If My Family Were Plants in a Garden ...

What would each life need to flourish naturally? ...

I often contemplate this analogy and find it profoundly helpful as a mother who is nourishing three children of different natures. Our experience of challenge with high sensitivity and talent has caused me to try and understand each person’s nature so I can support what is kind for body and being. While it is important to me to do the “right” thing, motherhood has taught me that the right thing can be different for each person, over and above the core aspects of life that we are all bound by. The truth is that we are both independent and interdependent, affecting each other’s daily lives as family from conception up to the end of our days. Our impact on each other is on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels, continuing at the more subtle levels once children grow and take on a life of their own. We are always and ever, family, connected through time and space by the creative powers of nature and the life-spirit that flows through us and sparks each heart to beat with steadfast vitality. We are each a complete life and expression of nature with beauty and purpose to add to life as we choose.

We each need space to expand into or reach for the sky; air to breathe, move, and animate us; sunlight to power us and light our way; water to nourish and soften our boundaries, making us more open-hearted and inclusive; and earth to stabilise us and take form. Some of us need more acidity. Some of us need more alkalinity. Bitter, astringent, pungent, sour, salty, sweet – the six tastes of Ayurveda can be used to describe our nature and temperament. Are we energetically mobile, transformative, or stable? Are we built to create balance, help stimulate, or focus on form? Ayurveda with Jyotish frameworks support me to objectively notice patterns of nature in myself and others. I cannot fully convey the depth and breadth of help that this healing system offers. The most significant benefit that I have experienced is a reconnection with nature in my daily life, and my ancestral lineage gifts of the power of direct observation, and recognition of equanimity and common ground. So, I have learnt to see myself, my husband, and each of our three children in our wholeness, and acknowledge the unique needs we have for individual well-being and our collective well-being as family. It is a fun thought to picture each of us as a plant in a garden. When I think about each nature, what would we be?

A particularly important truth that I have learnt as a mother is that each nature flourishes in our own time, and it is damaging to force to thrive. My experience with this is with schooling and having to trust my mother-heart and find the courage to homeschool my youngest child. I recognise that sensitivity is often equated with weakness, that people and institutions are quick to turn difference into problem because it challenges the status quo and industrial-like movement of society. I am peaceful with my decision to hold safe space for my daughter to learn at her pace and in her own way while she has clear sight and support for her natural strengths and to cultivate her joyful sense-of-self as one part of family and community. There were different challenges that I had to face and advocate for with my two older children. Our young people are the next generation. I have a protective heart for nourishing each nature to flourish with strength and purpose, to live their life fully and fully expressed. ‘Fresh life’ is how Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev puts it. He also says, ‘When we become a parent it is a time to learn not teach.’ His words resonate with me, and I find them helpful. I also know that our children watch what we do, not listen to what we say. Leading by daily example is a parent’s challenge. When I return each day to cultivating and tending the garden of my family, I breathe and be present in the moment. I connect with the five elements and my five senses. I keep distance from the river of my feeling and thought to try and respond rather than react. I practise paying direct attention without judgement, keeping an open heart, and personal boundary. When I think about an oak tree, a rose bush, or herbs and their diverse needs for flourishing and imagine people as plants, this cultivates my understanding and compassion as the atmosphere for nourishing my family.

It is challenging to provide for individual needs while upholding the wholeness of family and no individual feeling greater or less than another. This requires love, intention, understanding, energy, and time. And this need not be complicated or scientifically explained, simple kindness is key. While I use Vedic observational tools for objective awareness and a focus away from the noise of opinion, information, and modern life, these tools are only support for the core requirements of being present, paying direct attention without judgement, and encouraging self-awareness and conscious choice to craft our personal experience of life.

