Not everything has to be big. We do not have to conquer Kilimanjaro in order to have accomplished something. In fact I have what I call the little bucket list that has to do with completing small projects and ideas that have seemingly been forever in the making. In all actuality this is more of a cosmic list that the universe reminds me of in the strangest ways and at the most unusual times.

Today I am out in the field across from my house picking violets. One year I decided to make jam for Christmas presents and bought a beautiful how-to book. When I came across the recipe for violet jam I immediately fell in love, it was delicate and unusual and it was calling my name. This was at least twenty years ago. I could never find the violets so I never made the jam.

At the time I lived in Salinas Valley, a place where you can get your hands on some really exotic fruits and vegetables. My first call was to Star Market, the local grocery store that had everything you can imagine, and quite a few things you never knew existed, to order a couple cups of violets. They couldn’t get the blossoms. Then I really began to look in earnest, I scoured every specialty market in Carmel and Pacific Grove, enlisted the help of friends, and reached out to local flower growers. Still nothing. Finally I let the idea go. It would come around again every few years, I couldn’t find the violets again, I let it go again. I haven’t thought about violet jam for ages, until last year when I got a copy of the Herbiary by Maia Toll.

Maia’s take on plants has more to do with their energetic undercurrent or as she calls it, their second song. Violet’s energy is all about our inner sacred space and the work of cultivating it within. She says violets remind us that..”Each of us has a sacred heart that needs nurturing and protection…(and to)…Honor the truths being born within you.” Well no wonder I’ve been searching for violet all these years.

This has been the second song of my entire life and is the essence of this blog: finding, honoring, and seeding the authentic truth of ourselves. Ultimately life is a series of discoveries allowing us to find the sacred truth of ourselves along the way. This is part of violet’s beautiful message. As we grow in wisdom we learn to hold a place inside that is home to who we really are and faithfully tend it until it’s strong enough to be lived out in the world.

It makes perfect sense that the violets I endlessly searched for now surround me. The home I love has wild violets springing up everywhere you look. Perhaps I needed to create that space inside before violet and her medicine could find me. Now everywhere I look I am reminded to honor the sacred place within that whispers the truth.

So here I am in the process of completing something on my little bucket list, making violet jam at long last. Now that I think of it maybe it’s not so little at all, maybe nothing is.

Here’s to doing all the things that complete you.

kb