Defying Gravity

When I was in high school and college, I’d have a recurring dream that I was trying to run, but I was only able to move in slow motion due to an extreme weight of gravity acting upon my body. It was such a frustrating dream. At the time I had those dreams, in waking life, I was not an adept runner. Sometimes I would try to go for a jog where I lived in Delaware, and it felt kinda like that because it was just long, straight roads. I think a deeper layer of that dream was also about my pyschological and spiritual journey. Trying to overcome, prevail, change habits, make progress…and feeling my efforts didn’t yield commensurate results.

In my late twenties, however, when I lived in Pennsylvania, I accidentally became a runner. This was only because one January, in keeping my New Year’s resolution to work out a few times a week, I headed to the employee gym after work one day. The elliptical machine (the only piece of equipment at the gym that didn’t make me want to cry) was fully booked with a waitlist. Since this was only like January 3rd, and I’d already arrived at the gym in my workout clothes, I decided to begrudgingly get on the treadmill. I negotiated with myself that I would alternate jogging for a three minutes with walking for a 1 minute until I had done this for about 40 minutes. Surprisingly, I didn’t hate it. So, then the same scenario happened again, and then again. It seemed that 5:45 pm was a prime elliptical time slot, and I was just not able to get to the elliptical machine before all the other University of Delaware employees. 

After a couple weeks of my gentle jog-walks, I started seeing if I could extend the duration of my jogging time before intermittent walking times. I did this slowly and surely, and a few months later, I was jogging for the duration of my workout. I also gradually increased my speed so that I felt like I could refer to it as running. 

By that May, I was feeling pretty great when we left our home in Pennsylvania to go visit my sister and her family in Los Angeles. And there, I met California Kim. That’s what I named her because she looked like she was designed by Mattel for the Barbie doll line—but like she would have been Barbie’s friend, Kim, because she had auburn hair and green eyes (not blonde hair and blue eyes). So, I wanted her to have a name befitting a Barbie friend doll. 

Anyway, California Kim and I got to talking, and she was telling me about how she was training for a marathon. This sounded so inspiring and aspirational to me. So I was asking her how she got into that level of running. “Well,” she began, “I honestly just started by walking around my neighborhood every morning. I was walking about 3 miles a day, so I was going about 21 or so miles a week. And then, I just started to run some of it, and I made my goal to swap out my walking miles for running miles within a few months. And then I realized I had a solid baseline for running, and I decided to start slowly adding distance. Before too long, I was running long enough runs some days of the week that I realized I could probably start training for a marathon. And so I did!”

Now, California Kim was inspiring enough with this story, but then she went on to share something that Angelenos very rarely share—her age. Sidenote: this is because, they usually look at least 10 years younger than they actually are. “I’m 39” she confessed, “so I wanted to run a marathon by the time I was 40.” 

At this point in my life, 39 sounds like the beginning of actual adulthood. To my 27 year-old self from a small town where people got married by 21, that sounded near-geriatric. It left a big impression on me. “If California Kim can run a marathon, I certainly can!” 

So, when I returned back home, I I took my daily miles outside and applied them to the gently rolling hills of Pennsylvania. I made it my goal to go at least 20 miles of distance per week, but that was a combination of walking and running. Slowly, I converted my walking miles to running miles. Slowly I then decided to make my minium distance 4 miles at a time. Within a couple months, I was running 8 miles at a time, and then I reached double digits (that was a big moment). And eventually, 6 months after I started training, I ran a marathon! I even dragged Collin along 🙂 

That experience shifted so much for my psyche. I haven’t had that old dream about gravity preventing me from running since. 

I guess that story bubbled up from within me and onto this page because I’m studying and training to become an herbalist. Right now, the end goal feels pretty lofty. In my dreamiest dreams, I have a little shop. And in this lovely, little herbal shop there would be an elixir bar where people can order unique, made-to-order, tonic beverages that are colorful (because flavonoids) and healthy (because tonic herbs) and tasty (because we all want to enjoy our lives). There would also be lots of beautiful, dry herbs in jars all over shelves on the walls, and I’d be there to give consultations for people and help support them in their health goals. Whether it’s dealing with anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, or wanting to enhance their spiritual path with sacred herbs that promote dreams and visions, I’d be their go-to botanical gal. I could give them protocols and my number and send them back into their worlds with herbal allies—plant friends in the forms of teas, tinctures, salves, herbal smokes, or whatever was the most appropriate preparation given the person and their situation.

But who knows? I mean, this is a dream, but currently, I’m still trying to learn about Phytochemicals enough to make people tea that their doctors will actually allow them to drink. I made a tea for a family member recently, and I formulated the tea pretty well for what the condition was. But I missed the phytochemical details and how flavonoids would duplicate the blood thinning effect of the medication the person was already taking. Fortunately, I always tell people to check with their doctors before making a tea part of their regular, daily life. So the doctor flagged the redundancy of the herbs and the medication. But it was disheartening. Because it felt like gravity. 

Will I ever truly learn, for example, what caffeic acid (a phenolic acid) does in the body versus what thymol (a monoterpene) does in the body? They occur together in Thyme, for example, so will I know when to attribute an action to synergistic relationships of phytochemicals within a plant versus knowing when a specific constituent is responsible for a specific effect? And furthermore, will I be able to do this for thousands of phytochemicals? Or at least have a strong enough grasp on the broad categories that I know where and when to quick reference things? 

This past week I felt like that mistake applied gravity to my efforts toward my dream. It’s alright, it’s alright. Nobody needs to get out a violin for my injured spirit. I know that struggle produces growth, and plants have taught me this most of all. Without developing scar tissues through tiny injuries in the beginning of their lives, plants won’t have the core strength to grow taller and stronger commensurately. They can grow tall quickly without struggle, but then they collapse with one, strong breeze. So, they need to develop with struggle early on in the growth process. Gah. Such wisdom all around us if we look for it. 

I’ve made other mistakes along my herbalism journey too. Apropros to nothing I just wrote at all, did you know that mailing (a tiny bit of) cannabis across state lines to a friend is a federal crime?  And so is growing Papaver somniferum? Honestly, these seem like ridiculous things to make illegal. Especially considering some of the things that are backed by our federal government that should be illegal (ICE). But I try to be a law abiding citizen to the best of my abilities so that if their is a really unjust law, I can disobey it and it will make more of an impact. It’s a “choose your battles” sort of thing. I guess everyone has to set that dial where their own moral compass indicates. 

I will mention here that while the running dream never recurred, I did have a dream a couple years back that I was back on our old land in Vermont trying to fly on a broomstick. I’d be hovering a little bit off the ground for a few moments at a time saying, “I know I can fly this thing.” But after just a few moments, this extreme gravity would weigh me down. And I will say this, many who were burned as witches were herbalists. So, that’s something to ponder.

Well, that’s all for now, folks. If you were going to have a soundtrack for this post, I’d say please listen to three songs by Mother Mother in this order: “It’s Alright”, “Get Up”, and “I’ve Got Love.” And if you’re going to have a tea menu to those tunes, have chamomile, then peppermint, and then ideally you’d have a rose-cacao-damiana blend. Maybe one day you can get that last one in my shop 🙂