Spring

Yesterday, I dug my hands
into the earth

cleaned out dead leaves
and blossoms from around
the hydrangea bushes,
lambs ear plants, cherry
trees, and maple trees.

Instantly the smell of dirt
filled my senses.

I stopped.

Ahhhh the smell of spring!

As I cleared out what was
brittle and dead, I saw
underneath

green leaves appearing,
tiny buds beginning to
sprout.
Life quietly
and yet tenaciously
emerging.

Yesterday, I thought about
how our lives have us
inside so much – too much –
away from the pulsing
rhythms of the earth.

I don’t want to live so
inside – so detached from
Mother Earth.

I need my bare feet on the land,
to feel the hum of Earth
in my whole body –
to hear, watch, smell, and
taste our connection.

– Lisa McCrohan,(c) 2021

Early in spring every year – right as the crocuses and daffodils are beginning to bloom, I go out back into the grass and I put my bare feet on the earth. Sometimes there is grass – other times there is dirt and grass! And it’s cold! I can only do it for a few moments, but this mini ritual does something big for me: it is a sensual experience of connecting with Mother Earth and her season of spring – reminding me that “birth and blossoming return after darker, colder days” (Delightful, Episode 46. Awakening to Blossom). It reminds me that there is hope.

When we are going through a hard time, when life seems difficult and even dark, we need the healing-balm reminders that spring offers us.

Maybe right now, you dealing with an illness, maybe this past winter you lost someone you love, maybe you are transitioning into a new but unknown phase in your life, or maybe you are dealing with an inner struggle that others can’t see and don’t notice. It’s in these times that the spring season can help us. .

During the month of April on my podcast, Delightful, I am sharing poetic and soulful guided experiences that nurture our connection to Mother Earth. When we are struggling, when we are still emerging from the “winter” of loss or uncertainty, we all need a mother — (or a parent!). Whether your actual mom is alive or she has passed, whether she is nurturing or she isn’t, Mother Earth is here to hold you, to offer you healing balm, to remind you, too, that “birth and blossoming return — always — after darker, colder days.”

Hope is here. Even if we can’t feel it quite yet. Just like how within a cherry tree, there is the impulse and inevitability of pink blossoms, so too it is with us.  Within us is the organic impulse AND even inevitability of our blossoming.

Here’s support for awakening to that blossoming.Tune into this springtime meditation: Episode 46. Awakening to Blossoming: A Springtime Guided Meditation. Be guided through a lovely reflection on springtime and allow your nervous system to be soothed and supported.

May these guided experiences support you in connecting to the healing balm of Mother Earth and the mother within you. May spring reminder you, too, that there is the potential for blossoming in any area in your life.

What does hope feel like blossoming within you?  I’d love to hear!