A terrain under pressure

when the body’s ecology changes

So often healing is seen as ‘getting back to normal’. Didn’t we hear that during the height of the pandemic? And yet, we know that nothing ever works in that direction. I’m never going to have the terrain of my 25-year-old self before four caesarian sections, three work place assaults and the injuries and frailties they left, a lupus diagnosis and surgery to remove my gallbladder.

A wise friend recently responded to something I’d written with:

…perfect is not the right word, perfect is finished, the perfect tense is over, done with, it has boundaries in the past.

Quite. Healing is never about impossible standards of perfection that mostly exist to berate us for ‘failing’ to get well. When someone is told they are clear of cancer after long treatment, when someone is given a diagnosis of a chronic condition that can be managed through stages but not cured, their terrain has changed.

We know this on all terrains. Trauma doesn’t merely leave wounds. It changes the soil.

Fire races across a hillside, not simply reducing everything to ash, but revealing what is held in the land’s layers. There are things volatilised and lost, while other minerals become available. Organisms that perish, while others awaken. The soil may emerge richer or profoundly depleted, depending on the scale of trauma and the amount of recovery time.

Flood strips away topsoil.

A forest is felled.

Surgery removes an organ.

Infection lingers.

Bereavement hollows the spirit and plunders sleep.

Chronic stress tightens every vessel.

In the aftermath, the question is not: What herb heals this? but: What herb belongs in this new landscape?

The body, like other landscapes and ecologies, can move through succession — a beautiful ecological concept that describes not simply recovery, but relationship over time. No landscape is static. When a heath burns, the story becomes about who arrives first and what they make possible. In the raw-bright land, exposed and mineral, there is light where there was shade, heat where there was coolness, perhaps nutrients released into the surface soil. Many seeds were already present in the soil’s seed bank. Others blow in on the wind. Plants that are extraordinary pioneers, like rosebay willowherb whose seeds travel for miles, specialise in disturbance.

Roots begin binding loose soil, reducing erosion. Stems lend a little shade to the surface, slowing water loss. When the plants die back, they contribute organic matter, rebuilding the humus. These pathfinders are able to tolerate harsh conditions and improve them for others, often over relatively short lives. They open a new story.

Little by little the ground changes itself. Shade returns. Rain falls more softly through leaves. Roots open channels for air and water. Fungi weave beneath the surface. Birds carry seeds from distant hedgerows.

Each newcomer modifies the environment just enough that species which previously could not survive now can. Shrubs arrive, brambles appear, gorse may follow. Willows dip their roots into damp areas while young birch seedlings establish themselves. Gradually the conditions become less favourable for sun-loving pioneers like rosebay willowherb, but she will move on to where she is needed. Succession continues over years and decades. What looked desolate becomes a thriving ecology, but there is no stable endpoint. Storms will arrive. Flood may deluge. Trees fall. Fire may strike again. Succession is an ever-moving dance between disturbance and renewal.

My body has been conversing with rosebay willowherb. She is also known as fireweed, but her gift is not to resist fire, but to respond to it. She inhabits the disturbed ground, and just as importantly, she knows when to leave.

She holds the traumatised ground, restores conditions, and quietly yields to others. There is a profound humility in this ecology. Recovery is not the return to what was, but a series of relationships, each preparing the next.

It has been a year of ecological changes — lupus flares, acute pancreatitis, gallbladder removal which necessitated a period without herbs before the surgery that left the lupus unregulated for a while, then post-operative complications and a disordered gut as my body adjusted to life without an organ that had a real role. By the day of surgery I was already craving rosebay willowherb, plantain, violet, rose… herbs to calm the raw wound after the fire, others to slowly write the terrain’s new story.

As in the earth’s body so in ours. A traumatised body, whether the wound is physical, emotional… does not need counsels of perfection, but conversations with herbs that meet the particular terrain. After surgery I began with drop doses of rosebay willowherb spagyric to modulate inflammation, moisten, soothe.

Added Selfheal for reconnection, a herb who acts on fragmented systems to knit the ecology together.

Reached for plantain for protection, learning again what my system could tolerate and still maintain its integrity.

Sought out rose to comfort the heart, restoring permeability without collapse, tenderness after contraction.

Sipped cornflower hydrosol as a very mild bitter tonic for liver and digestion and used her in combination with rose as a compress on dry eyes.

And later, once the incisions were epithelialised, turned to lavender hydrosol to clean and soothe.

Finally taking refuge in a few drops of saffron in rose hydrosol each morning to add the bright spark back to days, a herb not so much for my soil but to turn me towards the light.

Not all wounds are surgical. We each know our injuries and the quality of what has burned or flooded, fractured or exhausted the terrain we dwell within.

When the land of your body has burned hot for too long, leaving parched ground, raw tissues or emotions, depleted reserves,

rosebay willowherb
rose
violet
marshmallow

herbs to welcome back the first green shoots.

When everything has become waterlogged, with grief or where there is oedema, where lymph stagnates, fog engulfs the brain,

angelica
cleavers
sweet flag
violet (for the waters of grief)

Where the ground is broken and the landscape altered, by surgery, fractures, childbirth, major infection, bereavement…

selfheal
plantain
rosebay willowherb
hawthorn (especially for cardiac or emotional shock)

When your pasture is exhausted, a too common condition in our crazy world. When your land is over-grazed, resources drained,

linden
milky oats
marshmallow
hawthorn (for the heart, physical and emotional)

And if you find your body feels like a wind-scoured coast, your terrain constantly exposed with hypervigilance, autoimmune reactivity, herbs that know how to weather exposure, how to remain deep rooted, will speak to you:

sea buckthorn
heather
hawthorn
plantain

Recovery is not a return to the ecology that we used to inhabit, but the unfolding of a new one, supported by allies who will listen to us if we will listen to them.

Finding your allies

Each month I meet with a small group of amazing women who are exploring their allies Along the Herbal Path.

We dive deep into an aspect of these companions in the animate world. Sometimes we pause to write, to centre ourselves in quiet meditation. Always we ask questions and make space for one another.

Together with the herbs, we create a little alchemy.

I’d love you to join us. Find out more, including how to join, on the triskelewell page