The hellscape of 2019

After the drought and the fires we knew that this would be a year of healing.  When the rain fell on Christmas Day, we all felt a glimmer of hope.  Never before have I been so glad to slam the door on a year as I was at the end of 2019.  We were broken people.  Brittle and hard, dusty and withered by the heat, the dry, the exhaustion of trying to save our cattle.  

And then there were the fires.  Three months of fear as they circled us, finally blazing through the bush and rainforest we take such pride and joy in.  Helicopters scurried to and fro overhead day after endless day, making long journeys to the Hastings River for fire fighting water.  They tried to collect from one of the rapidly dwindling pools in the river below us, but it was too dangerous.  We were grateful not to have that stress as well.  

The river stopped flowing in October.  The baking sun evaporated inches every day and rather than the cool depths we are used to refreshing ourselves in after hot days of farmwork, there were just a few muddy warm puddles for us to flounder in.  The same water which served our stock and the house, that we wash our bodies and our clothes in.  The home of our precious platypus population.  Never before, in living memory, has the Ellenborough River stopped flowing.  

Our once verdant pastures were desiccated dust bowls.  Our beautiful Jerseys dropped to their knees and we battled to save them.  We stressed about money as we paid for tonne bags of pellets and small mountains of luxurious lucerne.  We nursed and nurtured the fallen as we begged them to get up and get well.  We sold others rather than lose them too.  Every day seemed to be a weighing of the scales with death.  The Grim Reaper wielded his scythe mercilessly.  We have seen horror before but this was different.  Millie, Milka, Henrietta, Damson, Clara were all hand fed and much loved pets as much as quiet and peaceful matriarchs in the herd.

Big Red was a huge cow with monster horns.  She went down and we kept sitting her up but Ged went away for work and I couldn’t do it alone.  But by buggery I wasn’t going to let her die so I used every ounce of my ingenuity and strength during that week – erecting shade over her, hoisting her up onto her knees so she could eat and drink and try and regain her strenght.  She died anyway.

Damson had been abandoned by her mum the day she was born so was hand reared by us.  She and Petal were inseparable.  I was worried about her birthing for the first time so checked on her daily.  She went down and I tried to help but she ran from me and slipped into the river.  That was a long day of literally trying to keep her head above water until we could lift her out.  Once dry and safe we fed her up, to no avail.

I lost all my favourites last year.  All my four legged friends.  It was brutal.

We had the joy of Goldie and her puppies.  8 little parcels of love.  And then Goldie went off for a wander with Mudji and never came home.  We hunted high and low.  With no body to bury and her babies to raise, there was no time for the deep grief of her loss.

Even the neighbours in their 80’s who have farmed this land their whole lives said beasts were dropping like flies.  None of us knew that the drought would go on so long and that it would be as bad as it was.  We were relying on spring rains.  They never came.  We all started feeding too late.

Added to the heat, dust and fire stress then was the sweet stench of our friends’ rotting flesh as we weren’t allowed to burn them.

I’ve never been in a war zone.  My experience can’t compare but that’s what it felt like – heat, smell and smoke.  Choppers whirring overhead.  A constant feel of threat and dread.  By December Ged and I were ready to walk off the land.  It was too much.  We were too scarred, so tired, broken.

We promised ourselves ‘no rash decisions’ as I restlessly googled farms for sale in New Zealand.  We knew 2020 would be a year of healing, of finishing projects, of letting time and space separate us from our grief.  Little could we know what this year had in store . . .

And yet.  Covid has forced us home and stopped the rush and scurry of our lives, leaving the farm to take Ben to school etc.  We have had more rain in the first few months of 2020 than in the past few years in total.  The grass has hurled itself out of the ground.  Mother Nature is recovering.  And so are we.  Time to be.  Time to be here.  To let the sounds seep into our souls.  To sleep, at last.  To watch the meandering river and its quiet life.  To listen to its burbling over rocks.  To watch eagles soaring, the cormorant drying his wings, the platypus paddling on the surface before duck diving once more.

And in these quiet pleasures comes peace.  A deep stillness settling in my soul  as Nature heals the deep heart she has wrought.  As we rest easy in her abundant embrace after wrestling with her and The Grim Reaper last year.

