From the Ashes...We Rise and Recover
Life is often full of beautiful surprises and glorious adventures into our internal worlds, and through relationships we get to go as deeply into our experience of human life as possible. The need for connection is the most human of all our needs, and when we find it, within our families of origin, with chosen families, partners, friends, colleagues, and clients, we can feel an ecstatic sense of joyful belonging. For some this comes easy, for others, lack of trust, past failures, and the lasting effects of unexamined trauma can prevent us from the full experience of healthy human connection.
Sometimes we experience the joy of deep heart to heart and soul to soul connection, only to have it dismantled by the inevitable disappointments that also come with the human condition. All of us will experience heartbreak, loss, and grief in this life, no matter how much we try to prevent it by avoiding depth with others, by maintaining a falsely positive disposition or staying busy, by refusing to explore our own internal landscapes and excavating the traumas and conditioning we experienced as children and throughout our lives.
No matter how hard we try, we can not get away from the truth that life is astoundingly beautiful and full of delight, AND, life is going to make us hurt. A lot.
Pluto is still my guide, and I’ve been going through it. I’ve struggled with my physical and mental health, and I’ve lost a partner, bonus children, and a group of people who I had come to love with a fierceness I’ve not known before…people who had become my family.
Getting through this last 6-7 months has really been some of the most difficult work I’ve done, and now that I’m coming through, I know it was not without purpose, even though I felt like it was going to kill me.
These experiences of darkness and pain, of loss and grief, can send tremors through our souls and destabilize our entire sense of Self. We feel unable to cope, to move forward, to see anything good in life. For a lot of people, turning to substances or unhealthy behaviors helps them to check out, to stop the pain for just a little span of time. We are seeking relief but causing more harm to ourselves.
When we are called to the difficult spiritual work of attending to our grief and loss, to mending our own very broken hearts, it is tempting to wish for a permanent escape. But what the great masters all say, is that the ONLY way through the pain, is through it.
Going through the loss with a determination to be fully present with your feelings is the only way you will become strong again. It’s the only way you will find your path back to the truth of WHO you ARE. Not who you were before the loss, not who you want to be one day, but who you actually are. I believe this is the purpose of these great losses, heartbreaks, discoveries of trauma, and everything else really damn terrible that we are forced to sit with. Through the power of grief, our brokenness crumbles our bones to dust so that we may be rebuilt. We are transformed through this immersion with the shadow. We see our ugliness and the ugliness of the world and have a choice to make about its meaning. If we want to live as fully embodied spiritual beings on this planet as this time, we have to find the WILLINGNESS to go to the depths we are guided to.
Surrendering to this, we can allow ourselves to completely fall apart. To writhe in the agony of losing what we thought we’d have forever, what we never wanted to lose, and even what we never had but feel we should have. This doesn’t apply only to romantic relationships. It applies to everything. How we were raised. How we work. How we relate. How we expected our lives to turn out. How we allow people to treat us. Everything.
When these experiences of loss are extremely intense and difficult to get through, the really bad breakup, the death of someone close, the vision of the future that is no longer, the ability that becomes disability, we must turn to others for support. As a species requiring connection for survival, trying to go it alone will only lead to more suffering. Sometimes, when you have no control over what’s going on, you have to let go of wanting it and needing it so that another human can intervene and help you find your way.
As an herbalist, I feel the same way about our botanical allies. They too are spirit beings and we have evolved interdependently with them, the way we have with other humans and our 4 legged friends and winged teachers. We have to allow them to heal our bodies and souls in a way that we can’t on our own. We must allow the Earth to love us, to hold us in her embrace like the heartbroken children we are. We need Earth’s Medicine.
Arriving on the other side of my own recent experiences with debilitating grief, I realized that through it all, my body and soul had become weak. I had no more energy to try, hope, or want. I could not sleep and I could not stay awake. Old symptoms I thought I’d eradicated began to reappear. Past harmful habits became enticing. Giving up became the only option that made any sense to my broken heart. But somewhere within me, I knew I had to learn from this, and I had to recover. I had to find courage and be the brave woman who hikes long stretches alone, who approaches love and cooking with reckless abandon, who loves to hug everyone I meet, who has work to do in this world - I had to be willing to see my mistakes as much as hear about my strength and goodness from people who know me and love me (thank you - you know who you are!)
To get myself through the intermediary space between intense pain and once again wanting to feel my own goodness, I needed something to strengthen me - body, mind, soul. I needed a very special herbal tonic that would address my energetic injuries and the depletion in my body, something that would allow me to rest for real, to process a lifetime of pain resurrected through the loss of my most treasured relationship, without losing myself permanently to those conditions.
What I came up with is the From the Ashes Recovery Tonic. The first week I drank 1-2 quarts per day, and in that time I felt myself rise from the ashes of disappointment, attachment, and a shattered heart, eager to meet the sun each day - something I have not experienced for years.
The herbs in this formula were chosen to rebuild and tonify the spiritual and physical bodies, to strengthen heart shen and improve vascular sufficiency in the brain. When we have lived in a state of deficiency for a long time, it’s important that we nourish as much as we repair. I needed this formula to taste so good that I would want to drink it all day long, because I knew I was going to need a lot of it.
From the Ashes Recovery Tonic has been a miracle for my recovery. It is gently energizing without stimulating, it catalyzes a creative internal approach to healing oneself, it opens the heart so that its brokenness can be lovingly attended by the self and others, it reduces anxiety/palpitations/dizziness/rumination, and reconnects the soul that has dissociated from the body. It helps the body use energy wisely so that sleep comes and stays through the. night.
This formula feels very important. To me, to anyone stuck in the throws of depressive, stagnant grief or intense broken hearted outrage. It felt important to share with all of you. It is a beautiful medicine to use in conjunction whatever healing therapy you choose to utilize. And I encourage you, if anything you’ve read here is familiar, if the struggle is real, get help. Try the tea and let me know how you experience it (click the link below to pre-order!) I’m here for you, but so are many wonderful healers, therapists, and practitioners ready to support your transformation through the process of a broken heart, no matter how it broke to begin with. If you need something different from what I offer, I will be very happy to help you find the right healer. I got you boo, and so does our beautiful mother, Earth.
Yours in the Underworld,
Candice