When Chaos Ensues

 Welcome to the Thymely Drops of Wisdom podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Carmon, founder of Resourced Apothecary, where we are asking you to rethink how you refill your cup. Resourced Apothecary offers sustainable practices and products to help you deepen your connection to yourself, your community, and to mother earth.

here in this podcast, I'm sharing the plant spirit medicine I receive from the plants and the land. The plants share their wisdom through messages and actual medicines. We'll discuss both in detail. In addition, I provide sound healing and guided meditation to help you connect in with the plants in your unique way.

and I offer suggestions for integrating all of this into your life with rituals and practices that are both manageable and powerful. I'm thankful you're here. Let's get into today's topic.

 I want to take some time today to speak openly with you about some things that are coming up for me and to invite you to make space. For things that may be coming up for you when you do the powerful and important work of clearing out stagnant energy.

If you've been in meditation with me, you know I usually reference releasing what is no longer serving your highest good. For me, this practice has been incredibly transformational. You see, for what feels like my whole life, I've carried too much from the weight of the world to the burdens of expectations and societal programming to my internalized assumptions about the feelings of others, even to all the grocery bags in one trip.

Not gonna lie, that last one is still a thing.

I've deluded myself into thinking that a sign of my strength is how much I can carry by myself. This delusion runs rampant throughout our modern culture, and it's hard to even approach the damage it is doing until we are able to cultivate the capacity to witness. . This is why I speak so often about making space. Until there is space in our lives.

We are just treading water and getting nowhere. But what does that mean? 

Well, let me take you on a journey into the past with me real quick.  before I really became immersed in energy work, I was a person who always immediately responded no to any offers of help.

Without even thinking about it. Just, Nope, I'm good. I can do it, and I would do it, and I would do it all until I broke then. I would have to accept help to scrape me up off the floor and get me back on my feet. This happened more than I'd like to admit. With work, with my volunteer efforts, with relationships, I'd run myself into the ground and burn out.

Also, I'm stubborn, so even though it was clear to everyone around me that I needed to accept help, I just didn't see it that way. For me, the breaking point was having my child. That transformational experience broke me wide open. I couldn't do it by myself. I couldn't do anything by myself even when I wanted to.

Everything I thought I knew about being strong changed. Luckily, this breaking point was the catalyst for big personal growth.  I sought out a spiritual advisor. Shout out to Terri Ann Heiman, and I got serious about rebuilding in a way that nurtured my soul. A big part of the work I did with Terri and with many other teachers was releasing.

I made a regular practice of releasing all the energy that no longer served my highest good, releasing all the energy that was not mine to carry. Releasing all the energy that was too heavy for me to carry on my own. At first, it was a cute thought, like, oh, okay, I'll go along with this for the experience, and the meditation will be fantastic.

 Very quickly, though I was overcome with the change in how I felt. As I cultivated a regular practice of releasing, I began to notice more capacity to call on my angels and spirit guides for help. Again, what started as lip service became a source of nourishment . What happened next though was life changing.

The more I practiced releasing what was not mine and asking for heavenly help, we'll call it the more capacity I had. More capacity to witness my life, more capacity to enjoy the highs. More capacity to experience the lows and move through them. More capacity to be present to my life  instead of constantly feeling like I was just barely holding on to the bumper of the struggle bus.

The practice of releasing all that was not for me helped me develop the capacity to receive. My mindset shifted completely. I woke up to the fact that the strongest thing I could do was to ask for help and accept it instead of constantly trying to shoulder everything or being upset because they should just know what I need.

I began to focus on getting better at recognizing when I needed or wanted help. I spent time learning how to be more clear in my requests for support.

Wait, what do I actually need in this moment? What could make this situation less stressful? How do I more effectively communicate my wants?  what would make me happy right now? And where before I thought of all this as self-centered and shameful. It turns out that this shift in my mindset helped to create an actual capacity for deeper, more authentic connections with the people around me.

In learning to release what was not mine, I learned to receive. In learning to receive, I got in touch with myself on a deeper level than ever before. I learned how to communicate my needs. Then with more of my needs met. I developed an even greater capacity to show up for others. To offer beneficial help instead of pushing my idea of what they needed onto them. And as our quick little journey into the past arrives in the present day.

You may be wondering, when I turned into Buddha with all this personal growth, let me be the first to say this is a lifelong practice. I am nowhere near done.  I have so much more to learn and can develop all these skills much, much further. So don't take all this as me sitting up in my ivory tower to show you how you can be as spiritually evolved as me.

My intention here is to illustrate the power of releasing what no longer serves your highest good. I want to highlight the domino effect of such a simple practice. I also want to note that just because it is a simple practice does not mean it is an easy practice. When we go about the work of releasing stagnant energy from our bodies and our fields, that can actually be monumental.

depending on what your body has experienced, what your soul has experienced, your ancestral experience, et cetera, there may be quite a lot of heavy, heavy energy to let go of. And just like with onions and parfaits, there are layers to all of this.

Please tell me, you know that movie reference. 

So this month when we've been working with Mugwort and Larimar to release blocks and stagnation between the root chakra and the sacral chakra, we've been doing big, big work.

I don't want to make light of this, especially since we are working on the physical body as well as the energy body. When we call on Mugwort and Larimar to come in and do this work, there is a chance that we can be stirring up all kinds of old memories, trauma stories, and experiences,

and here's where I want to honor the strength it takes to bear witness. I want to encourage you to be open to asking for and receiving help if this process stirs up stuff you don't want to deal with on your own, or maybe stuff you cannot deal with on your own in this moment. Sometimes when we release this old energy will come back into our awareness as it leaves.

Are you in a space to witness that and let it go? Are you in a space to recognize when your body might be alerting you to where it needs more support around releasing? Can you be gentle with yourself as you do this big work?

I find myself in a weird tension here because I want to honor the magnitude of the process. I also want to acknowledge that for some, this will feel almost imperceptible. It's wild how energy work is different for everyone and honestly can be different for someone in different seasons.  I don't want to intimidate or scare you from exploring what will come up for you when you cultivate a practice of releasing.

I want to dangle the carrot of all the good that can come on the other side of this practice. And at the same time, I want to invite you to be open to support along the way. Working with a coach, an energy worker, a therapist or other person who has the capacity to witness you and offer support is a gift. A gift that I hope you will offer yourself.

It changed my life for the better. I am so grateful for the capacity to receive support. It is that capacity that enables me to tune in to the messages of the plants. It is that capacity that helps me maintain my center, or at least come back to it quickly when life gets chaotic. And that my friend is why I share all of this with you.

It is why I will always encourage you to release what is no longer serving you. It is why I will devote a whole month to the space between chakras and the idea of dissolving all the blocks and stagnant energy standing in the way of flow.

So as we move closer to spring, if you are wondering where all that big energy of potential and possibility has gone. If you find yourself in a bit of a storm, remember that sometimes when we let go of what is not ours, when we release stagnant energy, things can get stirred up on their way out.

That can be really unpleasant and sometimes even makes us feel like we're falling behind or moving in the wrong direction.  I encourage you to be patient. Witness the storm with the understanding that all this chaos is on its way out. The space it's creating will make it even easier for you to make the most of all that big potential.

If this storm is particularly difficult to weather on your own, you've got a great opportunity to call on someone for help. That help can come in the form of working with a professional, confiding in a friend or family member, hopefully one who has the capacity to walk with you through this, or it can look like calling on your angels and spirit guides in meditation or prayer, calling on the God of your understanding, or your source, or the universe, or even the spirit of Larry David. Whatever resonates for you. Give it a shot. See what comes of it.

I am rooting for you.

Big love, my friend.