Heart's ease is an herb/flower that can be taken as a tea/tincture, the leaves and roots easing depression, sadness, anxiety and hearts aching with pain and loss. How does this plant do this? Where does the ache, the sorrow and the emptiness go? As strange as it seems, many people swear by its healing properties.
This practice is on becoming heart's ease for others — absorbing and letting others' pain and heartaches seep into us and holding them reverently with tender regard. Sometimes it's just listening, over and over again to the same sorrow, the same stories, the same fears — and not explaining, not saying it's time to move on — just absorbing. It's sharing a cup of tea, a glass of wine, a beer, and helping the tears to come, to flow and wash through another layer of ashen ache and stark emptiness as awareness deepens.
Sometimes it's doing something "silly" or irrelevant to anything, just to laugh until the tears come and your sides ache — tickling someone's flesh, holding someone with your arms wrapped around them, their head resting on your shoulder. It's a wacky card (a real one in the mail, not only an email), a fridge magnet — like "All will be well in the end — if all is not well, then it's not the end!" Or, sometimes it's lying on the earth, rolling down a hill with your arms around another, running until you drop all sweaty and spent.
It's always done with intent — the intent to take the burden of others' heartache and hold it for them and return their gift with wordless gratitude. Be heart's ease.
— Megan McKenna