fly awake

It has been a long time since my last post–time has slipped away from me, I guess. The time in between has been filled with some intense changes. Here is a story about lots of herbs, especially Agrimony, pregnancy and dolphins.

A year or so ago I read about agrimony in Matthew Wood’s Book of Herbal Wisdom I thought it might be a good remedy for me. Among other things it’s a good remedy for people who feeling trapped in a situation, or people feel tortured (physically or otherwise), but hide behind a cheery face. It is particularly helpful in work situations that meet the above description.  Agrimony tends to cause changes, for example, losing your job if it’s not the right one for you. Because I felt so trapped in a job that didn’t feel right for me, I was afraid to take agrimony! I needed my job and was afraid of changes that agrimony might bring.

3/30 Dream

There are two blue plastic dolls that are meant to be together. I rub them together like sex. From the female doll’s plastic slit, I pull a lotto scratch ticket.  I am disappointed that I am not pulling a baby out, but I am intrigued by this ticket. The ticket has dolphin stickers on it and, depending on the way that you scratch the ticket, determines your new job. The dolphins make me wonder if the job is in Orlando.

4/22 Wake

I discover that I am pregnant. This is totally awesome, because I have we’ve been trying to get pregnant for so long. At the same time I am deathly afraid/tortured by the thought that it might not work out. My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for 4-5 years. I start craving raspberries and red raspberry leaf tea like crazy, but I’m tired and I can’t seem to get my hands on either. I’d been taking sumac, cooked rehmannia root and lady’s mantle, all of which really seemed to be improving my health.

4/29 Wake

I see an interesting posting on Craigslist for a job at a clinic that promote a healthy plant based diet lifestyle. Very intrigue, I apply.

4/30 Wake

At only 6 weeks I get tests back from the doctor showing that the pregnancy is not progressing well and I might miscarry.

5/1 Wake

I come to my herb class with Matthew Wood and ask him for his help. One of the herbs he recommends is agrimony. This seems so appropriate and ironic, seeing how I had shied away from this herb for so long. I feeling tortured by the way Western medicine often gives you knowledge of what is wrong with you, but no way to help the problem. Oy vey! While agrimony might have seemed to Wood to be a solution to the an acute problem, I knew that it would be quite transformative. With the pregnancy, and at work, I had been hiding what I was going through, my fears and discomfort were hidden behind cheery smiles.

I went home that night and immediately started bleeding, but instead of normal blood, it is a small amount of blood with lots of clear secretions.

5/1 Dream

Everyone thinks I bled on the pillow, but it came from the soaked cooked rehmannia root I’m holding onto. I try to tell them. But they don’t seem to understand.

5/2 Wake

Cooked rehmannia was something that I had been taking for my anemia. It helps anemia by increasing progesterone. When you prepare the root as a tea, you pull the root out of the water and it drips like old reddish brown blood.  I talked to Matthew Wood about the dream and he thought that perhaps my progesterone was too high and that was in part responsible for the pending miscarriage.

I am not bleeding enough yet that I am totally hopeless, so I look into ways to prevent miscarriage. Turns out that, just like my body wanted, red raspberry leaf is an excellent miscarriage preventative, (as well as a great general women’s tonic), and is also good for excess clear secretions (more often related to running fluids in colds, but in my case it applied to my bleeding). Lady’s Mantle has also stopped early miscarriages. I actually had some Lady’s Mantle, so I did as the success story I had heard told. I prepared a very strong tea and placed the wet leaves on my foreams. I meditated on the plant and my situation.

5/2 Meditation (Lady’s Mantle)

The dose of Lady’s Mantle is so strong, I immediately hear a list of female situations that alchemilla helps with. I ask about my pregnancy though, and response is not hopeful. I feel very soothed and comforted, as lady’s mantle is so good at doing for women. In the end I get the same response to my pregnancy question a couple times: Take St. John’s Wort.

