🌸I’ve been reflecting as the year draws to a close. And much of what I’ve been reflecting on has birthed from insightful conversations with my wise son, who is home from uni for the summer break. 

 First and foremost, I’ve been reflecting on the drive for money and excess, the wish to make meaning in life and also the plausibility of running a concern that has at heart, a heartfelt desire to help others. 

How do I fuse all these in a way that suits me personally? 

There’s no question money is an important consideration in the weird equation that is life. 

But does it really equate with deep joy? 

And coaches running around chasing money and talking about healing and “balance?” 

But chasing all the same? 

Am I one of them? I hope not. I really hope not. 

Can I go there? Sure. Do I want to? No. Not at all.

Been there and done that and got out alive already. 

Then what to do? 

🌸 Here’s a thought…

Peonies and Regeneration

I can buy the most beautiful peonies from the most upmarket florist in New Zealand. Stunning. Flourishing. Gorgeous. Every superlative can be pulled out of the thesaurus to describe them! 

They’ll come delivered, by refrigerated truck of course, wrapped and ribboned in styley wax paper. Big bow. Zhoosh. 

 I’ll digitally sign for them with a digi-pen at the door, and hand the screen back to the delivery woman who’ll continue on her rounds for the rest of the day. 

 I’ll then bring them inside and place them in a tall glass vase and they will grace my table for several days and I’ll marvel at their beauty. 

And they will be utterly beautiful. 

I’ll smile as I pass them for the few days they are alive.

After all, they’re my favourite flowers! 

Doesn’t that sound beautiful? 

 Yes. It does. 

 But there’s another possibility and another story to be had. A messier, more lively one. 

 There’s a return to “story” and a simultaneous resurgence of a new story. 

A ReStory. 

 A ReStory and remake. Twining.  Real. Complex. Ravelled. 

 One that I’m more interested in living these days. 

Alternatively, I can grow peonies here on my regenerative farm garden next season - a  beautiful bed of them - and I’ll turn the teeming soil myself, marvel at the earth’s busy life filled with mulch and mycelium, moist and wet worms and other motioning, dancing microscopic workers who live here on Arapito Farm free from sprays.  

 I will get dirty, and I won’t be wearing the pretty polka dot dress in the attached jpeg. 

 As I work I’ll be wearing old singlet, dirty jeans and knee height gumboots. I’ll swing a mattock and feel the force of the swing through my back and arms and thighs. (I’ll still wear the dress on other occasions.) 

I will wear my pink baseball cap to keep the sun out of my eyes as the clouds scud by overhead in the kiwi winds, and I’ll think about the day I cut the green leaves and beautiful flowers and bring them inside and stack and sort them and then place them in a tall vase. 

Regeneration and Post-Traumatic Growth 

I will dream. I will make dream. 

I will make dream real. 

And as I sort the flowers on the kitchen sink I’ll be wearing my blue polka-dot dress again. 

And I’ll feel pretty, knowing that we grew these peonies here in the soul-soil on our farm. I’ll know that the dog pooped in the garden and the chooks did too, and that this refuse fed the petals and I’ll know that the cow pats from the paddocks also fed the flowers in such spectacular and earthy ways. 

No mud. No lotus…as they say. 

The cost will be the cost of the peony tubers. 

The joy -a deep and practical and abiding joy- will be had for weeks - even months -as I watch sprouting shoots, marvel at unfurling leaves, make up a batch of home made white oil as a natural spray to thwart pesky leafhoppers and mealy bugs and taste the sap of a broken tendril and then finally watch the buds form and fill and open. 

 Regeneration and Trauma Healing

🌸This full life. This regenerative life. 

 I want little part of wittingly or unwittingly contributing to the difficulties the future generations may face. And yet, like you, I’m both complicit and culpable when it comes to the demise of things. We are all systemically involved. That’s the difficult part. How do I own that and contend with this fact? 

So what am I saying in a broader sense?  

Healing, Motion and Immersion

The issue at heart is one of immersion as opposed to detached and by-standing observation. 

Are we a true and interconnected part of this work and this world or are we empirical observers, reliant only on data and stats and number crunching to tell us what the trees and butterflies and seasons and dandelions are speaking to us day in day out? 

Am I saturated in selfhood, in the normalcy of narcissism that inverts back in on itself again and again, or am I able to see beyond self into the relational realm where messy beingness resides in all its unplannable and ecological glory? 

I have never really been “mainstream” and never intend to be. 

I am happily immersed in regenerative and systemic and forgiving principles that might lead us out of the madness that is our current western world. 

 Money is a part of the equation…and yet it’s not all of it. While it’s important, I’m clear that I am not a slave to it and it has never been my primary driver in life. 

I’ll keep doing the work I do because I care. 

I’ll care for land, family, women and world…focus on deep healing. I’ll help a woman find herself and in doing so she will begin to transform her life and her relationships, her family realm and her workplace. 

Healing and Community 

Separateness and selfhood are illusions.

Empire building is a strange aberration born out of a particular and limited thought tradition that is destroying us and the world from the inside out and the outside in. 

Life is good and heaven really is on earth when I do the work and till the teeming soil and contribute to turning the tubers into tender and gorgeous and flourishing and delightful flowers. 

Let’s grow peonies. 

Stop. Feel. Sense. 

Let’s grow peonies. 

Together. 

Love from Camilla Slater xx

©️Camilla Slater 2022. All Rights Reserved.

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Love, Camilla x