a month with white willow
I once had a willow tree in a vicarage garden. She was beautiful, lush and strong. The children climbed into her limbs. Her leaves hung down in streamers of pale lime-green that glimmered light-washed, silver in the sun. Cool of colour and of touch. Her roots were deep and spread wide. She was busy sinking them into the drainage pipes of the house to suck out their moisture. We were nowhere near a river and her thirst was large. The diocese wanted to pull her down.
An evening service to celebrate the church’s first 40 years on a struggling outer estate of Birmingham. I invited each of the former incumbents to return for the service, asked each to choose a hymn. I only remember that the priest who came directly before me chose ‘Through the night of doubt and sorrow.’ I didn’t ask why. The first incumbent returned with his wife. He was frail and in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, early enough to be terrified of the future, late enough to be continually frustrated by his memory lapses. They came early and knocked on the vicarage door.
She was sorry to bother us, but they wondered… When they lived there, when the garden was a patch of mud on a new-build… they had planted a willow sapling. Maybe it had survived?
Their joy at this enormous tree was beyond moving and he tumbled out memories of his time at St Barnabas as he stood beneath it’s cooling shade.
I managed a stay of execution, but it was felled when I left, broken by an institution that turned its back on me after three work-place assaults. Willow a salve then as she is now.
Herb of Druids and valued by the Physicians of Myddfai, white willow (Salix alba), like meadowsweet and birch, is a source of salicylic acid in analgaesic amounts.
Her astringent tannins protect the gut lining from inflammation, relieve diarrhoea, stem bleeding and help where there is weak digestion, acidity or parasites. Her diuretic action helps prevent fluid retention, eliminating toxins via the kidneys.
She is a wonderful friend for pain relief in fevers or pain associated with flu, headaches or heavy periods. Salicylates depress lower central nervous function, increase peripheral blood flow and act on the hypothalamus to increase sweat flow (making them helpful for headaches, sciatica and neuralgia). She is also a decongestant, which enhances her cooling effect on stuffy heads and fevers, and is a tonic when recovering from illness.
Her inflammation-modulating qualities are also soothing for muscles, arthritis, gout, tendonitis, bursitis, back pain and sprains. And helpful during inflammatory flares in auto-immune conditions.
Externally, she is an ally in lotions for cuts and wounds, in gargles for sore throats, as a mouthwash, including where there are ulcers or bleeding gums. And beneficial also in poultices for joint inflammation.
Associated with water, willow is both a protection from water and a bridge between the worlds. A reminder that everything flows and changes. Her association with the ebb and flow of the lunar tides has made her sacred to the goddesses of the underworld, symbolising transformation, regeneration and rebirth. Traditionally a tree of witches, she was also used in fertility rituals.
By the banks of the Cam, along the backs of King’s College and St John’s and further into the meadows, the willows were magnificent. The undersides of their leaves a soft green-grey, fine hairs filtering light — a herb of reflection rather than absorption, protection from excess sun and heat. A place to rest and read, to picnic and soak in the days.
It was a time of new experiences, my mind on fire. I blazed with newly found causes of social justice, discovered feminism, spent long days reading, thinking, resisting… Willow was a companion long before I knew her as a herb, cooling without dulling, respite for an overthinking mind, offering clarity in place of fierceness.
Never extinguishing passion, I sat beneath her soft-lit leaves when I was on the brink of emotional overflow, when my shoulders tightened, when life was hard to digest… Her presence softened my edges. Attend. Stay present to the margins, she whispered. A tree of grief and endurance, she knew how to bend without breaking.
Quietly, imperceptibly, willow taught me how to hold sorrow without drowning in it, how to stay supple, how to respond without burning out.
Energetically, willow is drying, cooling, astringent and bitter. In practice this means she is gently dispersive (moving heat and inflammatory stagnation), down-regulating rather than nourishing and more boundary-restoring than building. Hence her calming effects on febrile states, inflammatory pain and hot headaches. She is not cooling in a soft, moistening way (like violet or marshmallow), but works with a clean, clarifying coolness, pulling heat down and out.
Her drying astringency is a story of containment and tone. She tightens slack tissues, reduces excess fluids and reins in leaky boundaries (whether vascular, mucosal or emotional). Where there are swollen, boggy joints, weepy inflammation, excess perspiration with fever, loose, flaccid, or over-relaxed tissue states, willow will go to work.
And she is as helpful where emotions spill, loop, or overflow (though not so helpful where there is brittleness, depletion, or dryness). Willow restores our edges.
Her bitterness stimulates the digestive and hepatic flow, moves stagnation and pulls energy downward and inward. This is significant because the pain that willow treats is rarely purely local, but is often systemic heat + tension (autoimmune flares or migraine patterns, for example).
The bitter quality prevents pain from floating upwards, supports the elimination of inflammatory by-products. And this can give willow a sobering feel, a corrector before she’s a comforter.
Since she targets pain that is hot rather than cold, inflamed rather than spasmodic, persistent rather than acute, she suits arthritic pain, pain from over-extending and fever. She is not ideal where pain is cold, deep and deficient, dry without inflammation or rooted in exhaustion or collapse.
Willow is a herb of both clarity and subtlety. While she is an ally at times of physical inflammation and moral exhaustion, she is not who I’d reach for in burn-out and collapse. Listen to her carefully and she helps distinguish between terrains and conditions that look alike, but, under the surface, are almost opposites.
Moral exhaustion comes with fatigue and tension,the body tired, but held tight, muscles ache, but do not give way, pain is inflamed, but with tightness, and there is heat under the weariness. The nervous system is over-braced, but not shut down. Those who feel shattered, but still can’t stop. Those who feel ground down, but are still wound tight. And often carrying anger in the body.
There is a pattern of excess tension and heat, boundaries that are too firm, rather than too porous. This is willow’s ground. She will cool the heat, dry the swelling, and lets the body release what it has been gripping.
When exhaustion collapses in burn-out, there is fatigue without tension. This is not a lack of stress, anxiety, or mental overload, but a loss of tone. Not a nervous-system story but a structural one. The muscles are weak, not tight, pain is dull, deep, or empty, there is likely cold or fragility. The system cannot hold itself up and inflammation may be absent or secondary. Here the body is not over-defended, but under-resourced. Those who feel they have nothing left, are not restored even by rest. A pattern of deficiency in which there may be dryness without heat, poor circulation, low tone, boundaries that are failing.
In this state, willow is too drying, too cooling, too corrective. She removes what little fire is left.
Moral exhaustion isn’t only emotional, but has shape in the tissues. It comes from prolonged responsibility, sustained ethical pressure, doing what must be done without support. The body responds by armouring itself. Willow says, you can lay this down now and still stand. She steps into the tiredness of over-use and endurance.
I have spent this last month with willow. She sits always beside my bed in a blend with harpagophytum (Devil’s claw), tanecetum (feverfew) and zingiber (ginger). A blend for migraines and acute inflammation. Bitter, grounding, warming (the ginger outweighing willow’s cool) and analgaesic, it’s a blend to use lightly, occasionally.
But this month I made a Bach-style essence — a bottle to meet willow’s energetics. Her story meeting my own with a story of relationship to flow, grief-holding, boundary awareness… My lupus body lives close to the threshold where drying is unhelpful, cooling tips into fragility and correction must be subtle.
Her essence met this body with grace. She spoke of maintaining boundaries without armouring,staying present to the sorrow of this world without somatising it as inflammation, softening vigilance without dulling perception. She allowed emotional heat to move through me and flow out. She encouraged me to relax shoulders and jaw before they become pain. She supported me to attend deeply, stay present. To go on writing, go on witnessing. To persist.