Here is my little goat named Violet – an overly-tame bottle baby that we had kept too long in the kitchen while it was very cold weather. Her mother is a young yearling goat, and didn’t know what to do with her baby. At first Violet slept in a little bin by the wood stove, and we brought her along to the store with us sometimes in the beginning! It was very cute until she began jumping out of her bin and roving around causing destruction. Now she has become something of a problem animal and will break into the house and jump up on the table in a horrible, horrible way. We have to close the front gate with a bungee cord now so she won’t batter her way in and start assaulting the furniture. She’s very sweet and we still love her of course…when she is outside.

It’s been a long journey over the past year. Things are finally moving along at my new place – meanwhile, I am still stuck here at my old homestead, unwanted, disliked, and in-the-way. I have felt impatient to get out of the way and move ahead with things, but things unfold how they unfold. I am trying not to feel frustrated as I spend my days and nights in a place where I am unwelcome. It comforts me to know that soon this will have passed and I will be in a new and better place. Meanwhile, I feel as though I am living on top of someone else’s home. Ethan and his girlfriend, a woman who until a year ago was one of my best and closest friends of seven years, are also waiting and waiting for the moment I am gone so they can move into their new life together at last. It feels very strange to think of this being her farm and her home next after me, because it was the home I dreamed about for so long and helped to build just how I wanted it. She and her daughters were not always the best of guests back when she was my friend – we still have graffiti and broken things from them that they will have to inherit now!

In a search for dry firewood this spring, I visited a friend who lives on the most beautiful homestead just North of my old place here. It reminds me so much of my grandmother’s house – a charming cottage with a flower garden, and beautiful vegetables and fruit trees – and the most breathtaking view! In Florida here we don’t have very much elevation, but her little homestead is perched up high on a hill over looking pastures and forest. On one of my visits it was a perfect spring day, cool and breezy with golden light showering through the young, green branches. I went to load up some firewood from the stack and came across a whole carpet of violets that took my breath away.

The violets have been calling and calling to me this spring! It is also called Heart’s Ease – the heart shaped leaves!!! And I can attest that their sweetness and beauty indeed ease the heart, even when one’s life is in disorder and chaos. The leaves are also edible, and delicious in salads, and extremely high in vitamin C (also good for your heart).

My friend generously allowed me to harvest a bundle of them, and gave me good advice and listened to my troubles all at once! I brought them home and made one of my honey-based sodas. It turned out to taste like the most delicious candy! I had no idea violets had such a wonderful flavor! They don’t taste particularly strong when you eat them fresh.

HONEY VIOLET SODA

2 cups (packed) of fresh violets

1 cup raw honey

1 gallon water (not chlorinated)

Put the violets in a glass gallon jar, and drizzle in the honey. Pour the water over, cap, and leave to ferment for 7-10 days (depending on how warm or cold the weather is – longer for cool weather). It will turn slightly purple, and become bubbly. Strain and enjoy chilled. Yes, it’s that easy!

I want to share some more heart’s ease here than just a recipe – because I have had such a dark journey over the past year with friendships and relationships. I’m very lucky to have several other close friends who are having similar experiences who I can talk and share with. I will forever treasure these women! They are the stars that have guided me from afar.

I am trying to untie these knots in myself so I can stop repeating this pattern in my life!

So often these days I hear references to narcissists and toxic relationships. Over the past year I have read a stack of books on relationships with toxic people and narcissism. One thing that bothered me about all of them was that the narcissist is portrayed as a kind of monster. The problem with this advice is that it is very, very easy to label someone as being a narcissist, and to invalidate them. I found much of the advice in the books to be going along with a victim mentality. Not only that, but my own path that I have walked in this life, as a farmer, and a mother and a healer has shown me that all relationship dynamics are a dynamic that goes both ways – this is why when someone really bothers you, you have to look into yourself to see how you do what annoys you and how you contribute to the dynamic. This kind of duality ties into the Chinese medicine concept of the Governing Vessel (unbalanced emotion is arrogance) and Conception Vessel (unbalanced emotion is shame). They are two sides of the same coin, whether you are playing out the role of the victim or the abuser.

I was very lucky once to attend a Shadow Work class where this concept was used for healing – we brought up emotional scars we had, our shadow selves that are really parts of us we have rejected and pushed aside. They grow ugly and monstrous in the darkness, and the only way to heal them is to bring them out in the light, where we feel them and all their shame, so they can be loved and accepted again and become healthy. So often these parts of ourselves have wounds from other people that have made them shrink away into the shadow….the next step of healing is to put yourself in that other person’s place – the place of the person we experienced a wound from, and see the other side of the dynamic.

