Lindsay Kolasa

Some oak tree goodness at Audobon Park

2014 Reflections ~ Madhupa Maypop

What a journey it has been this year! This past year has been about revealing, revealing, and then more revealing. Some of my most personal and intimate information (via my blog post “I Was Born to Do This”) was unearthed this year and it’s just the beginning. I do hope to write something more lengthy and am looking at book form. Ahem. That will take me many years to complete.

Indeed, I am just now finding the words to express the dark night that I walked through years ago and how I came out the other side. To say that it was a rite of passage, barely captures the intensity I experienced. However, I know no other way to frame it.

It’s interesting that *right* around the time that I posted on my psycho-spiritual break-down and break-through, I learned about Carl Jung’s hidden and then revealed book, The Red Book.  Let’s just say that I know where he is coming from.

During my journey to the other side, I let go of a lot of unskillful patterns. As well, I learned new perspectives, birthed new insights, and acquired a set of healing tools.  The healing tools I acquired were hard-earned and I’m still getting to know them.  They were healing tools to me at first (hence my survival of the dark night), but now I know I am to share them.

You may wonder what the heck is this name, Madhupa Maypop. I really don’t know. The words found me and they stuck. Madhupa is a name in India that comes from the Sanskrit root word Madhu (meaning sweet, intoxicated, nectar, or nectar-drinker). Maypop refers to the beloved plant native to the Southeast, Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata).

I have chosen this alias (if you will) to represent the learnings I have gleaned from my healing process. The themes for “the healing” are earth ways, permaculture, gut microbiome, traditional food ways, yoga, meditation, imaginal realm, dreamtime, narrative medicine, and herbal medicine.

So, these are the things you will notice I post the most about. These are really the foundational aspects of my healing process. So, this is what I know best to share.

Some of you I have met. Some of you I have not and will probably never meet. To each and every one of you, I extend these words as we move through the other side of winter ~ blessed rebirth, blessed renewal, and blessed new cycle…

May you and I let go of what is no longer serving us and open ourselves up to the vast emptiness of not knowing…that fertile ground which will allow spring energy to dig deep and rise up when it is time…ah yes, only to start the cycle again…an endless dance of letting go to let grow.