I just want to present that title to anyone who is the not-so-ecstatic recipient of a colostomy and let you consider the concept for a moment until you GET it. If you need a hint, it would be something along the lines of broccoli for dinner.

Ah haaaaaah. See, you DO get it.

Shall we let the mere mortals in on it?

You have to be a top-shelf comedian for Smuggling Penguins to be in ANY way funny when it happens to you. It’s pretty hilarious to anyone who has no potential for it, but for those of us who wear our intestines on our abdomens, it’s your basic horror.

It starts with enjoying some food you used to really like and then, at some ARBITRARY later time, your colostomy bag begins to do those GoodYear Blimp imitations and next thing you know you’re adjusting your shirt, your sweater, wishing you were in maternity clothes (even the guys) or grabbing that baggy vest you keep in the car for such occasions, for you appear to be Smuggling a Penguin beneath your shirt. Thy Pouch Hath Ballooned. And while stabbing said Penguin with a fork may be the first thing that comes to mind, we quickly learn that’s NOT a good solution.

Officer, seriously, it's not a penguin

What IS the solution? This Penguin must be burped and HOW are you going to pull THAT off during a party? Beats me. Pray that there’s an exhaust fan in the bathroom? This can’t be remedied by sitting on a soft couch.  Ideally, you are alone, driving in your car, on a balmy enough day to have the windows open when it hits. Give me points, I’ve DONE it. Of course, this also ONLY works for those of us who sport the “Lock and Roll” pouch closures that can be handled with one hand with no fear of that wretched little clip falling down under the gas pedal.

Sure, there are those spiffy little charcoal filter things built into some pouches, but they never did a THING for me. You see, me and my stoma, we’re just all KINDS  of special.

My FIRST surgery saw me come through with no colostomy (it was an adhesion strangling my small intestine) My SECOND surgery, a mere 3 weeks later, when they discovered it was a colon cancer tumor now blocking ANOTHER part of my LARGE intestine, ALSO saw me come through without a colostomy. It was that pesky THIRD surgery; a mere 5 days after the second one, when the intestine resection BLEW apart, that gifted me with this THING on me. This was way down the list of things to try to comprehend as I crawled back from a week and a half of deep sedation, repeated trips to the OR to wash out my utterly contaminated abdomen, residing in ICU on a ventilator in restraints, being relieved of my gallbladder as it crapped out in the middle of this, and contracting C-diff. Once I had two functioning brain cells to rub together, resistant was the response of choice.

You have to understand, I had taken up BellyDancing at the age of 49. I’d been teaching and performing for years.  I just wasn’t getting all chummy with my new friend here. I was already disregarding some of the cheery “Life with YOUR colostomy is SO much FUN” MarketingMaterials as MY stoma simply HAD to be OVAL and not ROUND. So I had to master templates, curved scissors and cutting an OVAL hole in my colostomy barrier. What unbelievable fun.

I believe in giving credit where credit is due,  and it was Eliza Wood Livingston, in her book “Living with Colon Cancer, beating the odds” who presented the notion of NAMING her stoma STELLA. I shamelessly STOLE it immediately as ANYTHING that would make me laugh about THIS was a good thing. Suddenly to be able to bellow: “Stella!!!!! Knock it the hell OFF!!!!!” when she would INVARIABLY need to ‘go’ while I was taking a shower (and I swear, she aimed for my foot) just took the edge off.

And as I said, Stella was SPECIAL. First off, she’s a high, TRANSVERSE stoma. Listen to me - a connoisseur of intestines. My cancer was hiding behind my stomach, so when I was DE-sectioned after being RE-sectioned, Stella wound up popping out of a hole directly below my left breast. What this MEANS is that what I eat only makes 2/3 of the trip that it used to. Seems the LOWER colon is where we deal with roughage and to put it mildly,  Stella doesn’t DO roughage – not even well-cooked brown rice. Ouch. And this leads to Stella’s being busy ALL……DAY…….LONG. I tried to teach her a little self-control, but without a sphincter, it’s pretty hopeless.

Yes, yes, I heard tales of folks whose stomas had a SCHEDULE. Sometimes so much so that they could just roll up that pouch and tuck it in their waistband once the morning ‘business’ was done. Not Stella. Busy, busy, busy.

But over-achieving Stella decided that that wasn’t nearly special ENOUGH. One day, months after all this surgery, I looked down at my de-apparatused self ready to hit the shower when I saw this insane BULGE. omg. WHAT is that???? I was tearful and shaking as I went for my appt with my Wound and Ostomy nurse, Gail. (who has become one of my dearest friends and such a champion through all this) She gently felt around while I was standing up and pronounced that she was afraid it was indeed a HERNIA. This led to WEEKS of finagling with elastic belts with holes cut in them to try to control the hernia before we could get the proper one manufactured for me.

During that time, Stella figured that since she’s SUPER special, since she’s one of those rare intestines that ever got to see the light of day, she’d try one MORE trick……she PROLAPSED. I’d been used to seeing that shiny, bright red, ‘rosebud’ as some of the MarketingMaterials referred to stoma-ness and here I was, once again heading for the shower, staring down at Stella doing Penis Impersonations. Absolutely HORRIFYING. “Stella, STOP THAT!!!!”Seriously, I have never had penis envy and I sure wasn’t looking to grow one now.

The HomeCare wound and ostomy nurse was coming later that day and tearful and shaking, (this was getting to be a frequent occurrence with me) I told her what Stella had ‘done’. She smiled knowingly and launched one of her favorite lines: “SO. Your stoma scared the SHIT outta ya!” Yeah, you might SAY that.

I was advised that should I ever NOT be able to get it to go back in, or should it CHANGE COLOR, to get myself to an emergency room. That was NOT  comforting advice.

So now I have a HERNIATED, PROLAPSED stoma and my hernia BELT sports a Prolapse Panel. For one who had ceased wearing a bra for a long time because I couldn’t stand the elastic around my rib cage, a 4” wide, stiff, heavy, serious elastic BELT, with a massive Velcro closure, and a panel over Stella’s head to help her behave, worn around Stella’s equator, was a serious drag.

Stella's Corset

In the MarketingMaterials that the very HAPPY ostomy suppliers send us, the model stoma is always a BARBIE stoma. Perfect, plastic, with a symmetrical three-lined ‘mouth’. It never prepares us for the Jim Carey-esque rubber faces we come to expect from STELLA……or the barnyard NOISES.

