By Melissa Lisette Edwards
On the subject of conservation, I’d like to look at how some of the ways in which we’ve been conditioned to perpetuate the consumerism that fuels our lives and economics have extended into our interaction with the natural world as well, bringing about the need to protect and conserve.
2020 was a lot of things. For me, in the apothecary I managed, I had a front row seat to witness the craze people were bringing to the purchasing of herbs. The rush for herbs was comparable to the rush on toilet paper. On one hand, it was great that people were looking for natural ways to care for themselves. On the other, the colonized approach of taking everything we see with no regard to where it came from, for the caretakers of the land where it was harvested, any knowledge of the actual plants, and definitely no respect for the plant medicine was disheartening at the least, and horrifying at best. This was just one example of the very real and potentially harmful effects of our consumer mentality on our own health.
It starts with our language, which then informs our actions. We talk about taking our medicines, vitamins, supplements, baths, etc. What would happen if we decided to receive all of these medicines instead? How would that change our absorption of nutrients? What would this bring up or shift in our body?
What if instead of conversations around calculating and consuming more/less calories/protein/sugar, we tuned into our body and allowed it to receive the nutrition it is asking for? And are we actually taking our time or receiving the present moment for all that it is?
Being that almost all of our exchanges in mainstream society are transactional, why is the natural world the one place where we think we don’t need to give something in exchange for keeping us alive and well? If we weren’t so obsessed with unsustainable consuming, maybe we wouldn’t have to work so hard to conserve the very things that sustain our lives. When we’re in right relationship with the world around us, and receive the earth’s medicine, we understand that it is a gift and privilege to have access to and to work with. We understand the power of sitting among the trees, visiting with the flowers, lying on the earth, and allowing in the healing we receive just by being there and being still without ever needing to take a thing. Receiving our medicine gives pause to the taking and consuming mentality of not giving back, of not planting a seed, of not replacing what we’ve been gifted, of not truly absorbing the real medicine. I invite you to consider this: right relationship with the earth = right relationship with the self.
As we know, conservation is a conversation to save ourselves, not the planet. She will be here long after we’re gone.
Melissa Lisette is an Intuitive Spiritual Herbalist, Flower & Gem Essence practitioner, and an Akashic Record reader, utilizing all of these to assist in expanding consciousness and reconnecting people to the earth in order to activate the ancient wisdom.
