Held and protected on the journey

a month with lavender

lavender

Hello friends, familiar and new, and welcome to a house in a hamlet in a forest. I’m Jan and I hold spaces for those on journeys of transformation. I believe story is powerful and that the earth offers healing through our daily connection and herbal allies. My Sunday posts are always free and you are so welcome here. Let’s create a little alchemy together.

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Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly
Lavender's green
When l am King, dilly, dilly
You shall be Queen!

Call up your men, dilly, dilly
Set them to work
Some to the plough, dilly, dilly
And some to the cart.

Some to make hay, dilly, dilly
Some to cut corn
While you and I, dilly, dilly
Keep ourselves warm.

I sing to my grandchildren as we walk around the physic garden at Kenilworth Castle, singing myself back to childhood. My mother was a reluctant mother, unnerved by my early reading and propensity to sink into trance (away with the faeries, I constantly heard). But she had a huge store of nursery rhymes.

I don't know whether she sang them to distract herself, but they lodge in me still.

Lavender was a friend before I'd ever seen a stem of it or breathed in its cleansing tranquility.

Lavandula angustifolia. In Old French lavendre and in Medieval Latin lavendula. It may have roots in the Latin lividus — 'bluish, livid' and is certainly associated with the French lavande, Italian lavanda 'a washing', from the Latin lavare 'to wash'. And, further back, the Proto-Indo-European root of 'leue' — embedded in so many words for cleansing and the flow of fluids —

ablution
alluvium
deluge
dilute
elution
lather
latrine
launder
lavage
lavatory
lavish

In Old Irish there's the loathar or 'basin', in Breton the laouer or 'trough'.

Lavender and mothering. When I had young children they would joke that whatever ailed them the answer was lavender — earache, a cut, a scald, a graze, headache, aches and fevers, colds, blocked noses, sleeplessness... there was lavender.

If I could only work with three herbs, they would be

Hawthorn
Rose
Lavender

I've been travelling this month, for events to celebrate Cinnamon Press’s 20th anniversary and to see family and friends, and never travel without her. So it was fitting that I've spent some time with her every day through May.

Travelling, even in the UK and largely to places I know, always comes with some level of defamiliarisation. Different beds and kitchens, new discoveries and encounters. It's been helpful to have that alongside lavender because she is such an old friend that it's easy to not see her, to assume I know her. But we never come to the end of knowing another creature.

This is what I knew

Lavender essential oil is the companion of sleep -- gentle, relaxing... Lavender aids slow-wave sleep, which is deeply restorative and is helpful for anxiety, brain fog and focus. But dose is everything. Use a drop or two in a diffuser or diluted in an evening bath to soothe and restore and quiet, but use too much and the effect can become stimulating. It's also worth noting that Lavendula latifolia (spike lavender) is not the same plant — it has a higher amount of camphor and other constituents that make it more stimulating than true lavender — Lavandula angustifolia. And then there is Lavandin, which is a hybrid of the two, and often mislabeled — useful for joint pain, but not for sleep.

Who will buy my sweet blue lavender?

Sixteen branches for a penny...

Lines from a folk song collected in Victorian England.

English lavender (not from England but adopted by English royalty) is light and sweet, less woody and camphorous than French lavender (not from France originally). English lavender is better know as true lavender and is what is grown largely in the lavender fields of Norfolk and Provence — sweet and blue,. Though in the wild the strain in France is often the deep violet flowered Lavandula stoechas.

Lavender helps to bring energy down from the head and into the body, is anti-inflammatory, helps with , cools minor burns and helps healing and collagen repair. Lavender is good for disinfecting cuts, for earaches (around the ear diluted in a carrier) tired muscles, period cramps, bug bites, and fevers. She is both anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. And she lifts the spirits despite her gentle sedative action — a bringer of tranquility rather than euphoria.

A tea of the flowers is supportive for fevers and for stomach and bowel infections and eases vomiting and diarrhoea. A good remedy for travel sickness either sipped as a tea or rubbed on the temples in a carrier oil or inhaled as an oil.

