I am feeling adventurous, I add leaf, flower, and a thorn for extra protection. Sometimes I add rose petals, or drops of a rose elixir made with petals harvested last summer by the seaside, from a special place he and I shared many dates.
Rose holds the highest vibrational frequency of any flower. I’ve always found that rugosa by the sea has a special salty element. Perhaps this specific remedy offers an extra layer of energetic medicine. I consider rose for the energetic heart, to invite a little softness around edges crusted over with salt and generally worn down (I think of the waves pummeling the craggy rocks again and again, eventually making them smooth). Drops of rose elixir provide immediate relief to the layers of salt weighing down my heart. And I find it interesting to note that botanically, these plants share that they flower, fruit, and have thorns. I am reminded once more of the polarity of the beauty and the pain.
Next I remember my nervous system, which oscillates between totally offline and totally haywire. For this, kava and tulsi. The intensity of pain in my body has blocked me, at times, from feeling the love that still exists. My human ego/mind struggle in coping with the new reality of my love. The body may die, but the energies of love and of his spirit still exist. As much as I may understand that concept, I desperately want the human experience with my love — to hear his laughter, to touch him. When the reality hits me all over again, I am overcome with panic. It is utterly terrifying to know I will never see him again. For that overwhelming feeling, kava kava tincture (2-3 droppers-full, but you won’t find that on any recommended dosage panel), and a warm cup of tulsi tea help me return to my body. I’ve been advised not to compare herbs to pharmaceutical drugs, but kava is the closest thing I can liken to a benzodiazepine. When experiencing panic, kava tincture numbs the nervous system without causing sedation. It allows me to drop back into this plane with a strange sense of clarity. I always dilute it, and currently in the tulsi tea. A squirt from the dropper leaves a hypnotic plume of milky, opalescent medicine slowly swirling on top of whatever liquid it’s been dropped into. I can’t say it “pairs well” with the tulsi, because I don’t think it “pairs well” with anything, but the tulsi is lovely.
Tulsi was one of my first plant allies, gentle and palatable, and invites immediate calm. Tulsi is widely known as an adaptogen, helping to balance the adrenal glands and reduce cortisol. I prefer it to other adaptogens because it’s so easy to grow in my garden, and so fragrant. It contains eugenol, the same compound found in clove, which gives it an aromatic quality. Energetically, aromatic plants tend to be quite helpful in moving dampness from the body. I try to remember to have a cup of tea every afternoon.
Perhaps the most profound remedy has been linden, a gorgeous, fragrant tree. My sweet love and I spent hours on the phone last summer while we were living long distance. During these calls, I would take long walks around the neighborhood during golden hour. One week in June when the linden trees were blooming, I gushed to him about the heavenly fragrance. I could smell a blooming linden tree in someone’s yard from around the block. I told him by next June we’d be sitting together under a blossoming linden tree. Linden has always been an ally to me, but now holds an even deeper resonance with my spirit. In a quart mason jar, I brew a strong infusion of linden tea, both to drink and to bathe in. I learned about ritual baths with linden from Robin Rose Bennett’s blog post about grief. One night I was in such despair I didn’t believe anything could soften the pain. In wild desperation I prepared the linden bath. Submerged in the light sweet linden, I finally felt a moment of relief from that constant crushing pain in my heart, and was able to breathe into my body, opening to receive the love that is still there. Linden is considered remedial to the heart and the nervous system, and is indicated specifically for insomnia. I consider linden to be, perhaps, my all time favorite plant to drink just on its own.
For the trauma, I have gone through multiple tubes of arnica 200ck. Arnica is a homeopathic remedy, working with the etheric body on a cellular level, similar to flower essences. I keep a tube with me at all times, just in case. The dosage is 5 pellets as needed until the feeling stops. Another energetic remedy I have been working with is a ghost pipe tincture, made last summer after spending many days sitting with the plant and asking if it wanted to be made into medicine. Ghost pipe is a drop dose remedy, indicated for pain and post traumatic stress disorder. I drop some into whatever I am drinking, with the intention that it will help rewire my brain’s trauma feedback loop. Only three days of ghost pipe provided significant relief.
