Queen Anne's Lace

Last year one of my doula clients had a dream about me and her and queen Anne's lace... what could it mean, she asked?

This was around the same time I took a decisive step on my plant path, when I asked my husband to choose a pendant for me from Flower and Fable to be my ally going forward... He chose the Queen.

I've long believed this plant to be a witch herb, one of it's folk names being "mother die", as the story goes your mother will die if you bring it into the house. Folklorists suggest that this is because it sheds all over the house and will make your mother cross. Perhaps they don't know that women used to eat the seeds to prevent an embryo implanting when they did not wish to become pregnant. What if your mother had been caught with this plant in her home hundreds of years ago? The Queen has long had women's best interests at heart...

As a flower essence she balances the sexual centres. Like the Moon card in the Tarot, we have our animal impulses and our connection to something higher and sacred, the sweet spot is when we realise the wild and holy intersection. Queen Anne's Lace brings us into sacred union with that which is animal and angel.

Last week my doula client came to visit and we took my doula baby for a walk for his nap, we walked around my village and took a route I've never gone before. We found ourselves in this magical field of Queen Anne's Lace. Her dream had come true.

The plant had drawn us to her.

We had known her in this life and many others.

Time folded on itself as it has done many times before.

World breastfeeding week

I thought about what I wanted to share for world breastfeeding week, my children are older now. 10 and 6, and it still stands that I have spent half their childhood breastfeeding. This part I fondly call "learning how to mother without it".

What an initiation into feminine power, to be your child's entire nourishment. What a revelation, that your breasts aren't for ogling on the top shelf of newsagents but for FEEDING THE WORLD. When the gaslighting of it dawns on you. So angry, so happy.

I still dream of it. The few quick suckles and the long glug glug glugs and the calm that washes over you, better than any drug. Your sleepy babe wakes in the night and you draw them closer and you feel the tug tug tug as the wave falls over both of you and sends you to dreamland.

When you hear a baby cry, does the instinct to take out your breasts ever go away?

It hasn't for me.

The beautiful, grounding, limiting, expansive tethering of it. The way you measure time in feeds and you become incredibly productive in the between time. "If you want something done, ask a busy woman" so the saying goes. How to explain how your breasts fill up right before your baby cries even when you are miles apart?

Anytime I think maybe I can't do something, I remember I'm the woman who breastfed a tongue tied baby in a domestic violence refuge, a baby who would only feed while I was stood up. And I'm in awe of that woman.

Breastfeeding is hard because until you observe, how can you know? I nearly didn't breastfeed my son because I had no idea what I was doing. It was only when a kind midwife helped me to cup feed my sleepy baby was he roused enough to latch.

Breastfeeding is hard because the delicate interplay of hormones required are often sabotaged by the medicalisation of birth. It's hard because it's time consuming and it goes against all the modern ideas of how a baby "should" be.

I used to joke you weren't my friend unless you'd seen my breasts. Whenever I see breastfeeding I am thrilled and I want to say - I see you, I've been you. Together we have fed the world.

Sending my love out to all women who were sabotaged and carry their breastfeeding grief.

My womb sent me dreams about the two babies I miscarried

My womb sent me dreams about the two babies I miscarried…

I am sharing this because I feel called to let women know what it means to be your own oracle. When we are in the middle of an initiation it doesn’t feel like it, it feels like suffering, sometimes fighting the experience, before we surrender into it and become open to its wisdom.

I came to birth work from initiations of pleasure, to womb work from initiations of pain, but truly the pleasure and pain are intersected and overlap and sometimes you cannot tell one from another. The mystery is not done with me yet, there are deep paths to travel and for me the boundaries between life and death become more blurred every day.

I have shared these stories with only a couple of people, and no doubt some spirit baby mediums would tell me I am incorrect… in fact one medium did when I opened up about my experience. Spirit babies are apparently supposed to come back to you. I have heard this to be true and several women I know have experienced the soul coming back. The beauty about womb wisdom is that we do not need to rely on outside validation for our insights. The beauty of the mystery of the soul is nobody has the definitive answers.

The first baby I miscarried last year came to me in a dream a week later. He was a sweet baby boy and I knew instantly that he was not mine and I would not be keeping him. I knew that he had another mother and our time together was going to be brief. I asked if I could breastfeed him just once, and she said yes, and I put him to my breast for one feed and handed him over to her loving care. This dream was so comforting – what did this soul appointment mean for me and for him? He was going to his true mother who loved him deeply.

The second baby I miscarried recently was a much harder experience and very physically painful. I knew they were not going to stay, experienced a nervousness I had never felt before in any pregnancy. I told my friend Sam and she shared that her pear tree had a baby pear tree, and we should come and get the baby one to grow alongside our baby. My husband dug up the baby pear tree to bring home with us and we realised it had no roots of its own and would not grow. Dread filled me and Sam told me she also knew in that moment the baby would not stay.

The soul also came to me in a dream a week or so later. The baby was a girl who had not been wanted by another mother and was seeking a new one, and there was a choice between me and another mother who had different things they could offer the soul.

Ultimately I was not chosen, which was very sad but I did feel through the physical experience of miscarrying that something had been cleared from the womb that I had not been able to do myself, and that our time together had a deep purpose for both of us.

I am so grateful for these dreams from the womb that remind me when it comes to death, life, conception, there is no blame, there is no guilt. There are only souls finding their way through the time/space reality, making choices, healing each other, teaming up together and parting ways. I have been in a grief space these last few weeks and was able to release more sadness over the weekend, which is why I feel the time is right now to share.

As women we experience divinity through the holy animal that is the body, through being bearers of life and death. We do not need anybody to tell us our experiences and intuitions are real or not real. We are the oracle.