Chamomile was the first herb I fell in love with aged 14. I just need to open the jar and smell it to be a maiden again, to be engulfed in earthy sweetness in an increasingly sanitised and artificial world. “Matricaria chamomilla”, what a name! Meaning Mother - what more powerful name could you give anything, I wonder? What higher compliment?
In those days it was about saving our pocket money to spend in the hippy shop, buying ear studs in the shape of pentacles, memorising the Witches’ Rune. Bags of chamomile like honey and innocence and the magical world of the Divine Mother. Like a fairy song beckoning these wild daughters down a winding path covered in wildflowers… promising that there is a way through rebellion into belonging, there is a way back through this madness into something sweeter, something more real and true.
We sipped our tea and talked about the wise and free women we’d someday be. Like the woman behind the counter who sold us the herbs and jewellery. Oh the injustice, to be “in the broom closet”! To hide my Wicca books and spell books, from my family or from God, I don’t think even I knew. Maybe the delight was in having something just for myself, something about myself that only I knew. On warm days we poured rinses of the flowers through our hair and dried it in the sun to make it shine brighter. We would hold hands and dance and take portraits of each other, a budding sisterhood that ended like so many do in betrayal… but I kept the herbs and the poems.
How do I see her now?
Chamomile to soothe the skin, calm the belly, bring up the mucus. To usher the sweet dreams, relax the nerves, caress the delicate yoni. Like a true mother she has many hands with which to heal. Like a doula, she is for women and babies. And as my doula, she has been by my side through it all.
She is a gateway
She is a portal
She is an ancient flower garden whose scent leads us back home
Ahava
Jenny xxx