I guess I’m a farmer now.  I guess I learnt just why they can be dour and taciturn.  I learned about the pain lodged like a stone in their hearts.  And I have become quieter as a result. 

 

The Magic & Beauty of the Australian Bush

Ged always says I drive around with my eyes closed!  I say that of him too.  It does seem that we all have selective vision as we traverse through our lives.  I have been in love with the Australian Bush Flower Essences as healing remedies for years – magic in a bottle that have helped me let go of my past and move through my rage and grief to become happier, calmer, wiser.

Last year at this time when I was walking in Kendall State Forest, still sobbing about the loss of my beautiful Baby, there were thousands of delicate purple flowers scattered through the bush.  Purple was baby’s colour.  Everything she owned was purple – her head collar, leg bandages etc.  So these flimsy flowers on their strong green stalks seemed like messages from her from beyond the grave and I sobbed all the harder.

Still crying one year on.  Not so much, not every day, but still sometimes at a loss to deal with the loss.  And suddenly there were those flowers again.  I stopped and looked closely at them and all the other delicate tiny flowers blooming in the bush.  Each so small and perfect.  Tea tree with their five round white petals, like perfect rounded stars which remind me of the wonder and attention to detail after 10 days vipassana meditation in the Blue Mountains.  Little purple orchids on tiny climbing vines.  The golden yellow of gorse which I thought was a uniquely English bush.  The delicate tendrils of Eucalypt flowers with their wonderful sweet smell and caressing quality.  I made a collection and once more stooped to examine that papery purple flower.  Like a lightbulb in my head I realised that it was Bush Iris.  Familiar name, but what is it for?   I picked one and stroked my face with it as I grieved for Baby and realised that death is an intrinsic part of life.  In winter all is dead and dormant.  The land sleeps, the life forces stilled, nothing grows or flowers.  Yet in the spring time all is new and fresh and vibrant.  Singing and springing of resurgence and new life.  All is reborn.  So too is Baby as my beautiful Second Chance.  Nothing really dies. All is recycled, all is reborn.

I got back to the car and opened up the computer to check on the ausflowers website what the healing properties of Bush Iris are.  ‘The realisation that death is just a state of transition.  Opening of the root chakra and trust centres.’  All the things I have been meditating on recently and realising I needed to shift.  Funny that.

And then after taking the poor ailing child to the doctor who confirmed an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics, I spotted thousands of gorgeous flannel flowers on the sandy side of the road and stopped to harvest them in the hope of replanting them where I can see and adore their velvety smiles.  They bring me great joy and awaken the childish innocence I lost so long ago.

Suddenly my eyes and heart are open to the bush flowers all around me.  I can make my own!  Instead of being dependent on others for my healing I can seek to communicate and commune with nature on my own terms, make my own remedies, allow them to speak to and heal my heart and soul.

I have been an apprentice for too long.  It is time to become the master of my own healing and soul journey.  To step up to my magnificence and soul path.  To own myself.  To embrace myself.  To be myself in all my glory.

Mid Winter Hibernation & Healing

monarch butterfly

Varicose Veins are another of the delightful things I inherited from my Father – together with his nose, long, gaunt face, hair trigger temper and belief that I know best about all things.  There isn’t much I can do about my nose or the shape of my face, I have worked very hard on my arrogance, unasked for offering of advice and my anger and temper.  My personality has changed, but the physical attributes remained.  When I first saw myself in profile aged 15 I was devastated and begged my Mother for a nose job when I turned 18.  It never eventuated.

And after years of aching, itchy, legs and never being able to bare my legs in public in the summer, I decided to put myself in the hands of a vascular surgeon.  Luckily she was a lady and a nice one at that.  She listened to my horror of anaesthetics, scalpels and hospitals, and made me feel safe.

I went on a waiting list that was anticipated to be at least 6 months, and forgot about it.  Then came a phone call – could I commit to a slot in 10 days time as Wauchope Hospital had had a cancellation.  Ged agreed to be home and I grabbed it.  Better to be sick and wearing support stockings mid winter!  Then there was a huge debate about my refusal to have an epidural.  Some people are scared of flying, some of horses, some of heights – for me it is epidurals.  There’s no way anyone is going to stick a huge needle down into my spinal cord.  Ugh!

