I have a voracious appetite for reading.  I always have.  To the dismay of my two siblings, I often could not extract myself from a book, and took many a rain check on playing with them.  My parents’ joke was that anytime someone asked “Where is Jill?!”, their canned response was “In a book”.  So, I apologize that I cannot remember where I read this little gem:  “The secret to the way out, lies in the way in.”  I’ve been pondering and processing the ending of a huge chapter of my life, the end of a 25 year marriage.  I wanted deeply to end well, but that was not in the cards, for it takes two to tango.  So, my job becomes to end it well within myself:  to respond to the call to forgive, to honor the good, to know some things have an “use by date”, and to find the peace in my own heart and soul.  I have felt, for years, before the ending - which let’s face it - we are usually given ample foreshadowing of such an ending in life -  a new love beginning was leaning on the ending.  The vision was hazy, and could only be felt with the eyes of the heart, but I had deep certainty something nascent and delicious was coming my way, just as the light of the waxing crescent moon pulls us out of the darkest skies.  

Basil essential oil, above most others, speaks to me of processing.  Her sweetness, found in soft, shining and brilliant green leaves with no forks or spikes, reminds us that radical tenderness and compassion are the only way to wave Adieu (A - DIEU go with God) to something.  In wishing something or someone to fare well, we send it off with love, to reside in the hands of angels and cheer on their success and growth and finding of truth.  I am so grateful through this process, that life has gifted me the most amazing opportunities for creation, as I stare the underbelly of it, the shedding and the destruction, in the face everyday.  Basil essential oil has helped me to molt, and I am indeed more luminescent and beautiful, rubbed so and refined, by the very pain I long to turn away from.  They say a butterfly, denied of its necessary and awkward emergence from the confines of its chrysalis, will not innervate and fill its wings with the necessary blood flow to fly.  Hmmm….Yes.  

Yes to Basils and Butterflies and the magnificent powers of transformation through correct and loving processing.  I prefer Holy Basil, Tulsi, as a woman, but Basil True and Basil Sweet have been supreme companions in this growth as well.  Basil oil radiates as an anti-depressant, a nervine, an unparalleled digestive aid, a blood purifier, and a liver detoxifier.  She gives us insight into the ingredients we must summon for the inner chyme we need to create in life, to allow for the bolus to pass with grace.