Willow Tree Medicine

Beneath the willow

I remember...

I bend without breaking.

I feel without fear.

I return, again, and again

to the quiet green life within me.

Willow trees are linked to feminine energy. It listens more than it speaks. It invites you inward toward your own knowing. They are a symbol for renewal, rebirth, and new life after you have lost someone. It grows fast with just a single cutting or deep pruning. It always returns.

Their roots grow near water and their branches reach towards the sky...you could say that they are a bridge between earth and spirit, the unseen and the seen, present and past. It is a connection between worlds.

This willow is just waking after winter. The soft green tendrils whisper it is spring--life is returning, gently, and not all at once. Each long, delicate, hair-like branch allows the light to find it. They remind me of quiet prayers reaching down to our hearts and returning.

No forcing it to bloom. It is in the allowing. A soft timing moving through it. Like its sap rising in silence, like breath before it becomes a word. Follow its whispers...and let yourself be found by what is already reaching you.

This tree says, "feel it, and let it move one."

The willow is flexible and asks us, "Where in your life are you being asked to bend...instead of brace? You do not need to harden to endure. You do not need to be rigid to be strong. The strength of the willow is in the willingness to yield without leaving yourself.

Bend and remain.

Not everything is meant to be held tight. Some things are meant to move through. Most things are meant to flow through us.

Inhale...I soften

Exhale...I release what was never mine to carry.

Pause...The willow does not rush her greening. She bends, she listens, she allows. And still she grows.

Today I will practice this kind of strength--the kind that yields and remains rooted in love.

I bend without breaking.

I feel without fear.

I return to the quiet green life

within me.

Awareness within my own life there has been a subtle shift. The old way...I gave too much, reaching out before checking within...is beginning to lose its grip. Not with judgment or with force. Just a new awareness. And like the willow, I am learning to bend more without abandoning myself.

Strength used to mean holding it all together...for everyone. Being everything to everyone. I could anticipate needs before they were spoken. For a long time that was how I knew to love. But the willow whispers something different.

I can remain rooted in my life and still allow things to flow through. I can care deeply without trying to carry what is not mine to carry. I can love without losing myself in the loving.

Go out in nature and sit beneath a willow tree and observe her branches gently swaying. Inhale...exhale...pause and practice to be flexible. Bend like the willow without breaking. Listen more deeply and respond a little more slowly. There is power in the unhurried moments of life. People feel it and respond in kind.

Aho

Amen

Angel Face Mystic