Nurturing your Bittersweet Vines Within
Happy and Blessed Beltane portal to you all. May you find solace and peace within these energetic and intense lives we have the liberty to hold. Within these thresholds of great change, our reminder is to stay flexible, agile and observant, and care for ourselves along the way. Now let me explain…
This past week has been such a whirlwind: emotionally, mentally, financially and all the things! Just the nature of Spring: to rebirth all the parts of ourselves we might not be ready to confront but alas, here they are! I consistently have been meeting parts of myself that feel like they have been labored from the depths of my beingness, up and out into the light of day. It’s been exhausting to say the least. But, if there’s one thing about me you should know: I might not always like it, but I’ve always got my cowgirl hat on… ready to ride whatever is being thrown my way.
There’s something to be said about the many ways we’re being asked to bend, flex, fit and step forwards in these times of great turbulence, and coincidentally great expansion. From my own personal experience, the last few weeks have truly tested my limits in every single way. I have had to adapt and reevaluate my circumstances in both internal and external landscapes, over and over and over.
Have you ever gone swimming and opened your eyes underwater, looking upwards towards the light? It looks a bit muted and murky, not really resembling the sun that you know above the water's surface. Nonetheless you admire it, in that deep place of silence and eerie depth; knowing you’ll swim towards it again at some point without fail. This is how I’ve been feeling lately. I can see the light still hanging overhead, yet it’s fading in and out, it’s changing shape and it’s tempting me like crazy as I hold my breath waiting for the right time to rise. This makes me think about the concept of adaptability.
The people with the healthiest nervous systems not only are expecting change to come, but are the most flexible to it once it arrives. Those in nature who do not adapt to their changing environments perish. Change is brutal, yet it’s also a necessary part of life. If you think about it, flexibility is what makes a good anything, into something great. There’s a great metaphor of this concept in nature to help relay this message. The bittersweet vine is an invasive vine that grows literally everywhere, and engulfs most anything in its path. As a DEM invasive plant manager, gardener and landscape designer, it’s one of my great banes; yet as a poet and a metaphorical psychic alchemist, it’s wonderful relatable content! So let’s dig in.
The bittersweet vine grows vigorously, wrapping itself extremely tight around whatever it’s trying to climb... Once it’s wrapped itself fully up a trunk of a tree, it tightens. Tightening and swelling the once dainty and feeble vines into rock solid wrist width chains. The bittersweet gets so tight it actually fractures the bark wherever its jaws have clamped down. This is bad news for whatever tree it’s got in its grasp! The vine wraps so tightly it prevents the tree from being flexible in the winds of life. All trees are meant to bend, and sway in order to acclimate to weather. So over time, the weakening flexibility of the tree makes it so rigid, that when the next big wind comes, the tree meets its end. It’s really a truly tragic death! Bittersweet prevents the tree from adapting to its environment, and essentially from being flexible. Maybe that’s why they call it bittersweet. A bitter end to a sweet, innocent being kept from its natural flexibility.
We all know and shake hands with our own internal versions of bittersweet on the daily. Our minds torment us silently, with thoughts of why we must stay rigid for our best interest. Don’t open your heart, don’t be vulnerable, don’t laugh too loudly, don’t make the art, don’t rest, don’t say no, don’t wear something comfortable or dress down, don’t skip your makeup, don’t leave dishes in the sink, don’t turn up the volume on the music, don’t sing in your car like no one’s watching, don’t smile at strangers, don’t stop your diet, and don’t you dare be a messy, beautiful masterpiece of a human.
“Don’t be flexible to the bends life beckons towards you, it could be dangerous”, the mind thinks.
I have one thing to say to these parts of my mind that are just trying to keep me safe, but are in fact inhibiting my growth in the process… “You. Don’t. Own. Me”.
These parameters we subconsciously set for ourselves are the strengthening of that bittersweet vine over time. They tighten, tighten and tighten until life blows in a big wind, and we topple over without the ability to get back our original stature. Lucky for us, we aren’t a tree within the eyeshot of a bittersweet assassin. We are all invasive plant managers in this sense, and can identify the problem before it makes a grave impact.
Usually we can spot which of our thoughts are rigid, when we are within these times of contraction. For me they’re often flying through my mind a mile a minute. There’s value here in catching yourself within the swirl of it, to observe the internal monologue and what it’s telling you. That’s when you can find those loud thoughts that are telling you that you MUST do or don’t do whatever it is, these are your bittersweet thoughts. They are not you, but they will destabilize you in time, so best to start recognizing them and separating them out sooner than later.
One supportive aspect that has consistently shown up in these times of constriction and contraction lately, is the hypothetical life raft my subconscious has been throwing to me. When I feel like I’m drowning from my grief, heartbreak, mental anguish and physical fatigue. When it feels like I’m banging my head, fists and feet up against a locked door; my spirit guides remind me there may be an open window I’ve not acknowledged yet. The invasive plant manager in all of us has the ability to cut the cord of whatever isn’t working, and seek out a softer and more nutritive reality for ourselves. The crucial part of this life raft though, is to find it or be ‘thrown it’, we must consider it an option. If we simply remain helplessly trying to do whatever it is that our minds are insisting that we must do in some certain way, we are vastly missing the bigger picture.
The object here is to first actively find ourselves within this experience of banging down this hypothetical locked door. Second, consider potentially, there may be an open window somewhere else we haven’t noticed yet. And like that underwater analogy above… allow the light to find you, and for the love of God… when it does, please follow it.
The answer is not behind the locked door, however it is through trusting there’s an alternative route that will lead to something of nurturance and ease.
What’s so helpful here as well is to observe these vining bittersweet thoughts, and talk directly to them. For example: “hello thoughts that are suggesting that I’m in imminent danger, and urging me to abandon myself in order to stay rigid in accordance to my conditioning… If there is anything realistic to do about it, I will do it! But otherwise, you can see yourself/selves out”. I find this really accommodating, because these bittersweet thoughts are simply our more vulnerable parts who are afraid of being hurt again. By acknowledging them with kindness, we can soften their worries and reassure them that we’re safe, no matter what winds life brings us.
What ever door you find yourself trying to bang down, know that certain avenue is not the only avenue to lead you to the other side of whatever you’re faced with. There is seldom only one single way to solve a problem. Trust that once you notice you’re attempting to barge through a blockade, that you deserve solutions that come with ease. You deserve support, and you deserve to solve problems without having to beg for their answers. You do not need to strangle your success in order for you to be worthy of receiving it.
Can you allow the light to find you in the week ahead? How can you clear the invasive bramble within your own psyche during times of tumult? And how can you shed the light of compassion upon your tired soul, reassuring it that gripping tightly is the old way, not the best way.
With so much love and gratitude,
Taryn xx