Stella being all dramatic

Another long-time wound and ostomy nurse, the Aunt of a friend of mine, offered her wise words to me on the phone that there is no greater obstacle to ACCEPTING one’s colostomy than ANY suggestion that it might be TEMPORARY.  I have to admit that I’m in that category; however, Stella has been somewhat like that friend who moves in with you ‘just until they FIND a place’……and is still there a YEAR later.

I’ve been told all along that stomas have no feeling of their own. I BEG to differ. Even the explanation that any soreness I’m feeling is the skin AROUND it certainly doesn’t cover the ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ when that brown rice was working its way through. Stella has also had a hard time with ostomy barriers. They’re fairly rigid and adhered to my skin. However, the skin MOVES, especially when pushed around by the elastic belt connected to a rigid hole that goes OVER the pouch and presses down on the barrier. This can make for a very cranky Stella. No feelings- how absurd.

the pushy hernia belt ring

So after months and months of trials and errors, Gail came up with the StellaStole. After trying all manner of stick paste edges and oddly cut barriers, she came upon a mixture of Adapt Paste and StomaDust that can be mixed no more than a week ahead and kept in an airtight jar. It’s QUITE the production, but if someone reading this has a SoreStella, it might be a real plus.

A hefty squirt of Adapt paste goes into the jar (enough for two collars). That is then generously dusted with Stomahesive Powder and mixed together with a tongue depressor. I’m convinced that Adapt Paste is the Third Substance. WD40, Duct Tape and Adapt Paste. If it dries in contact with skin, a jackhammer is required to get it off (or mayb WD40). If it meets up with liquid for any length of time, it becomes a gelatinous mass of weirdness that makes rubber cement look civilized. Hence the StomaDust to calm it down.

So the two substances are mixed with the tongue depressor in the jar and left to ‘cure’. Adapt Paste has a lot of alcohol in it and frankly smells rather like rum. Basically we’re changing the texture to something a bit like cookie dough. But this is still Adapt Paste so DON’T TOUCH IT without dusted, gloved hands.

Ostomy Oobleck, Adapt paste plus StomaDust

This is what happens at ChangeTheBarrier time. Enough is scooped out to roll into a snake to go around Stella’s ‘neck’. This must be done on StomaDusted exam gloves, or everything’s going to get stuck together. Around it goes, the edges are pressed down and the barrier (artfully cut in the perfect OVAL) goes over it. Most of it should be up around Stella like a turtleneck, but enough needs to be under the barrier to keep any ‘output’ from getting under the barrier. The  hole for this is cut a good deal bigger than the stoma.

Stella in her barrier and 'stole'. Just HAD to blow a bubble for the camera....

As special as Stella is and as much as she does impersonations of all KINDS of strange things, this has worked better than anything we’ve tried.  And we did try a brand new style of barrier that isn’t cut, but is stretched with your fingers to the right size and shape and which FELT terrific, but just about killed poor Stella. Trust me, you don’t EVER want  to see your stoma doing THIS.

UNhappy Stella!

It was after THAT fiasco, with any confidence that I would ever learn to manage a Stella just blown to bits, that Gail brought in a StomaSpecialist for one of my visits with her. This woman was GREAT. There is basically NOTHING that a stoma can do that can scare her. She explained how, since stomas are MOST often hiding in the pouch, we never see the calisthenics they go through when readying to eject a load. There is astonishing swelling, and shape-changing, and sighing and snorting, all of which is totally NORMAL. As this woman left the exam room and I thanked her very much for her assurances…….Stella let out SUCH a Bronx Cheer (pppppfffffffttttttt) that the three of us just LOOKED at each other for a second before we cracked up. Stella, how rude. (beautifully timed, but RUDE)

I MAY be less than a week away from bidding Stella adieu. Or I may not. With hopes of being free of her last April, then perhaps June, then how about September, then maybe December and now January, I wonder if I would be having feelings that I’m going to MISS her if she just hadn’t been QUITE so spectacularly SPECIAL.

Respect the Stella

 Although ‘reversing the colostomy’ was originally the ONLY reason I was to need ANY more surgery, I’ve already been back in the hospital for 40 days in June and am facing a seriously MASSIVE surgery to rid me of a six-month open HOLE in my belly, remove a section of my liver if the spot on it turns out to be malignant, and oh yeah, IF all goes easier than expected, maybe we WILL have the time and energy to off Stella.

When we first discussed the enormity of this surgery and the priorities, the WORST thing in the world I could think of would be waking up to Stella’s STILL being there. However, the wound care has been SO horrendous that just losing THAT part of my daily life will be a huge plus.

But I have all intentions of expecting the best, and I WILL be decorating that ‘final’ pouch

it's digging time!

 What you’ll need. GLOVES!!!! These creatures are prickly stuff! I vastly prefer a spading FORK to any kind of shovel. The point is to loosen the soil to where the tap root can be pulled out. The motion is to WIGGLE the fork into the ground and to wiggle and bounce the handle WHILE grasping the rosette with your gloved hand. This way, if it is a many-rooted root, you can keep loosening where it’s still tethered and avoid breaking the roots.

 But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. First we must CHOOSE the rosettes we are going to dig. I will tell you from YEARS of experience, big, skinny, floozy ones have disappointingly small roots.

'thin' rosette, probably disappointing root

 What we’re looking for are very FLAT rosettes that are dense in the middle.

flat rosette with dense center

 These are holding good roots. MUST they be frosted before digging? Not that I can see, at least not here inWestern Oregon. Lush and Glorious is what you’re looking for.

Another TIP: do NOT cut off the leaves in the field. Put all the roots that you’re digging into something like a Tupperware bin with the roots down and leaves on top to shade the roots if it’s sunny.

roots with leaves in bin for processing

 Also, by never cutting the leaves off until you get home and start carefully processing, you don’t run the risk of missing something that’s NOTTA TEASEL. Teasels are a friendly bunch. They hang out with hawkweeds, dandelions, yellow docks, thistles and cow parsnips, all of which could masquerade as a teasel root.

Teasel hangin' with hawkweed and a thistle

 Do NOT store the roots in a bucket of water. They’ll get water-logged and the skins will split.