I share about these plants because, to put it simply, this is what I do, even when I grieve. When reflecting on why this has happened and what am I supposed to do for the rest of my life without my favorite person, all that is clear to me is that I must help others traverse their own experience with grief and death. But right now I need support, and the plants offer me some. The spiritual practices of journeying, tending to my beloved’s spirit, and writing offer me some. Connecting with groups and going to therapy offer me some. None of it fixes me. There is no “fixing” this. There is only integration, which I assume - but don’t know for certain - will happen eventually. What I do know is that every day feels like un-reality. Nothing feels real. Grief comes in waves and knocks the wind out of me. For that, the plants help. For the rest, only time will tell.
this post was originally written in March of 2025
It is whatever you want it to be
I always imagined my first blog post being about “my story” or how I got to where I am. The truth is, the older I get, the more I realize I’m still in the midst of “my story.” It’s evolving and changing with each season. Each year passing lifts another veil of what I thought I understood.
If you asked me just one year ago, my story would be about how I got into herbalism because during my last semester of college I wrote my final thesis in Feminist Thought about my outrage at the medical system. I was outraged at what I identified as “the pathologizing of our idiosyncracies” and the limiting containers these diagnoses create for the spectrum of human expression in response to lived experience, informed by cultural expectations and the American way of life. I was outraged at the overprescription of medication and how specifically women have been targeted with SSRIs, birth control, and other pharmaceuticals that alienate us from our bodies. It was Feminist Thought and I was twenty-one, after all. I had my own personal traumatic experiences with the western medical system and those medications, and writing that paper opened my mind to something different. Somehow, I ended up finding my way back to my roots (my childhood obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I really wanted to be Wiccan like her friend Willow) in Green Witchcraft.
The overlap was coincidence. I got into herbalism because I wanted to take control of my health and my body. I saw herbalism as a traditional women’s sphere — a place of midwives, healers, and witches. Herbalism was a balm for my anger, a channel for healing. I spent the next decade slowly unraveling, journeying to my heart, and studying as much about herbalism, holistic health, and alternate healing modalities as possible. I discovered the deep healing power of fostering a connection to the earth. I discovered my purpose was to help guide others in reclaiming their sovereignty through earth based medicine. In a nutshell.
My story has radically shifted this year. Though I am still angry at the system and the ways it fails us, I have been busy seeing my whole world shattered by death and grief. Everything I thought I knew about myself and the world around me has been irrevocably altered. No longer is it even in me to be outraged, though there is the ghost of that girl still in there, mad at the many failures and injustices of “the system.” I could insert a tangent here about the issues (how it all started with the industrial revolution and the shift away from agrarian living, and how now we are expected to be “productive” to the extent that we burn ourselves out completely, selling our precious time, our lives, our souls, in order to make a living (which still isn’t enough) and have actually fooled ourselves into believing “rest” is a form of laziness although our bodies are begging us to slow down and remember what it feels like to be, just be, in a body with blood, and to feel our hearts pulsing alongside the rhythm of the earth, which ultimately speaks to how far away we’ve gotten from that earth, and how even those of us devoted to its path must survive through some form of commodification of what is most sacred to us, trapping us in a vicious cycle in which we’ve been complicit in exploiting ourselves. Don’t even get me started on colonialism and its erasure of earth-based-spirit-centered medicine), but I’ll save that for another time.
I have learned a big lesson this year about anger and outrage, and blame, and how those qualities can be somewhat regressive. That’s a big lesson for me, a choleric (borderline sanguine). I used to be so attached to my anger. I saw it as fuel. But I’ve experienced a Big Change. This life is so precious and fleeting. Sure, I can blame the system. I can be angry at the countless ways it is blatantly failing its people. I can be outraged that life is so unfair. But the rage, the anger, and the blame all keep me stuck in a negative feedback loop. And frankly, that’s the last thing I need right now. I used to quote a bumper sticker (maybe it was a fortune cookie): “If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.” Honey, I’m paying attention. And I’m tired. I’ve beyond burned out. It’s been costing me my peace.
