REALITY CHECK

reality check | finding resilience in troubled times THE NATURE OF REALITY INSPIRED BY A CONVERSATION WITH PARSLEY

By Deb Rodney

It was just a garnish. A little, lacy green sprig I snatched quickly before the waitress whisked away my empty plate and headed for the dishwasher.

“One simple, crunchy mouthful was the beginning of what came to feel like a haunting, a possession, or an irrational addiction.”

Parsley. It tasted so good. In fact, it was better than the entire meal. One simple, crunchy mouthful was the beginning of what came to feel like a haunting, a possession, or an irrational addiction. It turned out to be a simple message.

Before you read my musing to its conclusion you will think I’m surely delusional, or my story will resonate somewhere in the depths of the truth you know. You’ll sigh and say, “Ahhhh, yes, I know that, too.”

There are parallel realities. One that says it’s impossible (and ridiculous) to have a conversation with parsley. And one that knows that the unseen (and unacknowledged) in our world speak to us in many ways—even if we only hear them in big moments we call miracles.

Well, parsley started speaking to me in a whisper without words. The communication felt more like an impulse. “Taste me, don’t I look delicious?” After that in the veggie section of the supermarket, there it was a little louder. A whole bunch was saying, “Take me. I’m yours.”

“I hid the stems deep down in the garbage, thinking I was surely going crazy and afraid my addictive behavior, which couldn’t possibly be explained, would be discovered by my family.”

For weeks, I bought parsley in multiple bunches, washed and ate it alone standing at the kitchen sink. I hid the stems deep down in the garbage, thinking I was surely going crazy and afraid my addictive behavior, which couldn’t possibly be explained, would be discovered by my family.

Then my mind would teeter in another direction. It was perfectly natural to eat a lot of parsley. It tasted good. It couldn’t hurt me. It’s a green vegetable, right?

Plants are medicine. How did we first discover their medicinal properties? Imagine one of our early foremothers in the forest foraging for food. She trips and cuts her arm. It begins to bleed badly. She decides to try and stop the bleeding with some leaves she puts on the wound. But it continues to bleed and she runs from plant to plant trying this and trying that until she finally grabs some yarrow leaves. She presses them to the cut and the bleeding stops. She passes the information to everybody she knows and soon yarrow leaves become known for stopping the flow of blood.

Or did it happen like this: The first women and men knew that plants communicated. After all they lived in intimate proximity with them since before they could communicate among themselves. They cut a carrot, looked at its center, and it resembled an eye. So, they knew carrots were good for eyes (which they are). A tree in the Amazonian jungle has a bark that resembles snake’s skin and is a known cure for snakebite. Today, we know that the inside of the heart looks like the chambers of a tomato, which is nutritionally good for maintaining a healthy heart. Maybe our early ancestors looked at

Or maybe the yarrow tree simply called out in some way, “Look at me. I can help.” And our foremother, without thinking put the leaves on her cut, the bleeding stopped and she lived to grow old.

“So, is finding the right foods for our health or the right medicines for a problem a hit and miss process?”

So, is finding the right foods for our health or the right medicines for a problem a hit and miss process? Or if we know how to listen, do plants communicate with us bypassing the “rational” mind and sending their messages to somewhere in the realm of the soul looking for wholeness?

I didn’t figure out what the parsley was trying to tell me until I went to my naturopath because I was feeling tired all the time. After a blood test, she told me I was iron deficient. With relief, I opened up and told her about my parsley addiction. She laughed and said parsley was high in iron. In my head, I could see little bunches giggling delightfully as their message got through.

Now that I know that plants have a language and can communicate from some deep place of connected life, I wonder if maybe there are ways we humans can listen beyond the limitations of words and thoughts, to find our way to resilience, health and wholeness.

Deb Rodney is the managing Editor of Natural Awakenings. She can be reached at debrodney@gmail.com

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BIDDY EARLY, Ireland 1800’s, A Ghost Story

by Deb Rodney

They called me Biddy the Healer. Sometimes the Wise Woman of County Clare. And sometimes they called me mad as a box of frogs. You daft people named some weed after me and it won the Cannabis Cup in 2003. Biddy Early: A little gift from the hereafter. But I dither.

As a wee girl, I listened to the faeries and by the time I was 15, I had learned to be a folk healer from my mother, as she had from hers. I had a knack for concocting herbal potions and I gave them to animals, same as people. On a small tenant farm, a dead animal could mean starvation for poor souls in the farmin’ back country of Ireland.

