Death of the Old: Let it Go and Embrace the New!

Just a very quick note today between sessions. I’ll start with an email reply I made to someone today:

This must be the time of many deaths. I think every session this week has been about people processing someone’s death or needing to deal with their own mortality. That is not to minimize your own losses, for which I’m sorry. It’s just bordering bizarre how many clients have had death as their session topic this week.

Life is good here, but I’m also having a kind of death of a version of myself in that we have so much wildlife here — very cool, but also such an abundance of it — that gardening will be extremely different for me. There’s not much point in planting most of the things I had planned to put in, as even with fences, there are tunnels, there are climbers, flyers, it’s kind of a free for all. I wanted a more manageable garden, so this transition is forcing that upon me. I can either fight all the critters full time and still lose or plan accordingly and not even build things up too big to begin with. Choose plants they notoriously don’t eat.

Time to focus more on other things like writing and meeting compatible local people of which there was a complete dearth in Goshen! Everything is a trade-off. Given what others are processing, I’m grateful it’s just the death of a garden plan in my head.

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A little more info for the blog:

Truly, I’ve heard from multiple people who’ve attended funerals this week, or who booked a session for a dying animal friend or one who recently passed, people whose parents are in hospice care, someone reinventing life after the death of a spouse, people who think they’re dying because they’re going through such intense detoxification, people who’ve done huge cleanses, either of their body or of their possessions, and multiple people I know saying “I don’t want to be here anymore,” followed by, “Don’t worry, I’m exaggerating, I wouldn’t really kill myself, but it’s just so intense!”

The times, they are a’changing! Best to roll with it, as the intensity decreases when you approach things with non-attachment and a wee, tiny sense of humor. What are these changes telling you has run its course? What freedom can you claim now that you’re less grounded in the old? If you feel stuck, try decluttering. If you feel boxed in, get creative.

I ran into two neighbors today — a next door woman named Amy who works from home and used to live in South Bend and …. the groundhog, who never misses a chance to crawl through the shed if rain washes away the fox pee. He was mighty fidgety, though, even with windless and motion-free pinwheels. One open and close of the window and he was outta here.

The encounter began to confirm what I already suspected: I’m not really going to get rid of these groundhogs. They’re everywhere around here, and I’d rather have them use a single known fence and shed dodge than burrow all over the place trying to get back in. I’d rather have them eat the prolific backyard clover than discover my front yard garden. I’d rather make peace than total war. Our neighbor also told me we have tons of wildlife, even things I’ve not yet seen, like possums (they eat 2,000 ticks per day … I invited them, and she saw a “huge one” in our front yard yesterday). We’ve also got raccoons, deer, and even wild turkeys. She looked at my front yard garden and stifled a laugh. I told her it was better than sure destruction out back.

The thing is, I love nature. I don’t want groundhog burrows all over our yard, but I’m OK with one or two sightings a week through a long standing path. I planted that food forest in Goshen because I couldn’t stand the complete lack of nature and beauty. Here, I have nature and beauty galore. There are also many edibles that wildlife find less enticing or even repellent:

• many herbs, especially lavender, mint, hyssop, chives, thyme, and garlic
• lots of my favorite flowers, including foxglove, dianthus, irises, daffodils, alliums, columbines, and snapdragons
• perennial vegetables like rhubarb, horseradish and Egyptian walking onions, plus annuals like fennel, peppers, and beets
• fruiting shrubs like aronia berry and spiny gooseberry

After reading about groundhogs climbing peach trees, decimating serviceberry bushes and stealing entire apple crops, I’m just not going to bother with those. I found a long list of groundhog resistant plants even beyond these particular favorites, which you can find here. Most groundhog resistant plants are also rabbit and deer resistant, too. I’ve got strategies to stink them out with fragrant herbs intermixed with my more vulnerable plants. I’m excited, because it’s actually a lot of easy care plants.

All of which is to say, change is here. For me and for a lot of others. David and I chose this location for the massive upgrade, and we feel it — especially me since he’s still spending his weekdays in Goshen for the next month or so. When we make a change, some things fall away. Sometimes things we dearly loved, but if we’ve set our sights and intentions, prayers and Reiki on the highest, most empowered good, then it’s much easier to release what’s leaving anyway.

I’ll leave you with a comment bump up from Timothy Glenn:

“Laura: You’re right about shifting gears while driving. To get from any gear into any other gear, you have to go through a phase called neutral. As for pivoting, another fun ditty from Abraham-Hicks is seeing life as a river — and everything you want is downstream. Even if you’ve been doing the typical human thing of paddling as hard as you can upstream, you can simply put down the silly paddle — and river by its very nature will turn your boat around. You will pivot easily and gracefully.”

Here’s to flow, ease and grace!