When I entered my saturn return a few years ago, I set an intention to find inner peace. I was telling people, “I have the cord, I just haven’t plugged it in yet.” It seemed like every time I’d go to plug it in, the circuit board would blow off. A large part of my herbal practice has focused on nervous system support. Plant magic for burnout. Let’s talk about milky oats, how sweet beautiful milky oats repair the myelin sheath (a milkbath for the nervous system). Let’s talk about trauma that gets stuck in the body, how energetic remedies like arnica can help release trauma on a cellular level. Let’s talk about how we can’t even begin to repair the nervous system when we are holding the trauma in our fascia, in our cells, in our etheric field. Let’s talk about all the layers.
The layers require deep work, which I’ve been attempting. I recognize that we are never “healed.” We are in process, “healing.” Outside of herbalism, I have opened up to many avenues to peel back my layers: therapy, reiki, sound healing, body work, functional medicine, naturopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, bioenergetics, quantum healing, astrology, shamanic journeying. I set intentions. I have a strong will. I stick to my regiments: movement, nourishment, play, rest. I value creativity and community. I spend time with the earth. I’m determined to change my wiring and heal the wounds of my matriarchal Irish-Catholic lineage, to unlearn shame, to loosen up and be less stern. There it is, the word that stops me. That’s one thing he loved about me - how stern I am.
That’s the Big Change. He. Him. Who? Stephen. My soulmate. The man so perfect for me I could have sworn I invented him. One moment he was here cooking beef stew with me and having a double feature movie night (I fell asleep during North by Northwest) and then so suddenly, he was gone gone gone. The absolute love of my life now ashes and dust and a little lock of hair. The One I could see beside me with certainty in all visions of the future. The One with his sweet heart, his tenderness, his long eyelashes, his curious spirit, his laughter, his hand in my hand — my love! how I could go on and on about the love (but of course, where could such life-shattering grief come from but the wellspring of pure love?) — no longer in this physical realm. His death has changed everything. Everything as in, Every Single Thing. Whatever it was I thought I knew, it turns out, I don’t know. I don’t know anything at all.
My story took the turn nobody wants. The turn most dreaded, most feared. I anticipated the turning page to say, “marriage,” and “baby,” and “happily ever after.” We were the most lucky, rare kind of love. It was beyond a blessing that we were certain to have those things. But those pages were torn out. Crumpled. Destroyed. Black ink spilled all over the rest. Of course, me, I blot it out. Damage control. I do all I know how. I try to keep healing.
The Big Change is he was here, he was mine and I was his, and now he is gone. The change is that I lost my edge. What made me Me? I try to remember to be stern, because that’s how Stephen liked me. He liked the stern talking-to I gave him in 2013, outside the bar, drunkenly, about how he should treat women (I have never known a man who has treated me better). He liked my fire, that I spoke my mind. Spicy. But now? My edge is gone. I’m soft. I’m the petals falling off a peony all over the tablecloth when you didn’t even touch the vase. You didn’t even look at it. I’ve got nothing to hold onto. I’ve shifted into melancholy.
That’s not who I am. I’m fire. I keep waiting for a spark to light me back up, but I think Teddy Roosevelt said it best with the death of his wife, “the Light has gone out of my life.” He lit me up. That mind/body/spirit concept is felt so deeply. And it is so exhausting to grieve. It is so exhausting to exist without the man I love. It’s exhausting to imagine the rest of my life now. There are things grief does to the body, to mind, and the spirit, which I will write about eventually (maybe). I’m tending to those places still. I’m trying my best to remember who I am and why I’m here. That’s what he’d want me to do. It’s what the plants have been helping me do. Only the plants. I turn to them over and over. Only the earth has allowed me to lay down upon it and breathe in its scent as it holds me with its soft lush arms of remembering again and again.
I will share something I wrote when I was first coming back into my body after the loss. I had hardly just met the grief. The shock took months to soften enough for me to understand that the grief was going to be a new, totally separate experience. I wrote my first blog post in hopes that maybe it could help someone going through something similar. Then I second guessed myself. “What right do I have, when I don’t even know who I am?” I clicked “Save Draft” for a time when I might start to remember.