My deep heart’s intention is to lead by example and encourage joyful contribution towards well-being that stems from our diversity of natures within the wholeness of our family. I see my family as a treasure chest of diverse strengths and skills, natural gifts bestowed upon each of us through our genetics and ancestral lineages. I support my inner harmony when I view these capacities as ‘our divinity within’ as David Crow says about chakras (the etheric energy centres that we can think of as being in our brain from survival instinct, through social capacity, to prefrontal cortex and “high mind”). Sam Geppi’s work to show connection between the Ayurvedic Gunas, chakras, and neuroscience, has also been helpful to me. Along with Ryan Kurczak’s “Mystic Path” series, these gentlemen have offered a practical working of these deep teachings that I can apply in my daily life as a devoted mother force. Right use of mind and a very conscious way of being have become realities for me and I am so thankful to these teachers for having the courage to trust their inner knowing and share their knowledge and wisdom in personal ways. Vamadeva Shastri (Dr. David Frawley) has been my first Ayurvedic teacher more than 20 years ago, setting my solid foundation for deeper self-awareness. He is matter-of-fact when he says about karma and free will, ‘You are free to put your hand into the fire, but you are not free to not get burnt.’ I value this clear delivery of truth albeit with a touch of humour. To not take myself too seriously is another important lesson I am noticing and learning.

I love storytelling as a medium for communicating wisdom and so I appreciate Master Oogway’s words in Kung Fu Panda, ‘You are too concerned with what was and what will be. There is a saying, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift that is why it is called the present.” I am buoyed by the fact that it is never too late to improve on something or do whatever I can from within me and around me, today – that right now is my point of power – as it is for every one of us. Choosing an intention for well-being is the first step. I turn my focus to keep a clear mind, letting go of unhelpful thoughts and releasing feelings that do not foster inner harmony. I hear Laura Plumb’s echoing words of ‘Only the essential and the beautiful’ to determine what to hold onto and let go of. Laura Plumb has also been a loving and profound teacher that I would encourage others to learn from. She is an inspiration to me of compassion and loving action through food as medicine and cultivating radiance and a harmonious collective. Mother Maya Tiwari’s global work and courage to support self-awareness and daily life-practice with Ayurveda empowers individuals and families like mine to reconnect with the five great elements and Mother Nature’s gifts of healing. Saraswati Miller contributes her warrior heart to protect and nourish dharma, walking alongside many of us who choose this path. These teachers provide metaphoric sunlight and water, earth, air, and space helping nourish my nature to flourish and I am grateful.

The garden in every way has become a metaphor for my life and particularly in my chosen role as a mother. Sound and music too evoke more ancestral skills to harmonise vibrations, appreciate all notes, and be self-expressed. Nature and artistry complement each other, providing healing balms through creativity. My life-partner has also been a transformative support in my life-journey deepening the pieces of nature, gardening, cooking, food as medicine, self-assuredness, inner knowing, and expressing joy for the creative opportunity and sensory experience of life. Life-partnership brings with it lessons in cooperation rather than compromise, and a test of being strong individual pillars supporting a common creation of family which is greater and more beautiful than the sum of its parts. It has not always been easy, but it is worth it! (In fact, my married name IS “Worth.”😊)

We are all human nature being and doing, one collective part of the great nature on Earth. And yet, we are the most influential and impactful aspect of nature on our planet. Our collective impact happens at the individual level, it is only a question of what the greater numbers of us are doing each day. What we do each day creates the quality of our individual life and impacts the lives of others also. How will we nourish our own life, the lives of our loved ones, and our collective? This is my ongoing contemplation, individual duty for right action, and prayer for our collective – a sacred intention that we respect our Mother Earth that sustains us all and lead our young people by our example in a nourishing life of purpose where we are all self-empowered and responsible contributors to a beautiful creation and movement of life on Earth.

For me personally, motherhood means responsibility and nurturance of body, mind, and spirit of the new life I have included in my life and life-at-large. Once a mother always a mother! I do not stop feeling responsible, my children’s well-being tugs at my heart strings, and my mental river of thought regularly includes my children and their father as my life-time flows on. I know other mothers can relate to this. The sacred bonds we share are unbreakable and infinite. And yet I must honour and abide by natural laws and support individual strength and functioning. I must practise self-care and my life-focus with devotion towards creating my own outcome, and support each of my family members to do the same. It has been healing for me to recognise that we are each a separate and complete life. I wrote this meditation a while ago to remind myself of this:

A Mother’s Meditation on Children …

They are not an extension of me, they are their own piece of life, as am I. I have the sacred privilege to nourish them for a while and help them grow into who they feel they should be. May I do the best I can to provide a loving and inclusive atmosphere. May I learn what I can and be grateful for the experience. May I work upon myself so I can be peaceful in the positive example I provide; a light to follow when the way seems dark.

I wish you joyful tending of your family garden and flourishing of each nature individually and together.