You may be tempted to dig a truckload of roots, but keep in mind, you have a LOT of work ahead of you. And if ANY of you are pawing at the door to get out there and dig SOLELY for the purpose of making money, let me ASSURE you, you will be making low-quality stuff. If an army of Teasel diggers gets out there with the intent of HELPING the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of neighbors suffering from Lyme, we’ll be doing something remarkable.

So you head to the field. You’ll no doubt see the elders, the tall, brown stalks with seed heads aloft. At their feet are the younger rosettes. In a year when I was scuffling to grab every useful root as the demand for my tincture perpetually outweighed my ability to make enough, I was SHOWN over and over that you DO NOT DIG the one rosette closest to the mother’s feet. You’ll know which one. You’ll see a group of them and you’ll know. It’s THAT one.

definite 'chosen child'

 THAT is the chosen child. LEAVE IT. If you TRY to get greedy and dig them all, you’ll find one with no taproot at all, or your fork will just not go in, SOMEthing will tell you.

So, you’ve chosen the rosettes to dig. Using your foot, send the fork in 6-12” from the crown and get wiggling. You’re loosening the soil while you’re tugging on the plant.

fork handle in one hand, tugging with the other

 If you do both things at once, you’ll FEEL when the rosette is ready to come out easily. If you do this motion for enough years, you might wind up in physical therapy like I am working on a frozen left shoulder. What fun.

Once you have your haul, THANK them. Those roots you have there will now never bloom, never make seeds. They’re giving it up to become medicine. So THANK them. I’m serious.

Home we go. NOW you can sit somewhere and inspect the rosettes to be sure that every one IS a teasel and nothing else. I cut the leaves off with my very sharp bypass pruning shears and compost the leaves. The roots with the crowns go into a wash basin.

muddy root 'topped', lots of hair roots

 Depending how wet and clay-like your soil is, you might want to spray them down with a strong spray from a hose outdoors as step one. That gets a lot of the dirt off, but not NEARLY enough. If your soil is sandy and/or dry, the roots may not need the hose-off.

First wash is done in standing water with a scrub brush. Hope your back can handle all the standing and scrubbing, you’re gonna BE here awhile. I use a long-handled dish brush to get into all the nooks and crannies. Scrub them in standing water and then put them aside. Again, don’t LEAVE them sitting in water.

First scrubbing in standing water

Now we trim the hair roots. (at least I do) It’s bloody tedious, but why clutter up your tincture with STUFF that hath no medicine in it? I clip them off, again, with very sharp bypass pruners and then we’re ready for the FINAL scrubbing. This I do under RUNNING water.

After hair-root trimming and second scrub under running water

 Here is where you break multi roots apart if you need to to get to all the dirt. These really clean ones are the roots I slice, also with my trusty pruners from the tips up. As you’re slicing, you’ll see the point at which you begin to lose the creamy-beige color to the roots and get into the browner part, or if it becomes pithy. STOP there.  Good roots from non-blooming plants have the texture of a potato.

Stop slicing if the root goes brown or pithy

You only want the beige parts. I slice them into a bowl and then put the slices into a very clean jar and fill the jar with 100 proof vodka. I poke out air bubbles with a wooden chopstick and make sure the roots are BENEATH the liquid and that the liquid comes ALL the way up to the very top of the jar. Teasel oxidizes easily and quickly and an air space at the top of the jar will have your tincture turning black from the top of the jar down. It doesn’t destroy the tincture, but it lowers the quality. To keep that from happening, fill the jar to the very top and for the first week or so, check it every so often to see if it needs topping off.

I find that my tincture goes from beige and colorless to a lovely amber color as the 6 weeks goes on.

6-week tincture on left, newly made tincture on right

I’ve always done mine for a minimum of 6 weeks with no complaints, but many other sources leave theirs for 8 weeks minimum.

When your steeping time is up (and hey. DO label the jars with today’s date and the date that it will be done. No. You’re NOT going to remember, trust me.) you need to squeeze the liquid out of the roots and you’re on your own as to how you choose to do that. A potato ricer is just fine for small batches. Squeeze the liquid out into a glass pitcher and then filter it all through a funnel with an organic cotton ball at the bottom to either put it right into a brown storage bottle or put it directly into dropperbottles.

It’s not so very difficult. I honestly think that all of you who dive in and make your own, small, hand-made batches WILL produce the best Help Your Neighbors medicine that local, grassroots herbalism has to offer. I think we need a LOT of this. If you dig from someone else’s property, offer them a bottle or two of finished tincture. If you’re part of a Lyme support group, bring it to a meeting.

Is Teasel all by itself EVERYone’s cure for Lyme? Not a chance. Ally. It’s an ally and a very important one. But there’s a whole lot more going on here. Help Your Neighbors Herbalism is medicine at its absolute BEST. We’re being pushed in that direction from every side. Just remember that teasels that are blooming or THINKING about blooming have no root medicine to offer.  Teasels that have taken the invite TO bloom but been mowed, may LOOK like a decent rosette unless you look VERY carefully and see a flower stalk or an attempt to bloom at mere inches tall.

looks good, but root will be soft because it bloomed

Now. Get out there and start digging (and tell all the teasels LadyB says hi)

See  www.ladybarbara.net for more info on using Teasel for Lyme.

I met Aetna Dowst because her address label got stuck to my horticulture magazine. As I had just opened my tiny herb nursery in Peekskill, (1992) I wrote her a note inviting her to come visit as she MUST be a plant person.

A few weeks later this woman appears in the doorway, stands there and announces “Hah, Ahm Aetna Dowst” in that soft accent that so many of us would come to know and love. And there began a long, rich and wonderful friendship. Who knew?

Over all the years since then, Aetna and I gardened together (I will never forget the year she decided she wanted a paisley-shaped bed RIGHT in the middle of the front lawn FILLED with sunflowers. She’d stand by the window getting SUCH a kick out of the cars slowing down to admire it as they went by). She hauled me off to Constitution Island where she went every Wednesday to help them with the wonderful perennial gardens there.

Gardening for Aetna was more of a play date than anything. She’d tell endless stories of all that the yard and house had seen over the many years she lived there. This is where the kids went sledding, that tree was so tiny when they first planted it.

