Contributed by Deb

It’s June!

Schools are finishing and it will soon be officially Summer.  Graduations and weddings may be filling your calendar like they are ours.  Our youngest daughter is graduating from college next week!  We are thrilled to celebrate with her and to have reached our own milestone ~ all our children have safely made it to adulthood and are thriving and bursting with life.  We can’t say this has been an easy journey but it certainly has been fulfilling.

And… we remember summer vacation very well.  The children are excited, happy and full of energy.  Butterflies and lightening bugs seem to gather around them, don’t they?  How do you keep them busy and yet give them space to rest and to grow? How do you yourself have space to rest when you are now busier?

We’d like to share a few simple ideas with you ~

Allow them access to the forests, fields and streams without any toys, instructions or classes.  Just let them explore, play and use their abundant imaginations.  Are you familiar with Jon Young, prominent outdoor leader and guide?  What’s the secret of his success with summer programs?  As soon as the children are dropped off, he and his fellow guides let the children run to the woods to play independently.  Of course, they are near by to watch out for the children’s safety and to answer questions but mostly, the children are encouraged to roam and play together ~ with sticks, in the mud, on tree roots… whatever they want.  They do games, rituals and storytelling at certain times but Jon says the bulk of the day is spent in independent play.

We wanted to take this chance to remind you that you don’t have to entertain or schedule your children every moment of every day.  They will thrive with space to go adventuring and exploring and they will learn more than you can even begin to imagine.

Look to Walt Whitman’s Poem, “There Was a Child Went Forth”, to show the transfer of wisdom and connection as children freely go about the world ~

THERE was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road….

And you, dear parent or grandparent, what of you?  Can you too go to the woods, lean your back against a tree and listen to the birds?  Can you take moments to just feel the breeze against your skin or to watch a sunset with your child?

If you need some assistance in slowing down, we’d like to introduce you to two green helpmates; oat straw and the flower essence of trout lily.

~ Oat straw can be made into a delicious infusion for whole family.  Buy it in bulk at your favorite health-food store and put one cup in a quart jar.  Pour boiling water to the top of the jar, cap it and let it sit for at least 4 hours or preferably overnight.  Of course, you can let it sit for a shorter time and it becomes a pleasing tea.  Drain off the infusion and drink it throughout the day or under the tulip poplar tree.  Oat straw is calming and as you drink her, you are changed.

~ Trout lily flower essence offers total peace.  She invites us to witness her harmonious state through the way she moves in the breeze, bows her head in humility while also being vibrant and bright. She is continually grounded in the earth with her strong spotted leaves.  When we take this essence, we are able to access this same balance and harmony.

Of course, we need not look to Jon Young, Walt Whitman, scientists or Grandparents of the Forest to ascribe to a certain way of being in Nature because deep inside of us there is a place that remembers the need and desire to surrender to the beautiful tactile experience of being in Nature.

We are here to remind you to open the door a little wider to this yearning in your heart ~

May the starlit skies guide your path ~
Deb and Harry
Your Grandparents of the Forest

Go here to purchase trout lily flower essence ~

Go here for a one time mentorship with Deb, Harry or both of them ~