Today I am following an urge and so I am out looking for Bloodroot.
Bloodroot is a beautiful spring ephemeral wildflower that grows in the woods now before the leaves of the trees grow in.
I love looking for and finding very special plants like Bloodroot. The plant is very quick to bloom and fade into the undergrowth. It has these leaves that hug the flower stem as it emerges. I have read that the leaf gathers around the flower stalk to help protect it and keep it warm.
The plant has been used medicinally as a dye, for various skin conditions, may have properties as an anti-cancer agent and traditionally was used to induce vomiting as well as abortion in horses and humans.
I don’t touch the plant. It is irritating to the skin and also a very delicate and at-risk wildflower, but I love to find it and say hello.
Yesterday Rob sent me a blurry pic of what looked like bloodroot from his fishing spot, so today I joined him to see if we could find them again and there they were! There were more of the flowers than I have ever seen clustered in a sandy area near the river. Maybe 30 or 40? Small and just emerging – they have white blooms with glowing yellow stamens. 💚
(I feel like humans but especially women have deep primal urges to forage, gather and seek. Because for hundreds of thousands of years that is what we did to feed ourselves and make what we needed to survive. It is deeply ingrained and many of us have transferred that love into an urge for shopping. Buying food and things for our homes hits an ancient nerve of foraging satisfaction.)
Last year I had a lovely trip to England that was a pilgrimage and an adventure in one. This spring I’m not going on a big trip but I want to take little trips and have little adventures- continuing to listen to what makes me happy and giving it to myself as much as I can.
It doesn’t have to be in nature.
We are going to New York City this week and I am eager to sit for a bit in the New York public library and on a bench in Columbus park in Chinatown.
Small things can be deeply nourishing, but first we have to figure out what we want.
As women and as mothers, I feel like many of us repress so many yearnings, so many of those callings, because we truly cannot follow them. There is too much practical caretaking to be done. Just to get by! Sometimes barely get by!!
Giving into our cravings for alone time, creativity or time in nature can seem so indulgent.
But.
To continue to generate enough energy and interest to support ourselves and the world around us, we need to also take care of ourselves and our internal needs.
We need to find ways to feed ourselves within the world so we can go on.
So, let yourself be drawn to something.
What would you like to go find?
What is calling to you? From nature? From your spirit?
What is something you want to do that maybe doesn’t make logical sense but gets you excited?
Maybe it is being loved ones?
Maybe it’s spending time alone?
Maybe it is looking at stars in the sky?
Maybe it is read a book in a cafe drinking a latte?
Maybe you, like me, want to go on a hunt for spring flowers?
Take some time to ponder something you would like to do for you, let something rise up and call to you.
And then make time to do it!
Let me know how it goes.