She talked a lot about her late husband, Somerby and more than once told the story of how she was at his side when he passed, coaching “Go for the LIGHT, Somerby! Go for the LIGHT!” The thought that they are together again in that light now warms my heart, it really does.

But I think the part of Aetna I’ve admired the most is her cheerful fearlessness. Aetna suffered from mean celiac disease. The tiniest bit of gluten could set her off and yet, in spite of some hair-raising tales of something ‘setting her off’ at MOST inopportune times, she kept going out to eat. She’d carefully scrape the filling out of the pie with me having heart failure across the table. One of the funniest meals we ever had was at her favorite Mexican restaurant with me unable to eat corn and her unable to eat wheat, we drove the poor waiter quite out of his mind. And laughed through the whole thing.

She hauled me into NYCity one day (she was driving) to copy sheet music from a library for a CABARET workshop she was taking. When we got to the parking garage, a celiac attack hit and I got her to a ladies’ room JUST in time. I was sure I was going to have to drive us home, but no, she recovered in record time, we kept going, got all the sheet music and went out for lunch. She was just amazing.

There came a point where she became asymptomatic with the celiac. Her doctor tried to explain that that didn’t mean she no longer HAD it, but there was no talking her out of that pizza. She hounded me to bring her a pizza, with mushrooms and olives. We stuffed our faces and I got sick from the mushrooms!

Aetna ‘nested’ on her couch as she became less active. There was a worn spot on the carpet where her feet always were, and she was surrounded by catalogs and half a dozen books she was reading all at once and papers and endless copies of the NYTimes.

After years and years, our playdates became less gardening and more housekeeping once a week. Aetna didn’t ‘DO’ dishes- she stated that all the time. We’d eat tuna with apples pretty much every playday. And she felt comfortable enough to go upstairs and nap while I was there.

And then came the tough decision to move her to Drum Hill. In her fearlessness, she was ready for the next adventure, but clearing the house of 40 years of accumulated housechowder was a feat that about wore us ALL out. Talbott got the brunt of it, but we spent some days working together packing and disposing of TONS of stuff.

She came to consider me her 3 1/2th kid. Cosmic adoption. Sandy, Talbott, L’il Aetna and LadyB. I was proud to be part of the family. Really.

Once at Drum Hill she settled in, looked forward to going down to the diningroom with her friends for meals, watched basketball on her big-screen TV and trips to the hospital became more frequent as her lungs gave her more and more trouble. But that fourth of July……both her livingroom and bedroom windows overlooked the Hudson River. Aetna and Tal and I watched the fireworks right from there, with Aetna sitting closest to the window in SUCH a state of delight that every time she oooooh’d and ahhhhh’d, Talbott and I just cracked up. It was a WONDERFUL evening.

She loved it when I would bring videos over, especially ones of my bellydancing classes and performances. She’d sit on the couch dancing along WITH HER TOES.

Aetna had a very broad sense of spirituality, even though she was a professed Presbyterian. She got the biggest kick out of my notion that George Burns AND Gracie Allen were actually running the Universe. I’ll never forget the day she said to me, in all sincerity “Well, George and Gracie BLESS you!”

It was VERY hard to say goodbye to her when I moved to Oregon, but Aetna coached that I GO and be with my babies. We emailed quite a bit early on, and I sent photos of the grandkids when I could. But then, as her health weakened, she stopped using the computer and correspondence had to go through Tal or li’l Aetna.

I was able to catch her on the phone a couple of times and still she was just DELIGHTED to hear from me. We laughed and talked and there were many choruses of “Oh, I DO love you so!”

I think Aetna said that phrase easier and more sincerely than anyone I’ve ever met.

With a message that Momma was ‘weakening’, I was given the opportunity to write her a real letter, remembering the best parts of our long friendship and to thank her and to assure her that BECAUSE she was so generous and sincere with her “I do love you so”, she brought me to where I could say it too.

She died this past Christmas Eve, while I was fighting for my life in ICU from multiple surgeries, colon cancer and a life-threatening infection. I’m eternally grateful that I wasn’t told of her passing then, there’s no way I could have taken it. But in hindsight, I KNOW she was right there with me, helping me fight my way back. And I am indeed coming back.

So dear, darling Aetna, my life is so much richer for your address label getting stuck to mine. If I can cultivate a fraction of your cheerful fearlessness, I’ll be just fine and yes…… I DO love you so.

I spent MANY years as something of a Lost Lymer. During the years when I was so incredibly sick, I knew very few others who had it – as a matter of fact, it wasn’t until I was sitting in some clinic during something like my fourth round of it that I saw the poster with the photo of just HOW TINY those blasted ticks were.

When I danced with Lyme in those days, there were no massive online support groups or green ribbons or coffee mugs that referred to us as “Lymies”. We were pretty much on our own. Once I became sick enough to lose my job, my health insurance and my home, I REALLY……. was on my own.

And you know what? I honestly think it worked in my favor. It gave me the odd ‘luxury’ of dealing with myself a symptom at a time, a chapter at a time and I didn’t get swept up in the tsunami of protocols and politics and conspiracy theories and FEAR that I see interfering with so many folks’ getting well.

Now, after MANY years of writing, and coaching and listening to others with Lyme, I’m still of the mind that FEAR is the greatest obstacle to healing. Give one small thought to what your body DOES in a state of FEAR. It tenses right up, everything shuts down. That’s extreme fear. Then there’s that low-grade, constant hum of ‘what if….what if…..what if…..’ Neither is going to help you HEAL.

The other major obstacle to healing is the huge, hideous pharmaceutical marketing machine that owns everything and is intent on brow-beating anyone who gets near any kind of media into accepting that we can’t POSSIBLY be >HEALTHY< without DRUGS and lots of them. So they feed that fear – constantly – because hey, that’s REALLY effective. We’re taught to ‘relieve symptoms’ as the way to health. That’s like silencing your children because they’re two years old and annoying. Nice ‘cure’ for the Terrible Twos.

So with all that going on and the fact that you feel unbelievably, inconsistently and horrifyingly TERRIBLE, it’s going to be a hard task for me to suggest you hit REBOOT and try to remove ~OMG~ as your daily mantra. Once you suspect that you have Lyme (& Co) and begin researching, you start the IV drip of fear. How much WORSE it can get; how some folks believe you NEVER get rid of it; how it (will?) ‘turn into MS’; that yes, folks have most definitely died of it and committed suicide to end it. I’m not saying that NONE of that is true, I’m suggesting that that not be the main part of your diet.

