Where My Soul Feels at Home
On plants, presence, and the quiet purpose that blooms when we stop trying to figure everything out.
This evening, I took a stroll through the neighborhood and met some friends along the way.
Over the last week or so, I’ve felt myself being even more drawn to plants.
Being a total plant nerd is a normal state of mind for me, but this has gone a layer deeper.
It’s like I’m being magnetized to them. Called to them. I don’t know what for, but all I know is that I need to be in their presence. And for the first time in my life, I’m not trying to figure out “why” on a cognitive, conscious level.
Not trying to figure out, “Oh wait, is there a message I’m supposed to receive, is there something I need to learn or discover?!” Because then my ego starts getting involved and I ruin the magic 😂
I’ve just been present with them. Open. Receptive.
And in this receptivity, I’ve witnessed how much different I FEEL in my body when I’m around plants and in nature. There’s a peace and stillness. A calm and flow.
An ease. An openness.
When my mom and I went to the garden center yesterday, I just knew I needed to be around those plants. To wander in wonder and reverence. To touch their leaves, to smile at their flowers and to learn their names.
Not only did my soul feel at home, but I couldn’t help but notice how much I wanted to learn about those plants. Especially the native plants that grow right outside our doorstep. I was so curious - my brain felt like a sponge.
I wanted to know their names, their properties, how and where they grow, their herbal qualities and energetics.
Peace, receptivity and openness…That’s how I felt.
And even more - when I’m around plants, I feel a sense of purpose that I’ve only ever felt on stage. And it’s a hard sensation to “nail down.”
I could be standing on a dark stage, in a completely empty theatre, looking out over the seats and know, in my bones, “this is exactly where I’m meant to be.”
Despite the fact that it’s a dark stage and I’m not even performing. No one is watching. I’m just standing in front of an empty audience.
Yet, my soul is at home.
That’s how I feel around plants. My soul is at home. I’m not necessarily doing anything, I’m just being present in their presence…and that fills me with a deep sense of purpose. I just know I’m supposed to be there.
And for someone like me, it’s hard to just be with something like that. I immediately think, “Oh, I need to DO something with this,” because for so long, I’ve connected purpose with action.
If there’s no action, there’s no purpose.
It’s only recently that I’ve started to understand that purpose can simply be an energy - it can be your essence. Purpose is what flows through you at any given moment when you feel alive.
I may not know exactly what vessel or vehicle this “plant purpose” belongs in, but I have a feeling it looks like working with clients for Flower Essence Therapy, creating my own herbal products, teaching about plants and plant spirit medicine, LEARNING about plants and plant spirit medicine…
But I don’t have to figure that out right at this moment. So often, the magic of purpose gets snuffed out because we try to do something with it right away, we feel this spark, this tingle, this homecoming within our soul, and we pounce on taking action with it. We get our egos involved.
But it can just be a sensation. We can let it live and brew and GROW as an energy and essence in our bodies first.
And then we can choose to do something (ie, get our minds involved) with it, or not.
I really believe we’re moving into an era of sensing, feeling and embodying things on a level that we’ve never experienced before. I know the Age of Aquarius has an air energy - a quick, fast-paced mental and cognitive energy - futuristic…but I also believe that, collectively, we are also moving into an era of intuition. Embodiment. Feeling and sensing. Deepening into the wisdom of our bodies.
Especially as women. We’re being called back to ourselves.
And something else dropped in yesterday as I was looking through plant pictures I took on a walk in the South Park neighborhood in San Diego with my dear friend…not only did I get another ping to learn about these native or locally growing plants, but I also want to share that knowledge, as well.
Because there’s something so empowering about knowing the land around us and the plants that grow there. It’s a relationship that ancestrally was very strong, but has, for many reasons, devolved into a mere whisper in modern times.
You don’t have to start making your own sourdough or raising chickens to deepen or develop a connection with the plant world. It can be done right after you order same-day delivery on Amazon.
But how cool would it be to walk down the street and actually notice the green world around you? To know their names. And one interesting fact about them.
To greet them as friends.
Because for so many centuries, for so many people and cultures…they were.
Friends, brothers, sisters, protectors, healers.
Plants want a connection with humans. They thrive on reciprocity. And, quite honestly, so do we.