It’s very powerful medicine, but you have to have the humility to see yourself in the other position and not just being the victim.

So casting aside the relationship books back into the library drop-box, I looked instead where I always seem to find myself looking in the end – the deep psychic pools of mythology and into my own heart. To begin, I want to share with you the story of Narcissus:

Echo was a beautiful nymph who offended the jealous goddess Hera, and a curse was laid on her that she could never speak her own words, but only could repeat the words that were spoken to her. She fell in love with a handsome young man, Narcissus, and followed him, but was unable to speak to him and tell him of her love. Wandering through the forest hunting, he found a clear pool that was so still it was like a mirror, and in gazing at himself he saw his own beauty and fell in love with his own reflection. Echo, silenced, sat and watched as he perished from the distraction of his own reflection, until he turned into a little white flower (the narcissus lily).

Inside this simple story is a very deep picture of the narcissist/empath relationship that I continue to ponder and receive insights and wisdom. There is so much to dive into here – the “Narcissist” who neglects themselves for a pleasing image to others – never able to receive true love, and the Empath, who is always reaching out, voiceless, unable to express themselves, in love to someone who can’t see them at all and doesn’t return their love.

Because Narcissus does not actually love himself – he is fatally distracted away from his own needs by the image of how others see him. Echo, tragically, offers him true love, but he is too distracted by this to receive the unconditional love he craves. So often people who suffer with this kind of relationship dynamic were often children of narcissistic parents, either as the Scapegoat Child (the one who was always blamed and whose needs never mattered), or the Golden Child (who was seen as perfect). It’s important to understand that both of these dynamics are really really unhealthy to be in, whether they were pushed up (arrogance), or crushed down (shame).

It is easy (and a dangerous trap) in pondering relationship dynamics to only see where we fit the bill of being the victim or the more virtuous position. In reality, anyone who suffers with this dynamic suffers from the same wounds – Narcissist and Empath alike. The dynamic is holistically wrapped up in each person. I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason narcissistic parents can’t see the problem in their family and the discrepancy between how they treat their children is because they are merely identifying each child with different parts of themselves. They, too, are split between being Echo (the Empath) and Narcissus, because they too were damaged by the same wounds they are passing along to their children. One child is treated with the neglect they received, and the other child is “made up for” and they empathize and identify with them in an unhealthy way, as they try to give them what their own child-self never received. They are simply passing along their experience, and it doesn’t seem BAD to them, because it is what they have lived with and the expectations other people had of them, and they have had to survive through the horrible rejection, as painful as it was.

The Narcissist is actually a very tragic figure. People acting in a narcissistic patter are very emotionally fragile and sensitive due to the damage they have suffered, but they are at the same time cold and cruel. They have been left unable to properly connect with other human beings. I believe that narcissistic behavior is actually a very practical survival instinct. When animals and human beings are in a deep state of distress, our survival instincts kick in to try to survive as well as we can, and that means looking out for just yourself and not caring about anyone else. Individualistic survival behavior is always more biologically practical and realistic in a crisis situation. Narcissists have very deep wounds that give them constant survival anxiety, because their needs were not met in significant ways when they were young. I believe that this very deep trauma triggers this kind of a constant state of survival behavior.

The Empath can see this. They see that the Narcissist needs warmth and healing and unconditional love (which is why they always end up entangled with narcissistic people) The Empath, too, has the same kind of wounds, and they recognize themselves and their experience in the Narcissist. They deeply, deeply empathize, and want to reach out and help someone else who has struggled like they have struggled, and be there for them in ways that other people were never there for them. It feels good to be the empath, and to give to someone else – it makes you happy to make someone else happy. You think you can help this person, and they will heal and change into the sweet soul you see underneath the unhappiness and hurt. Only you can’t ever reach them. They can’t hear you or see you, or accept your love or love you back. You are just left with your empty, outstretched arms until they wither away trying to please other people who don’t actually care about them (it’s more comfortable that way) and never noticing you. And in the same way the Empath becomes the Narcissist, trying to please someone else and unable to find their own source of love or expression of their true self, and it wraps around itself and back again. The Empath side of things is just as unhealthy, only it’s more agreeable to look at.

This pattern is a very difficult one to heal, because it comes from very deep wounds and it takes a lot of courage and humility to delve into and bring up for healing, and the hardest, hardest part is to see how we are BOTH of these, and how all of these dynamics are all wrapped up together in our experience as human beings. As an Empath, it can be surprisingly hard to actually accept someone else’s love and connect in a healthy way with someone -and that’s why you always choose Narcissist, who ignore you.

Life can be so hard here on Earth!

I think the moral of the story is that as difficult as it can be, as human beings we can’t forget our hearts or forget to love and accept love.