I often think of myself as a Team of Two. Me and my body. That’s it. That’s the team. Everything else is an ALLY. But in the end, it comes down to the two of YOU. People with threatening illnesses can seriously disconnect from their bodies. That may seem like a coping mechanism (and for a time it can be) but it probably isn’t going to move you closer to really and truly healing.

We’re scared to death of symptoms. We’ve been TAUGHT to be. That’s not going to change quickly or easily, but what better time to start than now?

The classic to end all classics is the term “Flu-like symptoms” which must be immediately SQUELCHED because they MEAN you’re coming down with the FLU and you need to obliterate your symptoms so that you can charge back to work (and give it to everyone in the place……nice).

Let’s try this again.

 “Flu-like symptoms” (that would be aching joints, headache, weariness, feverish, perhaps a sore throat, skin hurts…..) MEAN that your immune system has just shifted into fifth gear and is kickin’ some SERIOUS BUTT.

Sure. It’s uncomfortable.

Go to bed.

Did you know that your immune system only has FULL POWER when you’re lying down? THAT appears to be a scientific fact. Once you sit or stand, some little switch turns your immune system DOWN. GO to bed!

Now. Let’s go back to that body response to ~omg~ FEAR – Jammed-up tense. NOT what you need when your immune response needs to get to everywhere, do what it does and usher the thugs OUT. But there’s MORE. We’ve learned to PAY ATTENTION to every little twinge and pain in a negative way. (there goes that “omg” again!) When was the last time you gave your own body a “Go, You!” for DOING what it brilliantly KNOWS how to do? When did you quietly OBSERVE exactly what it’s doing?

I remember, the first time I read about the notion of Lyme spirochetes ‘morphing’ in a way that our immune systems can NO LONGER DETECT THEM, feeling this incredible CRASH in my own system. Then I got angry. How DARE those words cause me to lose faith in my own damned immune system!! I think that’s when I realized just what a team my body and I have been for nearly sixty years.

So fine. Lyme spirochetes have a Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak.

Where’s my Teasel wand?

They hide. Where’s the flashlight? We’ll get ‘em.

I’ve probably written a dozen different articles in which I point to my own daughter’s inspired brilliance in asking her children “What HAPPENED?” rather than “What’s WRONG?” It’s something we could all stand to learn. If you greet every twinge, every symptom and every message that your body sends you with “OMG, What’s WRONG??????” You can hardly expect to get well.

ReWind, ReBoot, BackOff, Settle DOWN. Let’s start again.

Get the CliffNotes if you have to, but LEARN how absolutely BRILLIANT a thing the human body IS. From before we were born, it has been functioning, adapting, and SELF-HEALING. Long before we had anything like a clue about ANYTHING, this package we bounce around in KNEW how to make use of the foods we eat and the air we breathe. It knew how to heal an owwie, how to usher out a cold, how to eject something we ate that wasn’t OK. It knows how to rest and recharge and how to bloody-well GROW. It’s absolutely mind-boggling.

How DARE we even consider that this magnificent creation can ONLY be >HEALTHY< with DRUGS. That is simply dishonorable. Not saying that drugs, surgery or standard medicine has never been a LifePreserver, but you can’t LIVE in a life preserver. Come to shore.

I KNOW what it’s like to have my body totally betray me. To drop the things I pick up, tremble when I didn’t want it to, forget where I was driving when I could drive. I KNOW what it’s like to live with pain like it’s some demented roommate, and I remember when a trip to the grocery store was a monumental task that could land me in bed for DAYS.

I will NEVER forget sitting in Eileen Secor’s livingroom WEEPING because I was sick and fevered and was in abject TERROR of becoming homeless. She got up, gave me a tiny, blue glass turtle that a dear friend had given her and assured me that the FEAR of homelessness was FAR greater than what it actually is. I still have that turtle and I got to face being homeless TWICE. You learn to couch-surf, you REALLY learn who your FRIENDS are.

I survived.

I prevailed.

I stood back up.

I recovered.

I went back to gardening

I took up bellydancing

I moved across the country and took my place as GrammaBee to three wondrous children..

I’m staring down my sixtieth birthday in April 2011.

There were times when I wasn’t so sure that all that would happen.

Do NOT let ANYONE inject you with FEAR. Got that? There is no healing in a state of fear. Grab hold of your SELF. You and your body. Yes.

You’ve got a DISEASE. A terrible, horrible, no-good, VERY bad DISEASE.

But do not, do NOT give up on YOU.

Start OVER. Listen to yourself and watch what’s happening. You’re putting up one HELL of a fight, but acknowledge all those little victories. FEED them. You need rest, you need nourishing food. You need to put stresses elsewhere for now. You need to find YOUR allies, whatever they may be. But most of all, you need to TRUST that your body is on YOUR team. Ultimately it comes down to you and YOU.

I honestly believe that the thousands of us who have beat Lyme and lived to talk about it are going to stand up EVER so tall and stare down the worst that the world has to throw at us knowing……….. that you CAN’T scare us anymore.

© 10/27/2010 LadyB

Back in NYState, my little town of Cold Spring would pull off a ‘street fair’ a couple of times a YEAR. The teeny Cold Spring Farmer’s Market was sweet, but THIS….two FULL city blocks of vendors, with another city block’s worth of Farmers Market vendors across the street…and THEN I find out it happens EVERY WEEK????

You’ve GOT to be kidding.  EVERY week??? Yup, EVERY Saturday, for 7 ½ months outdoors (and another 6 weeks indoors for 2 & 3-day weekends) this enormous ‘tent city’ rises from the sidewalks and DISAPPEARS by Saturday eve. Gone.

Poof.

Like they were never there.

Absolutely mind-boggling.

For years I went as a visitor. It was the favorite place to take a singular GrandMunchkin for one-on-one time, because it’s free, it’s easy, there’s music all day long, places to sit and climb, fabulous food, and ALL those vendors.

It wasn’t until August of ’09 that I finally checked it out. I read the guidelines, went to the product standards committee meeting to present what I do and oh, my, I GOT IN.

