beebusch

Storms erode riverbanks just as sorrows chip away at the soul.

At first, the damage feels unbearable. Everything has moved. Everything looks wrong. And you want to rush in and put every stubborn little rock back exactly where it belonged, as if you could convince the river that nothing ever happened.

But rivers know better.

Time and nature quietly conspire. Water finds another way around. Roots grab hold again. Moss returns. Life, shamelessly persistent, continues.

Not quite the way it was supposed to.
Perhaps the way it was supposed to become.
Changed. Rearranged. A little eroded.
And somehow, still beautiful.

Butterfly bushes will give you butterflies. Literally. Just stand close by those tiny lilac flowers for three to five minutes and mind your own human business. 🦋

At the end of summer, they become irresistible little nectar bars, and somehow every butterfly in the neighborhood gets the memo.

Their botanical name is Buddleja, but “butterfly bush” feels less like a name and more like who they truly are. As a Druid in training, I’m learning things like this—not only the names of the plants in the forest, but who each one is, what visits them, what they feed, and what tiny world exists around them.

Writing by hand, once an ordinary part of life, has somehow become a small revolution.

I live at a keyboard. I type fast, answer nearly 100 emails a day, and have two books waiting to be published. Words are constantly rushing through my fingers.

But this little green book asks them to slow down.

It has become one of the treasures of my Druid journey. It made me dust off my old crystal pens, uncork the scented inks, practice the beautiful calligraphy I love, and put the secrets of my heart somewhere no keyboard can quite reach: onto paper, by hand.

Most of us have a little journal tucked away somewhere, patiently waiting for a life.

Find yours.

Take it outside. Sit beneath a tree, beside water, or wherever the wild world makes you feel small and wonderfully present.

Open to a blank page and write:

I am here.

That’s all.

Then follow your hand and see where it takes you.

She’s Pepper Rose—beauty, whiskers, and a suspicious amount of feline magic.

She has claimed my writing corner as her own, settling among my candles and tiny cauldron as if she knows exactly what goes on here.

Perhaps she does.

Maybe she understands this strange little nature-inspired mystical world of mine better than I think. Or maybe she’s simply waiting for me to accept the obvious: every witchy writing corner eventually comes with a cat. 🐈‍⬛🌿✨

I often wrestle with the contradiction of it all. My love of nature has been woven through my entire life, yet somehow I chose a career that asks the Earth to surrender some of her smallest, rarest, and most coveted treasures. The irony is not lost on me. I adore Mother Nature, and apparently, I also have a habit of accessorizing with her.

Natural diamond mines, gold mines, and even modern lab-grown diamond factories leave their footprints in different ways. We move mountains, disturb ecosystems, consume enormous amounts of energy and water, and go to extraordinary lengths for things small enough to disappear between the cushions of a sofa.

There is some comfort in knowing that my own work often begins with what is already here. I recycle old gold, rescue forgotten gemstones, and transform jewelry from the past into heirlooms for the future. I suppose I am a treasure maker of sorts—a caretaker of beautiful things that have already been taken from the Earth, giving them another life, another story, another generation to belong to.

Perhaps that is my small way of making peace with the contradiction. But the truth is, I still carry an ache—the persistent ache of wanting to somehow make it all better.

Musicby my daughter Maria De Irisarri