Oh Hawthorne!

So sorry! I can't get this picture any larger!  Techie newbie here.

I have always had a deep attraction, and fascination with Hawthorne.  One of the first Herbalists I had the pleasure of meeting happened to also be a Witch and she wove such a magical picture of the healing powers of this tree in her workshop.  I suppose that's where it all began.  And with this began my search to discover  Hawthorne for myself.  I suppose it took me 15 years because well, I had so much growing to do before I was really ready.  In her workshop, she described the Heart powers of Hawthorn, and told us were to find a tree or two in the city park.  Oh, I went there the very next day on my lunch break, and I looked at the trees she'd described as "the witchiest looking trees there. You'll know it when you find them." Well, I found them, but it was if they put a veil up and around themselves because I did not "see" them.  I found their flowers, I pricked myself on their thorns, yet still could not know them as Hawthorn.  Perhaps I just didn't trust myself then.  During the following 15 years I drank Hawthorn leaf tea - added a thorn for healing my then broken heart, in later years brewed decoctions of the berries, made tinctures, waxed poetic about Hawthorns healing gifts for cardiac stresses and for opening the channels of love within, and dosed my husband and myself with the tinctures during those times of deep worrying life stresses.  However, it wasn't until two days ago, during some surprise and blissful time alone in our city park whilst my son was in his own all-day Tom Brown course in the same park, that I truly, and finally, got to meet Hawthorn.  I'd set it as my days mission to seek out the Hawthorn trees which I knew were there.  Before even gathering my being-indulgent-in-the-city coffee and pastry I went to where I knew there were Hawthorn Trees growing.  Oh the absolute bliss!  There they were, three in a row, their twisting bare branches curving in one direction where the winds had coaxed them over the past many years, or were they turning their branches in that direction to protect the earth energy behind them?  Ah, I sighed, I am too late to collect any berries, but Lo! on one eye-level branch were a cluster of three bright red berries! They dropped into my hand as I cupped my palm beneath them.  A gift!

After gathering my coffee and pastry, yum, I returned to the trees, sat beneath their branches curving up and over the tree top and over toward the ground, like huge protective hands.  I peered at the world through her branches and breathed.  And here I discovered the true gift of Hawthorn.   If one will open to this gift, she offers an inner strength, she protects from within, protects our sensitive selves, those who feel too much, sense too much, feel others energies. She gives us the points of her thorns with which to fend off energetic and emotional intrusions.  She fills us with elasticity and ease with which to feel our own feelings, and be calm with them.  Even when our feelings are so big that we might burst our cell walls for accommodating them, they can flow through us and the river walls won't cave in, erode or collapse.  This is her gift.

So, if you feel the urge, brew yourself a nice cup of Hawthorn leaf tea and feel her strength, suppleness and resilience flow into your veins. 

Carey