Planting Daisies

“Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning down to its black water
to the place that we can not breathe
will never know
the source from which we drink.”

David Whyte

We are told that planting daisies commenced at the nadir of deepest sorrow. When there was no capacity for grief to grow among the grieving.

A humble flower with a simple nature, chosen to preside – not roses, or dahlias or lilies.

The daisy. A modest, unassuming plant, with no need to draw attention to herself.

Never fussy and in need of little tending.

Mourning begins as soon as you start working the soil, earthing tiny seedlings into moist ground. Setting in motion a cycle of beginnings. And in so doing, you knead courage into your mute, grieving body.

A pain, so deep and so raw, that it would dare expose its soft underbelly only to the gentlest of surroundings.

You dig into the earth. Carving a home for new life with your bare hands. Gently lifting your first plantlet and laying her down. Patting the soil around, to tuck her in.

Soothed by rhythmic rocking, to and fro, as you reach for the next, and the next. Until an entire garden lays out before you.

An ancient healing ritual – enacted in an era when humans, too, were innocent like the daisies. Wisdom of centuries, lost.

A meditative dance, to reunite the human with feeling sense and rootedness. Guided by a sturdy blossom, an apt and able way-shower.

Delivering release from dispiritedness.

Rupturing the floodgate of forsaken feeling – roiling spirals of pulse and sensation, tossing and churning, opening portals to those spaces where we cannot breathe.

Surrendering to the desperation that knows no end.

Until, inevitably, it does at last.

“It is the opening of eyes long closed … speaking out loud in the clear air.” David Whyte

Kneeling alone, in a of field blossoming daisies, bright bodies, raised and nourished by your tears, and the dignity in your fresh-claimed voice.

Your refusal to turn sour and dark and small.

Speaking boldly into the clear air. Tasting, as if for the first time, the Source from which we drink.

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

Jamie Anderson

“I have lost my smile,
but don’t worry.
The dandelion has it.”

Thich Nhat Hanh