The cooling anti-inflammatory actionnot only soothes burns, including sunburn, but can help with skin conditions such as eczema, acne, varicose ulcers and nappy rash. Lavender makes an excellent bug repellant, including against lice and mosquitoes, as well as being calming for insect bites. Lavender has a place in hand sanitisers, wound sprays, balms and salves and can in mouth rinses (the herb not the oil).

Lavender is relaxing for tense and tired muscles and has strong anti-spasmodic activity. It can be used in a poultice for sprains or added to bruise ointments.

Respiratory infections, chest infections, tonsillitis, and laryngitis, all respond to her astringent, cooling, calming effects, as can asthma and croup.

She is helpful for the nervous system, bringing clarity and focus when there is lethargy and calming anxiety and irritability. She's go-to oil or teahelpful for headaches and migraines (as long as the scent is acceptable), especially where there is stress or tension, and the infused oil can be rubbed onto the temples or base of the neck.

When I was pregnant with my first child, we had a lodger who was one of the mose elusive people I've ever known. One day I had a migraine that was possibly the worst I've ever experienced — nausea, pain, aura... Hilary arrived home and came into the bedroom — she massaged my head with lavender and the pain evaporated.

My children were right — I reach for lavender for almost everything.

And this is what I learnt this month

Each year I find a particular word or concept runs through the arc of the seasons. Last year I spent lots of time journalling to arrive at 'tend' and it was a powerful concept to explore and embody. I didn't journal to find the word that is lending a flavour to this year — it seemed to appear everywhere I looked or read, it seemed to be the word recurring in my story and the stories of friends -- held. How are we held — in ways that limit us, in ways that nurture and protect us? What are we holding? In so many senses. Who do we hold and who holds us?

Lavender is the epitome of a herb of purification. Just opening a bottle of the oil clears and cleans the air. The scent is both sweet and medicinal — that note of astringency. I have valued and turned to lavender for decades but don't often think of her as a deeply emotional or spiritual herb. Practical, endlessly helpful, a fixer for all seasons and whatever ails us. An ally offering friendship, but perhaps not intimacy — calm and cool. An aid to focussing and clarity and a herb of Mercury, well suited to calming an overactive mind and to stabilising emotions.

But sitting with the astringent, slightly floral, slightly soapy-tasting tea or adding the diluted oil to a bath or falling asleep with lavender on a tissue on my pillow.... things I have done hundreds of times before... I was pulled back to the nursery rhyme and folk song, to early mothering, to holding my once-babies, and to being held. I have no memory of being held by my mother — of hugs or any physical comfort, though it may have happened when I was an infant.

I wasn't unmothered — others in my life offered different fragments that I wove together later in my own journey as a mother — but I began that journey with only foggy ideas. Lavender offered clarity in that process, across the last forty years, but working with her daily, I understood that what I'd always known of lavender was a partial story. Lavender wasn't only cool clarity and practical aid, calm and reasonable.

Lavender accompanied me in dreams.

Lavender's tranquility might not be euphoric, but it is deeply emotional and healing.

Lavender was there to hold me, to protect me.

It happens with human family and friends too — we know someone so well that we stop looking for the nuances and subtle and changes and the deeper things we may have missed. We freeze-frame people because it's easy and sometimes comforting.

Over the last several months I’ve been learning to manage an autoimmune condition. I’ve been a slow learner, persisting in over-working when my body was protesting. Two days before leaving for the UK I had a flare of symptoms and thought I might not make the journey, but herbal supporters, including cooling lavender, quieted the inflammation.

The first event for Cinnamon’s anniversary was marvellous, then onto friends before the next. But instead another flare arrived — the worst I’ve had — digestion, fatigue that needed a new word inventing and joints ceasing. It was devastating not to make it to the second event. What held me was Adam and lavender — tea to astringe digestion, oil to soothe joints and bring sleep… A voice whispering that I could pause, be still, be held.

I thought I knew her well, that her coolness and calmness indicated a slight distance, but here was a different story — one of deep care — not showy, not loud, but profound, offering transformation.

If you would like to explore ways to work with me herbally, DM me.

Lavender is a safe and well-tolerated herb and essential oil, but as with all essential oils, never ingest the oil or use it without dilution and a couple of drops is plenty in a diffuser.