While this was not good news it was practical. In the end I miscarried, but with the help of St. John’s Wort and the comfort of Lady’s Mantle I felt it went as best as it possibly could. I rode the emotional roller coaster that would be expected, but I was able to recognize that a lot of the suffering was chemical.

Back to agrimony and my dream at the beginning, there is a silver lining to this story.

5/10 Dream–Mother’s Day and my late grandmother’s birthday (she was my most comforting relation)

Mistletoe. I’ve been wanting to learn more about it, a guest lecturer comes to talk on the subject. She’s staying with Scott, or she know’s him best. She’ll give an exclusive lecture. She might have some to sell too. She will not tell how to gather the plant. She wants to the knowledge kept secret. The event is expensive and may be sold out. I see the baskets of necrotic looking mistletoe berries that she’s gathered, but I don’t want them–I want to gather my own. This all takes place in a bookstore like Barnes and Noble.

She leaves Scott’s house on the edge of town. I can tell because he’s setting her six rolled-up acrylic carpets carpets out in the middle of the road, near where she’ll wait for her ride. The are set in a row, at a slight angle to the yellow lines. At first I think they will leave together. But Scott’s not going. I ask him for information about the Mistletoe. Scott and I have gone inside and are on the couch now. He starts to tell me a little but he’s holding back.

I wake up and try to tell the dream and what I’ve learned about Mistletoe to everyone I see. I also repeat it to myself, trying to remember.

Wake

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of mistletoe is that it is an abortifacient.  Even though I just finished miscarrying, I thought perhaps there are some lingering products of conception. I don’t really feel this to be the case. Still I feel there is a message I need to receive from mistletoe. It takes a couple days but I manage to track some down. When I took it, I immediately felt soothed and comforted. I felt like I could release. I read about mistletoe and discover, that in addition to it’s rep as an abortifacient, (maybe the nastier side of the plant), it is also used for loss of a loved one (human or pet), emotional pain, nervous tension, and accepting defeat. This is such a sweet side of the plant, I really felt healed after this experience.

Meanwhile, I had a couple interviews with this awesome veggie health clinic job. The whole thing seemed almost surreal, everything was going really well and just seemed like it had to work out. I recognized this feeling from other areas of my life, but not jobs interviews which have never been something I excelled at. I had been feeling the influence of Agrimony strongly over the last couple weeks. It had become difficult and undesirable for me to hide my feelings. In some situations this was unwelcome, like situation where I normally poured all my energy into protecting and supporting others. But, in the case of this job it was very helpful to have a side of myself that I normally keep separate from my work self come through–my creative/dreamy side. One big unknown, was pay. It hadn’t been discussed. Finally, the night before my third interview I had the following dream.

5/26 Dream

I see a series of big block numbers on large cards, the numbers go up like a calender would go down, in rows, climbing to about 30. Some numbers have pics, or someone holding them. But my eyes are moved quickly upwards as I hear, “Pay attention the last question”. My eyes stop right before the numbers run out. Here we have a monkey in a shriner hat holding a big card with a bold “28″ and dolphin on it.

5/26 Wake

I had been trying to figure out this pay thing, what was too much, too little, etc. But basically my mind had been too busy with this and everything else going on in my life to receive an answer to my query. Finally something clear enough I could understand. I also immediately remembered the dolphin in my dream from March, and was very excited about that.

I go to the interview, armed with my best weapon against any possibility that things could go awry: vegan cupcakes. They discuss many things with me, making sure I really know what the job is about. Finally she says, “I just have one last question…” (and it sounds so dreamlike) …and the question is pay. Well it’s kind of an uncomfortable topic, but I am prepared with the answer, so after some brief hesitation, I get it out: 28?

My interviewers breath a collective sigh of relief as they look at each other. “Good because that is what we wanted to offer you.” I love it when everyone’s happy.

Tee hee. How nice to be part of a dream that ends well. While I didn’t get my baby wish yet, I did get my silver lining new job/dolphin/lotto ticket.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm and is filed under animals, death, dreams, flying awake, lucidity, plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.