counter to my usual instincts

If you’ve fol­lowed me long enough, you’ve read that a lot my art is about bal­anc­ing life force and death forces, how we hold and trans­mute those en­er­gies (par­tic­u­lar­ly women bec I think were are bet­ter built for that kind of pro­cess­ing).

My scales have tipped re­cent­ly to­ward the dark­er side, more to work through than usu­al. But, it’s to be ex­pect­ed dur­ing cleanup time. Of­ten, things get messier be­fore they clear up. We’re see­ing that process un­fold on an ac­cel­er­at­ed, col­lec­tive, grand scale right now.

Which is prob why, when my fa­vorite house­plant (which has thrived for years) sud­den­ly and rapid­ly be­gan dy­ing over the course of a few days – for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son ex­cept maybe mir­ror­ing my en­er­gy shift? – I only tried to save it once.

Counter to my usu­al in­stincts to res­cue and heal, I just let it go be­fore my eyes, every­day, no­tice­ably with the same at­ti­tude I have look­ing out my prover­bial win­dow at Amer­i­ca right now: If some poi­son, ill­ness, tox­i­c­i­ty has to rise to the sur­face and die, so be it.

You bet­ter dip out and clean your­self up, too, when you need it – if the forces of good are to come out the oth­er side thriv­ing. Do not feel guilt or shame. While you put it down, I’ll pick it up.

And when I put it down, I’ll know some­one else is pick­ing up my load. Soaked in death force en­er­gy from the time I opened my eyes this morn­ing, I hid for awhile and then slunk out­side bare­foot and bare-backed to prune dead branch­es, dig in the dirt, and pull weeds til my bare skin itched all over and I was thor­ough­ly sun-soaked.

And sud­den­ly I want­ed to save my plant. I col­lect­ed it from in­side, trimmed off all the dead and yel­low, and re­plant­ed the roots in fresh soil.

That’s trans­mu­ta­tion – a more re­lat­able word to me than “self-care.”

A deep lis­ten­ing, an in­stinc­tu­al fol­low­ing that leads to the oth­er side-life force bal­ances death force. You can trust that.

And you know what, if she still dies, I’ll plant some­thing fresh in her place.

 

—ruby roth

Flom­mist Ruby Roth is an artist, de­sign­er, cre­ative strate­gist, and the au­thor-il­lus­tra­tor of four lead­ing books for kids. Her work has been fea­tured on To­day, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC News, and oth­er ma­jor me­dia out­lets. Copy­right © 2020 Ruby Roth. Pic­tured up top: Wa­ter­col­or on pa­per, ap­prox 5x7 inch, con­tact for sale in­quiries.

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