That FIRST day, I milled about with all the other hopefuls on the corner of 8^th and Oak, listening to names being called and points being counted. I had ZERO points. When all the spaces were taken, there were three newbies standing there. Beth Little, one of the brilliant managers of this incredible happening, looked at the three of us and said “I’m going to MAKE spaces for you.” and she did. Knowing NOTHING about surviving a day a Market, I showed up with no booth, no umbrella, just a card table and SOMETHING of a display.

A vendor that I had bought things from way back when I’d first visited back in ’05, and whom I’d told that HE was my inspiration for attempting to JOIN this mad party, was my FIRST sale. A $5 sweet woodruff wreathlet. I honestly don’t remember what I MADE that first day, but I had a BLAST.

The next Saturday I was sent home. No room at the Market. Third week I got a space, fourth week, sent home again. But THAT was the end of my being sent home. I’ve been SHOWING UP ever since.

There’s this incredibly elaborate >point< system that works beautifully to keep vendors from crawling back under the covers on rainy/cold/windy days. If you want your POINT, if you want first choice of spaces both at Saturday AND the coveted Holiday Markets the following year, you SHOW UP. And show up I DID.

By October and November, it was getting to be QUITE the challenge. I remember setting up my tiny 4×4 booth in an 8×8 space and having the lovely woman next to me offer to let me BUNGIE my booth to hers as the winds were to be fierce.

Through that first year, which led to the chance to share a booth with another vendor and so get into Holiday Market last year, the one thing I think I’ve been MOST impressed with is how the vendors take CARE of each other.

This isn’t easy. Sure, the spaces cost us $5 for a 4×4 or $10 for an 8×8 (and $15 for a RESERVED 8×8) but we’re OUTDOORS. Whether it hits 101*, or it’s pouring rain, or (George and Gracie forbid) it’s WINDY. We show up.

Because you know what? Visitors show up. Sure, the crappy-weather days aren’t as MOBBED as the glorious, clear, sunny days, but we’re always gratefully astonished at the number of folks who SO honor this establishment that Saturday Market has become over the past FORTY YEARS, that they show up because WE do.

On the OPENING day of THIS year, I was ceremoniously BUSTED by the Fire Marshall for having clear vinyl on my booth on a potentially rainy day. No plastic is allowed on booth structures. I was instructed to TAKE IT DOWN. Ohhhhh my.

Darling David Rade came by, heard my plight in facing impending rain with NO top on my booth, and he went straight back to his pop-up booth, took off one side, came back to mine with giant spring clips and put the side of HIS booth over the top of mine. When the heavens opened up at 3pm, I COULDN’T have been more grateful.

This kind of loving kindness makes us ALL look out for each other.

As I’ve gone from card table/umbrella to actual booth structure, I still bring my free-standing umbrella JUST in case anyone needs it.

This year, I’ve been gifted with regular neighbors as we line up our 4×4 booths along the very outer edge of the market along the sidewalk on West Park, near the corner of 8^th. Four of us have pretty much established ‘reserved’ 4×4 spaces. We have enough points to qualify for ever-changing 8×8 spaces this late in the season, but we CHOOSE to keep our little 4×4’s in the ‘hood.

Deb Huntley holds down the corner with her sweet, tiny potted plants in lovingly painted pots and saucers, along with circularly-hand-painted sake bottle flowervases and Zenhomeschool posters and educational materials. I’m next to Deb with my tinctures and infused oils and herbal wonders. Then comes Kevin with his fabulous Fractal Geometry artwork, then comes Pamela with her wonderful jewelry. We have a blast.

And so today we faced most DIRE weather reports. Predicted was windy rain ALL DAY LONG. Ugh. The four of us put our noggins together, grabbed two 8×8 spaces to divide up among the four of us and set about to set up in the RAIN.

We were SOAKED, Charlie Brown, completely SOAKED!

The finagling to engineer umbrella-drip-lines to miss the next vendor’s merchandise, to make sure everyone was safe and dry – was QUITE the construction project. The LAUGHTER necessary to pull off a stunt like this was CONSIDERABLE.

I anchored one end of the New Neighborhood and Kevin AND Deb anchored the other. Once I was tucked in to my little rain-proofed booth, I began to hear comments like “Awww you look so COZY in your little nest”

And I was.

Pamela’s umbrella was actually OVER my little booth,

 and my ‘public service’ umbrella was between us to shield our excess STUFF. Kevin attached his tarp to the top of my stepstool and FINALLY, we all were settled. At which point the rain STOPPED.

Honest.

It just STOPPED.

At one point, not quite trusting my glasses, I asked Pamela if she saw the RAIN half a block away at the parking garage, but it wasn’t falling on US. ‘Twas true, we all saw the rain falling half a block away.

Just not on us.

Hey. We’re GOOD.

This IS the famous Eugene Saturday Market.

By the end of the day our little GypsyNeighborhood had just become funnier and funnier. We’d picked up the four of us and scooted ourselves around the corner.

Next SUNNY Saturday, we’ll be spread out down the West Park sidewalk, but if the weather gets grizzly again, (and we’re OUT here through November 13^th) we’ll return to being The Village Peoples.

And a little ps…..

The NEXT morning, I found myself enjoying watching the pouring rain and things began happening on the keyboard:

Rainy Sunday AFTER Saturday Market

Rain, rain, it’s OKAY

Fill the wells and rinse away

All the pollen, dust and grime,

I’ll watch from here,

It’s lazy time.

In my bathrobe, not my boots

No umbrellas or rainsuits.

Watch the rain through my window

There’s NO place

That I have to go.

There’s NO place that I have to be

So rain out there and not on me

Of ‘stay outside’ I’ve had my share

This morning

I don’t have to care.

This morning I can watch it pour

Through the window, through the door

Because it isn’t yesterday,

Go right on, rain,

It’s QUITE OKAY.

And after a dry, dry summer

Where everything just hung on,

Rooted DOWN

Stood strong

Sometimes bowed their heads in the hot sun

As the towering Doug Firs looked on,

Finally, the rain returned.

But those OTHER days

When no rain actually falls,

When mist and drizzle float around,

Suddenly, if you slow WAY down,

There’s A Window Through.

