Cleavers
The Wise Woman's Folk Herbal Series
Cleavers is coming up all around us, and the children love to grab the stems and trick each other. There is something so foolish about having something stuck to your back, and they play games to see how long it takes each other to notice.
How long has it taken you to notice what isn't serving you? Do you laugh when you realise just how obvious it was, no matter how oblivious you were at the time? Do you feel like your weakness was like a target on your back?
I think of cleavers and its sticky hands and peppery taste - fiery like the Holy Spirit and present and abundant just like love if we only take the time to look. I think of those sticky hands with elongated fingers moving like smoke through the body, dragging, coaxing, caressing all the places we are stuck and stagnant. Filtering our spirit of sludgy buildup and low vibrations. Just like the Holy Spirit, cleavers says - "I am the great purifier."
Cleavers is the plant for those prone to excesses and overindulgences. That craving to be filled up, to want more love, to fill our houses with stuff, to eat that extra bite even though we know we are full. It is a craving that women often feel, especially if there has been some aching lack, some deep emotional craving that has never been satisfied. Just like some "sticky willy" stuck to your back, our addictions broadcast our pain to the world.
Herbal medicine is not about fixing, it's about restoring balance. So we let cleavers move through our body like a filter, removing physical and emotional buildup with its cunning fingers, allowing the waterways to run healthy and clear. Reminding us that we are love. Reminding us that the craving will never be satisfied by anything external. This isn't about changing, being "better", being healed. It's remembering we are all those things already, it's our knowledge of that that gets obscured from time to time.
Letting ourselves come home to the truth of that.
