on choosing integrity over boundaries
Hawthorn flowers when hawthorn flowers.
Oak rests when oak rests.
Mistletoe fruits in winter.
We think of integrity as moral uprightness, even as a kind of rigidity, but the root of the word in Old French is about innocence and the Latin integritatem speaks of soundness and wholeness, as in an integer which is whole. Integrity as being true to the bodies, to the creatures we are, faithful to crafting ordinary lives well.
Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it.
wrote Virginia Woolf
She is talking about writing, but she is really talking about life. She’s describing a phenomenon that many artists, musicians, herbalists, gardeners, and people living with chronic illness recognise that a sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.
The wave comes first.
The words, actions, decisions, plans — come afterwards as we find the rhythm.
When I mentor writers, often I’m helping them find the rhythm that already exists in their work.
When I work herbally as a companion along the path, I’m not trying to magic a ‘cure’, but to listen to plants and body, to restore a rhythm that a particular body will find more whole (which is not the same as perfect).
When I spend time with plants, the voice arrives before the language. The key is to listen, attend with devotion.
The body has rhythms long before we construct explanations for them. An integrity of its own. Taking time for rest and retreat in June returned me to exploring these rhythms again. I thought a lot about the balance of boundaries and permeability.
Many of the herbs I work with most are herbs of permeability. These are the herbs that encourage receptivity, flow, exchange, softening, and movement across boundaries. Violet softens congested places, moves through lymph and emotion without force, dissolves hard edges, asks: What if this could be gentler? Marshmallow moistens membranes, allows exchange, prevents surfaces becoming defensive and reactive. A dry membrane becomes less permeable, more inflamed. Marshmallow restores the conditions for relationship. Rosedoes not abolish boundaries, but neither does she harden them. She open enough to give and receive, closes enough to remain herself.
Plantain draws, soothes, closes, opens, responding to the needs of the tissue. Not a wall, but a gatekeeper, who says, enough, when tissues are over-exposed. Prunella is a herb of intelligent completion who knows when something needs knitting, when energy is leaking from a wound, literal or metaphorical. Hawthorn of the heart speaks of exchange, circulation, containment. She has her blossom and her berries, but also her thorns, tells us: attend to me with care.
The herbs I am drawn to work at the thresholds, honour membranes that need integrity but are not closed.
gut lining
blood-brain barrier
skin
alveoli
vascular endothelium
Not closed. Not open. Selective. Both/and.
The terrains of our bodies, the terrains of our energy, thinking, being… are living membranes. We are
forest edge
marsh margin
shores where land and water meet
I have always struggled with boundaries, even with the word. I say I’m going to retreat and write, then watch myself answering emails or doing work that has been asked for but isn’t urgent. I can trace it back to childhood like so many people-pleasers, but there is also an element that is even deeper — that the notion of boundaries can feel rigid and deadening. So much boundary language is about fortification, cutting people off, building walls, self-defence.
The herbs suggest another way. Not keeping everything out, but discerning what belongs and when. Integrity and rhythm. What Woolf calls ‘very profound’ is precisely this: rhythm makes boundaries obsolete by replacing them with something supple and alive. The river through my garden doesn’t justify its course. The tides don’t explain themselves. The blackbird doesn’t negotiate with dawn. They follow rhythms that have their own pacing, their own integrity.
One has to recapture this, and set this working…
As though the rhythm was there all along, waiting to be heard again. And this is as true of living as it is of writing. I did a lot of writing in June, but the most vital part of taking that time was finding again the rhythm speaking beneath the noise.
When we arrived at Reagh, the hawthorn was in full bloom, bursting with fragrance and nectar, offering shelter and remedy as she will offer fruit and remedy later in the year. And then there were thorns that also exist in service of life. Abundance does not mean giving all. Integrity does not mean becoming harsh. We could all be more
plantain
hawthorn
rose
Not less open. Not less generous. Simply aware that a membrane that cannot close becomes injured, a membrane that cannot open ceases to live. Wholeness lies in the rhythm between the two. In a world where so many of us are conditioned to pour ourselves out long beyond sustainability we can find ourselves thinking ‘I must be available’. In a world where overwhelm is everywhere we can find ourselves reaching for rigid boundaries, thinking only ‘leave me alone’. But living systems rarely work in binaries.
a woodland edge is neither forest nor meadow
a riverbank is neither water nor land
skin is neither body nor world
The places of greatest fertility are the places of exchange. The ecotones — threshold habitats where two worlds meet. I hadn’t noticed before that the plants I reach for most often are so often edge-dwellers, herbs of meeting places, of hedgerow — a boundary that is also habitat, shelter, corridor, food source, place of exchange. A place that both separates and connects simultaneously. A place of rhythm.
It isn’t really about boundaries at all, but integrity, a quality of being that isn’t asking where to stop, but how to be whole. A thing with integrity is not closed. It is highly permeable, but the exchange does not destroy the coherence.
a healthy forest
a living cell
a river system
a good friendship
a thriving community
A person of integrity is not someone who keeps everyone out, but someone whose actions, values, speech, and inner life cohere. The parts fit together. They have responded to the wave and found the rhythm.
What allows a person, a plant, a body, an ecosystem to remain whole in relationship?
However we answer, it dawned on me that integrity also has a temporal dimension. A living thing that is finding coherence is not static, but continually renewed.
A woodland’s integrity is not that it never changes.
A body’s integrity is not that every cell remains the same.
We adapt, which brings us back to rhythm.
A boundary is often fixed. Integrity is something enacted again and again.
Like breathing.
Like a heartbeat.
Like a woodland leafing, flowering, fruiting, shedding, and leafing again.
A work always in process that needs no argument or self-justification.
Plantain doesn’t explain himself.
Rose doesn’t defend her thorns.
Hawthorn makes no apology for herself.
Simply creatures finding our rhythms.
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