Suddenly you can SEE

The jeweled trails

Of tiny beings

Who have been there all along,

Busy every day

Whispering so very faintly

Watching us go by.

Suddenly the whole garden goes magic

Only to vanish again

The moment the sun waves the fog away.

When LAST I was wandering about in the Teasels, there was much “not yet, not yet, not yet….” to be heard/seen/observed about the seeds in the seedheads.

I watched and watched and touched and ran my fingernail down the spines, watching for any heads (other than the center three of any given plant as per the previous blog) whose OUTER tentacles might yet be losing their green color.

Then I took ONE head and tapped it against my hand.

SEEDS!!!! It’s releasing SEEDS!

Foolish, foolish human that I am, I CUT that head and tossed it into a paperbag.

Whereupon I ‘heard’ the word: “Look.”

“S’cuse me?”

“LOOK!”

“Look?” So I pulled the seedhead out of the bag and I LOOKED.

still-green seeds in head

Foolish FOOLISH human.

There, in the chambers towards the BOTTOM of the head were GREEN seeds. Oh no.

They stood, they waited, they folded their autumn-drying leaves, WAITING for me to GET it.

“Oh my, DON’T cut the heads.” I thought, feeling VERY sheepish. I went to another head, bent it down gently and tapped it against the bag – a shower of ripe seeds. OK, NOW I get it.

From there I danced around the entire garden tapping ripe seedheads into the bag. The original seedhead was still in the bag, and next morning I twiddled it around in the bag and there was a new shower of seeds, but not ALL of them. My bad.

I looked at the pile of brown seeds in the bag and figured, it’s probably JUST ABOUT exactly enough to make a pint of tincture. I poured the seeds out of the bag into a pitcher planning to sort through, pick out any grass seeds I found (I had bumped into a grass stem while doing all that tapping). The grass seeds were very white and easy to remove with the tweezers, but, as with all things Teasel this year, THIS little project gave me a chance to inspect and puzzle and LEARN some more. Little grey squares. I’m seeing little grey squares that I don’t remember seeing in older seeds I’d gathered last year. I even poured all the seeds into a mesh sieve to get them out (?). Nothin’ doin’ they’re staying put.

Fine.

I measure them out and the amount of seeds is PRECISELY what I use to make EXACTLY a pint of seed tincture (but of course) I pour the seeds into the pint jar, I pour in the vodka and even as I turned away, out of the corner of my eye I saw…MOVEMENT.

I spun around and just STARED for a moment before RUNNING for my camera. How many more “This is FASCINATING!!” can I do in a Teasel’s direction. It was like a liliputian lavalamp. Every seed was standing straight up, and either drifting UP or drifting DOWN, and all those little grey squares looked like tiny bubbles dancing around. I just couldn’t take my eyes off the jar. I have NEVER seen seeds act like this.

Ever armed with a chopstick, I stirred the whole thing and NOTHING would make those seeds point anywhere but up-and-down. Not ONE of them went sideways no matter how much I disturbed the liquid.

FRESH seeds! That’s what I’m looking at here, FRESH seeds! Heavy at the bottom. Of course! Those little grey squares are the little whoopdeedo’s that attach the flower TO the seed, that’s why they AREN’T in the gatherings of older seeds. Do I love what I do, or what?

Now THIS is going to be one jar I shall ENJOY shaking on a regular basis for the next six weeks.

It sat on a table out in the moonlight, I didn’t forget it (as I have for other flower essences I haven’t been entirely tuned in to and wound up discarding). I filtered it that very morning, preserved the ‘mother’ essence with brandy and put it away in a cabinet, because I didn’t quite KNOW what it was all about yet.

Yes, I’ve ready other descriptions of what others think Teasel Flower Essence is ‘for’, but none of those descriptions spoke to me.

Teasels? They ~speak~ to me…….. a LOT.

So I gave great thought to the utterly unique way in which the flowers start in the middle of the head and go BOTH ways. That HAS to be significant. I thought about the ‘kill, kill, kill’ thing that virtually every Lymer feels, but also that enormous need to HEAL.

We’re an ecosystem, not a shoebox. If you send in ALL the troops with flame throwers and nuclear bombs and power-washers full of Drano, you won’t be growing any flowers on the battlefield any time soon.

No, Teasel knows the pull of BOTH directions. I watched and watched the flowerheads, touched and puzzled as to WHEN the spines are soft and when they become fierce. And still the bottle remains in the cabinet. I don’t GET it all yet.

But that was LAST full moon. Today is another. August Full Moon. As I went out today to gather another batch of tiny florets, I realized that most of them were no longer in bloom. MOST of them are ripening seeds. I’ve asked them about THAT, too. I feel VERY drawn to working with the seeds, but I have for a year now and have done nothing. Something tells me they must be VERY fresh. But how will I know? I’ve been watching the three sister teasels in one corner of the garden. One was the very first to bloom. That first seedhead is way above my head, so I can’t watch the seeds closely. So I sat with them for a LONG time the other day with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes, I saw all the many seedheads on all of the Teasels I let bloom in the garden and saw, for the first time, that the seed heads go beige, but still, the protective arching spines are all green.

 Not yet. I GET it.  And even when the sidespines lose their green, I am NOT to take the center head or even the THREE center heads. Just the side ones. They are extra. They are to share. Absolutely, I will WAIT.

Earlier in the season I was brought to a stop with my digging rosettes trying to meet the soaring demand for Teasel root tincture to help with Lyme. April 22 was my last batch. I had to stop. I was finding that even though I was only digging flat rosettes, in that last batch I was finding plants that had initiated flowerstalks. Some I only could see once I cut the leaves off.

There, in the center, was a solid circle – a flower stalk, and I could feel the root had lost its medicine. I couldn’t tell by looking at them, so I just had to STOP.

From the end of April pretty much all through May, the invite went out. I don’t know how else to put it. I simply had to WAIT to see who accepted the invite and who declined. As Matthew Wood said it years ago:

 “Teasel is a biennial, except when it isn’t.”

He’s utterly right. I’ve dug non-blooming rosettes with roots SO huge that there’s no way they could be a First Year Root. Just no way. And I’ve seen Teasels BLOOM at 4 INCHES tall from having been mowed repeatedly. Once they accept this invite to bloom, that’s IT. They are GOING to bloom, they are GOING to make seeds, they are GOING to survive.

