A Scent-full Life!

I’ve been smelling rosemary essential oil, which always reminds me of living in France. I used to pick the fresh, young tops off the rosemary plants and chew them. I loved the stimulating smell, the clearing energy, the taste of sweet, fresh rosemary mingled with the bitter notes that stimulates my digestion. Then, as the rosemary triggered more memories of the past, I realized that I’d never shared my aromatherapy story that also began in France.

In 1990 I moved from the UK to France. The beginning years were a struggle. I didn’t speak the language. I was a young mom with two small boys. My son’s father (who was French) had serious mental health issues. We had no money and eked out an existence living in a tiny hamlet in my partner’s small abandoned ancestral farm.

I nearly gave up on numerous occasions to run home to England, but something kept me going. Was it the challenge, the need to prove that I could assimilate and make my life and relationship work in rural France? Who knows?

Nature was my solace. Growing things, keeping chickens, having a horse, learning to basket weave and wildcrafting herbs were how I spent every spare moment. Rural France had a lot more to offer on this level than the very built-up south-east of England, where I had grown up.

I heard about an herbal school in Lyon. Every year, I would get the brochure and dream about taking the three-year herbalist diploma course. Every year, I let the enrollment date go by. The excuses were always the same, too far, too little money, I didn’t speak good enough French…Until one year a couple of South American shamans came to the nearest little town to where I lived, and I participated in a one-day class with them. The outcome of the class was that they told me I should be working with plants on a much deeper level. As I drove home, I knew what I needed to do. That year, without knowing how I was going to pay the fees, I signed up to the herbal school.

I’ve never looked back. On the first day, as I walked up four floors of old stone steps worn smooth from hundreds of years of wear, I knew my life was going to change. The course was all I could have dreamt of and more, and I surprised myself at my innate knowledge of plants, healing, botany…I’d come home.

I quickly went from student to teacher. A dream had come true. I’d trained as a drama therapist and teacher in London in the 80’s, but pairing it with plants and healing was, I knew my true destiny.

Patrick de Bonneval, a revolutionary pharmacist, herbalist and the founder of the school mentored me. I felt seen. He asked me to translate the clinical aromatherapy class that was part of the herbalist program into English. We co-wrote a book entitled Aromatic Medicine. We were invited together to teach at the International herbal conference in the US. We took a small copper still with us and distilled there in 2012. My world was opening up.

In 2014, I taught at a NAHA conference at Bastyr University in Seattle. Little did I know that I would fall in love with a fellow presenter. Yes, Florian and I met there. I was still teaching clinical aromatherapy, but my heart and soul always leaned towards inner healing. I wanted to help people heal their souls.

At the end of 2015, I moved to the US to be with Florian. It was a huge crossroads in my life. My mother had recently passed, I’d stored all my worldly possessions (of which there weren’t many) in a holiday house of my father’s in France and I‘d just heard that he’d thrown them all away, but the biggest thing was I had cancer.

The cancer diagnosis took me on a journey of deep, inner healing and coupled with the depth psychology guidance that my psychiatrist husband gave me and the oils, my journey into the underworld began. I used oils, art, writing, a small amount of psychedelic therapy, rest and inner reflection to heal. It was the hardest but most rewarding journey of my life. It’s the ground from where all my teaching, healing work and guidance for others comes from.

So, as I sit here writing this ten years later smelling the Tulsi essential oil that happens to be next to my bed (I love writing in bed). I smile at the synchronicity of life, at the magic of the plants and their oils, at the journey I’m on.

Central to the inner healing I was called to was my ancestral motherline. Researching and healing the deeply wounded feminine within myself and my lineage led me to the part of myself that is Indian and then to India itself. Cathy’s Attars, our tiny but beautiful artisanal essential oil company took seed in Kannauj, the perfume center of India, where Moosa, our distiller and we connected. Where India’s aromatics wouldn’t let me go without making sure I took some of them with me – or was it that I couldn’t leave without ensuring some of them came with me?

In India, Tulsi is one of the herbs most central to the home and is referred to as the ‘woman’s deity’, a symbol of the mother. A representation of the divine feminine, the goddess Tulsi in plant form or the avatar of Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance.

So, I started this newsletter talking about rosemary, from an ex-student Florent turned amazing distiller from France, and here I am ending it with Tulsi from my friend and colleague Moosa in India. Two bookends to a story of a life, to a story of scent and healing.

It’s been a ride, and the roller coaster is still rolling, but I wouldn’t change anything or regret anything. As I smell the Tulsi, she reminds me that life has a beautiful invisible sense to it, even if we can’t always see it at the time.

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