It's strange how Animal Medicine has come to me. In a lot of ways, I interpret the potency of the medicine based on not just the object itself, but in the ways that it shows up in my life. Both as the subject itself, or as symbols, signs, omens, etc. AND what I've been noticing is how important a role men have played in this unfolding. So, FROG Medicine brings me to you - yet another powerful man who was willing to stick with me for four years in order to do some real dirty work. Ha! Or, maybee not so willing. LOVE is a strange, funny thing. bell hooks says in her "All About Love: New Visions" that some things, like co-dependency, meeting the physical needs of another, and more, aren't love when abuse and neglect are involved. Yet, how can we not call time flowing under the bridge, no matter how it has been spent, LOVE? So, that night, as we strolled along Clairemont Avenue, form our shared house in a suburban neighborhood to the boxy, earth-color painted strip mall down the street, we stopped to gaze upon the facade of a neighbor's house. A frog lover, this person had hundreds of plastic and plaster frogs decorating their front yard. Frogs lounging, frogs kissing, frogs dancing, frogs hopping, frogs, frogs, frogs. We just stood there, laughing as we did (and do) together ~ a lot. Then, with magic dancing in your eyes, you turned to me and said, "And, I bet there's a frog at our feet right now." Standing on the sidewalk at the space where a wooden fence met the earth, wet from a winter season, we shuffled our feet in our shoes. "Ribbit!" went the little green froggy, hopping out from under our human stance and back towards the hodgepodge of fake, American finery. And, that MAGIC defined US for me - choosing to believe in the unseen, in humor and lightness, even when we ourselves felt too bogged down by the emotional baggage that can come with a lifetime to really allow ourselves to flow and unfold in the power of LOVE.