And THESE are the ones in bloom today, on this August Full Moon. The secondary side-shoots from the big ones, but also the ones that met a weed-whacker, a scythe, a mower.

THIS is how much they want to survive. For them to accept this invitation to bloom spells their death unless those seeds survive. No WONDER they take their time deciding.

And once the digging commenced again, once it was CLEAR who had heard the call and who had decided to sit this one out, there was another directive. Over and over I would suddenly STOP digging. It was like my digging fork just wouldn’t go into the ground. Something would just make me STOP. Time and again it was the ONE rosette sitting directly at the base of a blooming stalk.

 It happened so often that I came to see it as the ‘Chosen Child’. You do not take the child sitting at its mother’s feet. They were usually HUGE, but they are NOT root-medicine plants. They are the ones who will bloom next year for sure. The new seeds ripening now will take their chances. Goldfinches will feast on them, they will fall where they cannot root into the ground. Some will germinate right in the seedhead and spend the rainy Oregon winter riding the arching stem of its mother to the moist ground.

 If they dry out or freeze at any point before they get their roots in the ground, it’s over. So this ChosenChild is to be honored and protected.

So today, as I gathered tiny florets, stroking my fingers sideways over the spines and noting that fertilized flowers came out easily and non-fertilized flowers did NOT come out AT ALL, I thought about whose flowers I was gathering. The survivors. The ones who met the blade of the mower (sometimes more than once) and were STILL determined to survive.

Do I know that feeling? I was mowed down EIGHT separate times. Each one more difficult than the one before. I finally grabbed hold of one INCREDIBLE weed, and kicked for all I was worth ‘til I came up for air. I MADE it. I’m WELL.

So. Teasel flowers are about bravery, and faith and acceptance. They’re about dying and carrying on and doing both at once. They’re about keeping enough to be sure you survive and sharing the extra.

I’m not sure I’ve ever met a more noble, brave or wise plant in all my life (and I’ve spent decades hanging out with the plants). It’s an honor to spend my days with them, and to have them as my teachers.

LadyB

August 24, 2010

At first I tried the ‘change the channel’ approach of flipping her bed pillow over, but that only worked a few times. I finally made her a dream pillow to slip into her pillowcase, and I recall her blowing me away one night with her question:

“Mom, do these work because of what’s IN them, or because it gives you something to pay attention to?”

whoa.

“A little bit of both, Sweets, a little bit of both”

A couple of summers ago, when said daughter’s middle son was prone to the occasional tearful toddler meltdown, his older brother took a cue from GramaBee and upon seeing his brother beginning to dissolve in tears, raced to the garden for a sprig of (ready?) MARJORAM with great urgings to ‘smell your medicine plant, Aulii!!’ which DID eventually work. Every time.

Now. Are there chemical constituents in Marjoram that affect the neuro-activity of a weeping child? Oh please. Just like there are chemical constituents in a hug. But ourSELVES can grab hold of a sweet, strong scent and be ok.

So there we are – a little bit of both.

Over the years, I’ve come up with dozens of recipes, often depending on what is at hand. Now that I inhabit the World’s Tiniest Herb Shoppe at Eugene, Oregon’s famous Saturday Market, it was time to get serious about the production of these fun and lovely things.

With a large box of my own ‘gatherings’ on one side of me and the Mountain Rose Herbs catalog in front of me, I set out to concoct a whole series of ‘flavors’. NOBODY does fragrant roses like Mountain Rose.The rose bushes around me that are scrappy enough to grow above where Bambi can reach them unfortunately have no scent. So that was TOP of my shopping list.  

What rather started it all was my swooning over my own Clary Sage when it bloomed and learning that while it utterly curls most women’s toes, most men will take a whiff and turn and say exactly the same thing….”What.” in a hilariously deadpan voice. Innnnnnteresting. Combining my Clary Sage with Mountain Rose’s Damiana?  Oooh, I’m onto something NOW!

And “Molten Goddess” is born. (with the addition of a few more lovelies) No guarantee of sleeping with THIS one!

As I went down the Mountain Rose list, I came upon Patchouli. But of course! “Tie-Dye DREAMS”!! Patchouli, Jasmine, Hops, this is GREAT. (hey. It’s Eugene)

Delighting in how magnificent both our ever-present Doug Firs and White Cedar are when dried, I began to hatch “NorthWest Nights’ but two evergreens needed softening, so I added a touch of roses there too, along with a bit of LemonBalm (which grows like an absolute WEED here) and a few other things.

These are all fine and fun, but ONE of these probably needs to be a tad ‘therapeutic’, so I started working on “Buoyant Cloud”. Herbs I knew to be softly uplifting and relaxing to actually encourage sleep.

Keeping in mind the wise observance of my daughter so many years ago, I put as much thought into the labels as into the blending of the herbs and flowers themselves:

Roses to sing to your heart

Patchouli for relaxing balance

Lemon Verbena to lift your spirits

Motherwort for a bit of ‘there, there’…….

But perhaps the best was “Blue Malva Flowers for attracting moonbeams” (what???)

This bit of brilliance was a spin-off from a wonderful thread on the Wise Woman Forum where many of us were discussing our SILVERING hair, when someone suggested that the silvering of our hair brings us more in tune with the moon. Absolutely. I had a large bag of Mtn Rose’s Blue Malva Flowers from my days of concocting hair rinses to glorify my own silver streaks. In they go. No, they have no real SCENT, but they have PRESENCE.

So four of my ‘flavors’ are quite complex and Molten Goddess is a very limited edition as there is only so much of my own Clary Sage to be had. I decided to do one more – “Sweet and Simple”….just lavender and roses.  

If I had to depend ONLY on what I can grow and gather, most of them would be very limited additions.

Dream Pillows at Market

And so, the sewing begins, although it seems a shame to lock all the pretty colors and textures in fabric, but I put out clear-bottled samples of each so folks can smell and see them at Market.

So here’s to a Gently Uplifting Sleep; a Nostalgic Snooze (guess which one THAT is); Soft, Sweet Slumber; A Magical Nighttime Journey; or a Deep, Magnificent Sleep. (love our evergreens)

G‘Night John-boy!

LadyB

This little gem is part of the MOUNTAIN ROSE HERBS BLOG CONTEST