What the Wild Whispered

Lessons from Mother Nature – The Queen of Change

 

Last Monday, I zipped out of Singapore with my daughter to Australia for ten days. Our family is going through some big life changes and I wanted to come home. Aside from the very real experience of my son finishing his schooling in a matter of weeks, my parents have had an incredibly challenging few years with chronic health concerns. Their resilience is dazzling, but I wanted to see them and ask what I could do to help. 

In the mix too, is the recent passing of two ‘grand ladies’, my husband’s aunt, and a very dear family friend, who was much loved by my mum. 

We have stopped in Leura in the Blue Mountains for a couple of days and will then head to Mum and Dad’s for a few more days. And I’m so grateful that we have.

The garden is in full-scale ‘spring mode’. We have just passed the equinox and every single living system in the garden has sprung to life collectively. They have heard the call through the wild field and have simultaneously activated their growth cycles.

The garden is a cacophony of blooms, colours, perfumes, bees, butterflies and birds. As I walked through the dazzling spring carnival, I felt completely enveloped by the garden itself – a living, intelligent field. And I realised that I was feeling soothed and calmer within this embrace. I decided to walk through the garden pathways as if I were in a dialogue with the Queen of Change Herself, Mother Nature. As soon as I adopted this perspective, my heart opened, my senses sharpened, and I started to see the metaphor, patterns and sensations in cycles, seasons, legacy and body.

Here are four beautiful and powerful reminders from the Queen of Change Herself, expressed through a vibrant, collective intelligence of a mature spring garden. Catch my mini vlogs also, on TikTok and Instagram.

Lesson 1: Engage in colour magic

Every season has its palette of colours, that finds expression through the dawns and dusks, moons, and especially the botanical realm. There are distinct shifts in colours and combinations at certain points of the year, and the equinox colours are both medicine for the energy body, and an invitation into colour magic. 

I realised as I walked through the blooming beds and waves of surround-colours, that there was a pattern – a range of purples and peachy oranges dominated the colour-scape. And they were incredibly soothing to my senses as I felt through the big shifts and changes in my family, as we calibrate to Mum and Dad getting older.

Purple corresponds to Sahasrara, the Crown Chakra, and peachy orange/pinks correspond to Swadhisthana, the second Chakra. Colour and the wild mandalas of flowers stimulate and enliven our chakras and in this experience, my 2nd & 7th Chakras, in unison.

The Crown governs our connection with All, our universal centre, subtle and ethereal. The Sacral governs our right to feel, our adaptability and fluidity, our sensory engagement with events and the intelligence of our bodies and feelings. 

We gathered a huge mixed bunch of flowers for the dining room table, to bring the colours inside too. I immediately started to incorporate meditations and visualisations that work with the two chakras. The daily breathwork from the Spirited Living Live Quest, Unity Breath, Simple Sushumna Activation, garden journaling and meandering. And gently I felt the strain of the turning cycles, ease and soften, and the Queen of Change opened my eyes to the Beauty of Change and the sweet lessons that Change offers.

Lesson 2: Intentionally shift into your sensory field 

It is here that Mother Nature communicates with us. The high sensory hit of the spring garden is because every sense is stimulated to factor 9000. Colours, forms, dappled light, more colours, new shoots, and bursting blossoms flood the visual field. Buzzing bees, all-day birdcall, warm wind through pine trees, buzzing beetles and teenage laughter flood the airwaves. A symphony of perfumes infuses the air. Every flower is emanating its most alluring perfumes to attract the happy bees feasting on pollen and nectars, the fresh new grass smells sweet and then there are the scent bombs.

There are a handful of plants in the garden that rule the scent field with the most sublime and acutely-refined-through-evolution perfumes, such that their fragrance beguiles not only bees, but all living creatures that encounter it. There’s a section in the garden which Dad planted years ago that combines, luculia, daphne, geranium, butterfly trees, magnolia, freesias and daffodils. It is impossible to walk through this section of the garden without immediately slipping into a light perfume-induced trance where time slows down and you start to move in slow motion. It is powerful medicine. 

In times of big life changes, especially simultaneous ones, it’s good to surrender to the reach of our system to drop out of the thought field and natural frenzy that change can bring, and to disrupt time. Intentionally creating windows to drop into sensory awareness and light trance presence not only soothes and heals an emotionally heightened system, but also brings waves of sensory delight and heightened intuitive senses.

Lesson 3: Loosen your grasp on time

Every tree and plant in the garden has its unique time code with how it opens to the spring energies. Some are already in full bloom, some are shyer, and are only now budding. There are no excuses, or comparisons within the botanical realm of the garden. Each and every being and its timing and offering into the whole garden, is sacred and valued.

The garden is a mature one and the grand old trees communicate via the mushroom network amidst their root systems that connect them with the wild trees of the national park, outside our gates. Allowing the energies of changes and movement in my life and family, and witnessing the different movements and growth in some ways and the call to be still in others, is the way to roll here. Being able to hold a gentle responsiveness to what my system is calling for, rather than grasping onto an ideal or formula. Just let the process be and run its course, and in doing so, see and participate in the beauty of change. 

Lesson 4: The Beauty of detachment, impermanence and legacy

This week, two amazing women known and loved by our family and friends, passed over. We attended the funeral of my husband’s aunt and my mum attended the funeral of her dear friend. And the week has been marked with acknowledgement and inspiration that these two women continue to give in Spirit. I was moved by the stories and legacy of my aunt, the pain felt by all her friends and community and especially her immediate family. She was an incredible wife, mother and grandmother and everyone who knew her was better for it. What a legacy! Yet, these grand old dames also have their season. Acceptance that they too, as much as they have formed their families and touched so many others, will pass. Allowing them to pass peacefully and to honour them through gathering and remembering them, is beautiful and healing.

In my garden, a grand old cherry tree had finally also had its time. As it was one of the original trees of the garden, its dead truck and branches were enormous. Over the few years, she had become cloaked in light-green lichen, trailing Angel’s Hair and a massive spider colony that weaved intricate spiralling webs, which light up in moonlight, like twinkling carnival decorations. Divine!

This year we had to cut it down due to safety concerns, which was heartbreaking, as she still held space for so much life and diversity. We mulched what we could and recycled the trunk. We scattered the mulch in the beds and this spring, the grand old dame sings again, through her lifeforce now shining through the whole bed. She has lit up the garden, just as our two grand ladies have lit up their family and community gardens with their legacies. 

Aaaahhhhh…being with, breathing with, allowing with, halting with, moving with, loving with the Queen of Change, our shared Mother, speaking with me through an exquisite Spring Garden. I feel held. 

I hope reading this story will enliven that feeling in you too. Get outside and love your wild! And if you love this content you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok, because I love making it! 

If you have any questions or thoughts about the Queen of Change and the lessons from Mother Nature, do get in touch. You can join our Monkey Pot Magic Facebook Group and nurture a deeper more meaningful connection with nature with a community of nature lovers. Also, our new season of Dawn Dreaming is now open for October and November. 

If you like this article and are keen to join a like-spirited community, join us at https://www.spiritedlivingwithdani.com/.

Please visit my website to explore courses and useful content to guide you on your path to healing, self-discovery and mindful living. And if you would like to explore more about a spirited life, my book, ‘Spirited – A guide to your innate spiritual design to transform your life’, is now available. See stockists here. 

If you enjoyed this post and would like to share it, I request that you please credit Danielle Van de Velde as the author. I do not authorise repurposing or republishing without my written permission. You may email me for the same.