befriending witch hazel
friends in liminal spaces
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As I get closer to my daughter's first birthday, I find myself in a liminal space. Jumping from the present into long journeys of “this time last year.” For this time last year, I was 8 months pregnant. Awaiting the arrival of my first child. Waddling through the kitchen preparing nourishing meals that could easily be reheated. Sitting on a yellow rocking chair watching my husband assemble furniture for our baby. Trying to picture her smell. Her hair. How much she will weigh. How strange to have been in a place where I could only imagine a person I have come to know so deeply. Whose presence now seems to have always been alongside me. In the flowers. In the honey. In the salt that touches the sea. Just waiting for the right moment to bloom.
This time last year, I was organizing neat rows of postpartum remedies. Building an altar of nipple balms, peri bottles and sitz baths filled with calendula, rose and witch hazel. Cradling the witch hazel like a rosary as I prayed that my child’s entrance into the world would be as swift and as painless as possible. It was at that moment that I found a friend in the bewitching shrub as she unfurled her dormant petals and offered her golden blooms as a torch to help guide me at the crossroads of maiden and mother.
Looking back, it's no surprise that I would build such a friendship. For witch hazel has been a longtime companion to mothers and mothers to be. Like any good plant midwife, she tends from a place of heart and knowing. Always lending her bark and leaves to help soothe and heal any afterbirth pains while offering an empathetic mirror through her botanical name: Hamamelis. Meaning: together with fruit. A poetic illustration to depict the way witch hazel blooms. Her delicate flora always opening alongside her previous year’s fruit. Reminding mothers of their own entrance into matrescence. For we, too, bloom and fruit simultaneously when we give birth to our children.
This time, this year, I find myself in that same yellow rocking chair. Tending to my very own golden-haired winterbloom. As we sway together, we’re embraced by the rising morning sun. How lucky we are to have burst through the earth in the same growing cycle. Sharing the same garden bed. Together. With fruit.
These beautiful tulips from Alchemy Farmhouse Blooms.
My Psychic Solstice candle by Snakes for Hair.
Snowdrops, who have recently bloomed and have become my muse.
My dear friend and fellow flower loving, poet mama, Kat Farrell-Davis. I highly recommend reading and subscribing to her Substack,
. I look forward to it every week!Devotions by Mary Oliver.
Your golden-haired winter bloom, the crossroads of maiden to mother, 'this time last year'... plucking my heartstrings, as always. I sure do enjoy how your writing engages my senses- I can see that yellow rocking chair and smell the honey 💛🍯💐🎇