Happy Solstice!

I spent the solstice with a small group of friends in my friend’s garden. We honored nature’s beauty and her creations and basked in the afternoon sun. And we playfully used the garden as a place to find pointers for our next personal growth steps. ….. Two of my friends picked carnations, one white and two pink. I was attracted to a deep red nicotine flower. My friend’s husband chose a tiny yellow wildflower. We all collected gorgeous leaves of different sizes, shapes, and textures. I found a heart-shaped stone, a velvety carmine red 5-petaled flower, a sage leaf, and a wooden lizard. These items gave me useful hints and encouragement. The stone pointed me to  the importance of living from my heart. The flower illustrated the miracle of witnessing the unfolding of myself and the people around me—i am thinking particularly of the amazing transformation i see in my clients. The velvety softness of the flower and of the sage leaf reminded me to be gentle with myself and others. And the lizard told me that i have great resilience. Like the lizard i would rather shed my tail than be caught or stepped upon. It’s that resilience that helped me reinvent myself and move to a different continent. The lizard also teaches me patience—it takes time to regrow a tail.