I used ergot to ease the pain of labor. The idiotic church held that a woman’s birthing pain was punishment for the sins of Eve. The church didn’t like me. Not one bit. I didn’t like them neither. Priests denounced me from the pulpit. They tried to scare people away from me. But people came. Who wouldn’t go to hell for a cure, if one of her own was sick?

Oh, how I lust for a wee draft of poteen! But the whisky would spill down my ghostly gullet and onto the floor like piss. I could use a smoke. Sigh. I did love my pipe. And I lust for my husband’s bodies. All four of them. Each of them died on me--wild cards they were or they wouldn’t have married me. The sweetest of the lot was 31 years to my 71. They say I bewitched him but he’s not here to say what drew him close to me.

I was accused of many things. Yes, I cut up earthworms and frogs and boiled them in a pot. I fed that soup to those afflicted with the prevailing disease of starvation, when there was nothing else. Trust me, it’s easier being a ghost than livin’ in your world. I know for a fact because when I was 16, I slaved my heart out in the poor house after my mother died. It taught me real early what it meant to be poor. Somebody there taught me to read and write, for which I am mightily grateful. Poor people help each other out. It’s just what we do.

And yes, I carried a magical blue bottle that I shook two or three times and it showed me cures and warned me of deaths and disaster. It was given to me by the faeries and contained some powerful medicine. And it scared people. Once when my black-hearted landlord evicted a bunch of us who had nowhere to go, the dark elixir in the bottle showed me that his death was nigh. As he threw me out of my cottage on me ass, I screamed that he was doomed. People was so mad and desperate that they murdered him that very night. That blue bottle caused me a lot of trouble but I carried it everywhere.

Yes, people came to me. I helped their babies find their way out of the womb and I sat with them when they died. I pulled their teeth, set their bones, sewed them up and cured their gas with my herbs. Some money-people came to me too when the fricken doctors couldn’t cure them. I charged them accordingly.

My healing ways was questioned by a doctor who would sell you the eye balls right outta your own head. He was jealous of the few shillings I sometimes got from my patients, or maybe

it was the fat little piglets or the bottles of whisky. Or maybe it was because they came to me at all. I lived with the misery of the poor my whole, long life. They trusted me. I didn’t care what them doctors thought. But they sure cared about what I did!

In 1865, I was brought to court in Ennis and charged under the Witchcraft Act. If a woman dared to cure, she was accused of consorting with the devil. That was ridiculous. I had my husbands to consort with and they pleased me. I had no use for the devil. They wanted to be rid of our fine peasant-women’s herbs and lore. And that wasn’t going to happen while I was alive. A ccording to the American Massage Th erapy Association (AMTA), 75 percent of individuals surveyed in 2013 said their primary reasons for receiving a massage in the past 12 months were medical or stress-related. People no longer seek a massage solely for relaxation, says the AMTA, but many use massage therapy to assist with numerous medical conditions or to manage stress and anxiety, which translates physiologically as tension held in the body. In the 2013 survey, 59 percent of respondents said their physician recommended massage.

While the fi ght-or-fl ight response which produces the stress hormone cortisol was once a reaction to life-threatening situations such as encounters with wild animals, today this physiological reaction of the autonomic nervous system could be the result of perceived threats such as negative self-talk or a hectic workday, or could even be triggered as a side eff ect of prescription medication.

A review of more than a dozen studies concluded that massage therapy helps relieve anxiety by aff ecting the body’s biochemistry. Researchers at the University of Miami School of Medicine reviewed data measuring the cortisol in participants before and immediately aft er massage and found that the therapy lowered cortisol levels by up to 53 percent. Massage also increased serotonin and dopamine, which are both neurotransmitters that help reduce the occurrence and severity of depression. MASSAGE FOR STRESS AND ANXIETY by Lee Walker Quote here?

Many people carry a signifi cant portion of stress as tension in the shoulders, neck and back, and posture plays a big part. However, the opposing muscles, such as those in the chest, also oft en contribute to the pain in the back of the neck.

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Well, the case was dismissed due to lack of evidence because those priests and judges couldn’t find even one witness to testify against me. Maybe they was scared. I don’t care why. I helped many more people and died poor and natural when I was 74.

The Catholic church and I made our peace. Father Connellan anointed me in my last hours. But he hurled my magical blue bottle in Lake Kilberron behind my cottage when I passed into this sorry state. I’m still furious about the stupidity of some people and I’m gonna hang around until I find it. If you find it, use it wisely.

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