Finally the anaesthetist agreed to a General Anaesthetic for me and I was booked in.  Rather like childbirth, it is a good thing I had no idea what I was in for beforehand!

Up really early on the Friday morning and drove myself and JP to Wauchope, for him to drive the car back home.  Nil by mouth and all that, but clutching my thermos of tea for after the op.  The hospital was extremely efficient and everything happened very quickly.  I was first up so straight into the hospital gown, the anaesthetist came to meet me and I made him PROMISE not to do an epidural (!) and then the surgeon came to mark up my legs.  Quick as a flash I was in pre-theatre and needled and the next thing I knew I was out, freezing cold, teeth chattering and nurses flitting around me asking about pain and temperature and trying to stabilise me.  Then I was out in the day surgery warmth and drinking my tepid tea before staggering into the loo to get dressed.  In and out must be their motto because they rang Ged to come and take me away before lunch and he decided to take me straight home.

Of course I was flying from the anaesthetic for days.  We had our big mid-winter party on at the weekend so were surrounded by friends, and I mainly sat with my feet up in our newly configured sitting room, knitting. I even went for a walk on Saturday although that was pushing it!  I supped champagne and enjoyed being Queen for a few days.

When the drugs started wearing off my legs really ached and I wondered what on earth I had been thinking.  Then I really crashed with a temperature, throwing up and diarrhoea.  Not sure whether it was flu or opiate withdrawal.  Whatever, I was a groaning, shivering, blob under the duvet for 2 days.  Thank God Ged was there to keep the wheels turning while I hibernated.

It was great to be able to give in to my body’s demand for rest and recuperation, rather than forcing myself up to look after Ben, pushing myself beyond my limits as I have done so often over the last 5 years.

I knew when I decided to have my varicose veins ‘stripped’ that it was an outward, physical, manifestation of the inner work I have done over the last few years – letting go, forgiving, changing.  And in succumbing to the surgeon’s knife I was ripping out the old, outdated, gnarled and twisted that I no longer wanted or needed in my life.  Prescribing myself a new beginning.

Under the duvet I let go . . . I meditated on my last foray into a world of opiates and the heroin withdrawal I masterminded and oversaw for my friend.  I repeated silently to myself ‘I lovingly forgive and release the past’ as I slipped in and out of deep and dreamless sleep.

And I healed.  On all sorts of levels.  I rested.  I stopped cranking the handle and the world still turned . . . I gave myself permission to retreat, recuperate, be vulnerable and weak.  I let those who love me care for me and see the control freak felled to her knees – vulnerable and pathetic. It’s only me who has a problem with that!

And when I arose after my exile of travelling dark recesses of my soul and psyche and passaging in places of pain, I was different.  MUCH more relaxed, with my sense of humour returned to me (how I have missed you!), a sense of balance and proportion about work and play and a real readiness and willingness to listen to others, to learn at the feet of masters, and to give myself pleasure and nurture myself with the things and people I love.

And as I recognised that I needed to grow and change more, to journey along more challenging healing paths to the heart centre, I began to look for places and people to help me.  I found a book I have had since 2004 and have put off and off and off embarking on.  Sequel to the life changing ‘The Artist’s Way’ it is Julia Cameron’s ‘Vein of Gold’ which demands daily walks, morning pages and a voyage of self discovery through the trivialities, tedium and trauma of one’s past.

I pounced on the book like an old friend and readily committed to the journey.  Perfect winter work.  As we hibernate, heal, connect deeply with our most immediate family and friends and ourselves.   Mining ourselves for our riches, dreams and inspirations.  Plotting our futures and pathways to our goals as the winter winds howl and the cold scratches at the doors and windows with its icy fingers.

Winter is time for inner work and introspection, just as summer speaks of reaching out to friends and the world, partying and celebrating the warmth and fertility.  Just as the land sleeps and rests so must we.  It is good for me to finally learn to rest and not to be constantly questing, working, doing.  The seeds of deep change are being planted this wintertide, and despite my averse reaction to drugs, hospitals and surgery, I can see that science can complement metaphysics to effect deep change and transformation.

Will I submit for the other leg too . . .. ???!!!