I was weeding my herb garden today and celebrating with delight a little plant of St John’s Wort that has taken its place among the herbs I have planted. And I was reminded of an old story I have lived with since my twenties:

“She lives in a little cottage in a wilderness-garden surrounded by trees filled with birds. Her house is basic; earth floors, herbs hanging from the beams, a wood stove and an old belfast sink.

In her garden she tends to herbs. She knows them as she would know her children, welcoming their companionship as she acknowledges their power; greeting the bees that share the bounty.

Into the garden come children. She hardly looks up from her weeding, but they know with their whole beings that they are welcome. After a while she brings out simple food for them. She hardly speaks. There is very little to say. 

When the children leave, they feel whole; better able to recognise their own unique selves in the confusion and chaos of being very young.”

This is a story from when I was very young. 

I was at Dartington College in Devon, and my dear school friend was studying at Bangor. So, at weekends, I drove my little moggy 1000 up the centre of Wales to visit her. 

There was a place, somewhere in the craggy hills of North Wales, where this story lived. Each time I drove through the long valley, amid the huge bare rocks, I heard it, or maybe I dreamed it, or perhaps I was told it by some whisper of the future. I came to love that old woman and to welcome her companionship as I drove through the hills. Once the road changed, she was left behind, with a faint whisper of herbs filling the car.

When my sixtieth birthday was approaching, the story suddenly came alive again in my mind and in my heart. So I invited my family and my friends to celebrate my birthday by bringing herbs to plant and by helping me carve out a bit of the wilderness that is my garden, (surrounded, as you might guess, by tall trees filled with birds) to make a herb garden.

Today, the herb garden is full to bursting, calendula, foxgloves, rosebay willow herb, forget-me-not and a host of other plants have volunteered themselves into the space. The wilderness is still all round and the trees are full of birds. 

And the children? Well, when I was driving up to Bangor, I had never heard of CST, but if any of the children who grace my practice have an experience of being able to recognise their unique selves in the chaos of being very young, I shall feel I have done my job.