Beloved friends,
You know those moments where it seems like the universe is just... not being very subtle? Right now for me it just seems like ROSES ROSES ROSES.
In the current Workshop for Living: The Story of Belonging, I've been sharing a little research each week that evidences how deeply we benefit from time spent immersed in the wild life of the Earth. Last Saturday I wanted to highlight how this can happen when we can't be outside so I shared a lovely bit of science: 5o women in Kyoto had MRIs of their brain. 28 were then asked to wear rose essential oil on their clothing daily for a month. 22 did not. They had MRIs again. The brains of the women who had been awash in roses showed "increased the gray matter volume (GMV) of the whole brain and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) subregion" in particular. These are parts of the brain that relate to processing, emotion, memory, and identity. "On the other hand, the GMV of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) did not change." These parts of the brain are, to say it very simply, alarm systems. So the scent of roses did not increase parts of the brain that related to fear and stress and did increase the volume of parts of the brain that relate to connection, cognition, and self-awareness. Turns out all of those stereotypes about the scent of roses are true! Here's the study if you'd like to read it; those quotes are from the study abstract.
The next day I went to a beeswax candle-dipping workshop. My friend Emmy Gran led it outdoors in her garden on a beautiful autumn day. She's a flower farmer and designer. If you're in Seattle or Port Townsend, Emmy's flower CSAs have pickup in those places and she does incredible work for weddings and special events. Most of the beautiful flowers you've seen here on We Are Beloved this year are the blossom of Emmy's hands and land! Here's her website, Instagram, newsletter.
I was excited to learn to dip candles – and to visit the garden. So many flowers! And young ducks! And sunshine and good company. A wonderful afternoon. At the end, Emmy announced that she had rose bushes to give away. Their color just wasn't proving useful in her work. An herbalist was interested and wanted to smell them, so they went to check them out. I tagged along. Emmy picked and handed each of us a blossom to smell. I said, thinking of that rose study, "Ohhh I think I'm going to put these into a bath tonight!" Emmy said that the plant needed to be deadheaded – to have its blossoms removed so that it would send energy into making more blossoms instead of seeds – and that I was welcome to take whatever I liked. So I brought home a bag of slightly wilted, incredible smelling roses.
With this bounty to work with, I decided to try making rose water.
You can simply simmer roses gently, but I wanted to try distillation. Distilling rose water produces a longer-lasting result due to having less organic matter than a simmered water. The process was simple and fun! You remove the petals, put them in a pot with a bowl in the middle, and cover them with distilled water. Set the lid on the pot upside down with ice in it, then gently simmer.
Simmering makes steam containing rose essential oil. When the steam hits the cool lid it condenses and drips into the bowl. Throughout the simmer, you spoon away the water of melting ice and add more ice, which makes this a lovely contemplative process, the sort where you are both called to be present and there is space for the mind to woolgather.
If you'd like more detailed instructions, I began with these. What didn't work for me on my first batch was the suggestion to set the bowl atop a smaller inverted boil. The simmering water tipped the top bowl over. Whoops! For my second batch I did what I'd read elsewhere and set the bowl right on the pot bottom, which worked great. If you decide to try this, it's important to use organic roses so that you aren't condensing pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers with the rose oils.
I've been misting myself and anyone who'll let me with my rose water for a couple of days now. What a treat! I am reminded of Michael Pollan, in The Omnivore's Dilemma, suggesting that an excellent way to handle relating to foods that are more about pleasure than nutrition is to make them yourself, because donuts are delicious but a lot of work so you probably won't do it often. I hear in this something about preciousness as well as restraint. Yes, I could buy rose water, but oh, how much more pleasure and treasure there is in the hydrosol I made by hand from roses grown by someone I love.
A couple of days later James and I met with a geoengineer to discuss our home, the ridge it sits atop, and the trees growing around it in terms of fire safety, view restoration, and the stability of the land. We've already met a few times with foresters about the forest health side of things. All the news was good: the house is built correctly, the land is stable, and the trees blocking Mount Rainier are not essential. He also suggested that when the trees come down, we consider planting the hillside with drought-tolerant natives such as... nootka rose!
Nootka roses have just five petals, so they're not much for rosewater, but they make rose hips that both I and the deer, birds, and insects can enjoy eating. They also support pollinators and butterflies. I look forward to planting some in the early spring.
Roses, roses, roses!
I do not know what the universe is. I call myself a devotional agnostic, Priestess of the Mystery; I do not think I COULD know what the universe is with my human capacity even if something could try to convey it to me. Our science says that time is not linear and I cannot comprehend that, so surely I could not comprehend the totality of being. But sometimes patterns arise which feel so meaningful, don't they? I cherish this.
My rational side thinks that this is a harmless way to find pleasure in the beauty of the vastness of being. My mystical side thinks that the universe seems to be pointing me toward roses right now. Me in my wholeness: I am content to allow all of these beliefs to live within me. I do not feel a need to reconcile them. How can I know what is right? How sweet it is to simply enjoy and wonder. As Walt Whitman says in Leaves of Grass:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then i contradict myself
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Love,
Dahlia
Resources
Birds, Books, Being, Time
Leaves of Grass was on my mind because Maria Popova mentions it in the introduction to her An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days. I've got a copy waiting to be tucked into my suitcase for companionship during a visit to my family later this autumn. These and all the other books that have been discussed in the current Workshop for Living can be found in a new section of my bookshop: there's a mix so far of poetry and nonfiction, all centering on our theme of belonging. For the next two weeks we're on an Integration Break in the Workshop for Living. We'll resume for the second, larger half: five more Gatherings in October and November, finishing just before Thanksgiving/National Day of Mourning. This workshop has a poetic rather than a linear structure, and it's the first I've ever taught where I think you'd be just fine dropping in for the second half if you wish! Thanks to Kate for enquiring and leading me to realize this. Drop me a line if you're curious, and check out details here. Of course we'd adjust the cost from what you see on that page.
I love flexibility. In this season of the world where we are so... oh, maybe I'll say it like: we are expected to be so unreasonably constantly available – what a joy it is to find places for flex and ease. I found a little for myself with those roses last Sunday. I loved the idea of making rose water but I wasn't able to do it on Sunday and the blossoms, being wilty, did not seem like they'd last long. So I tried removing the petals and putting them in jars in the fridge. If they still looked good on Monday: great! If not, I'd had the lovely experience of peeling rose petals from their stems, and that was a pleasure, too.
I do something similar with delicata squash seeds. It rarely feels convenient to cook the seeds when I'm cooking the squash; I've timed the squash to be ready for a meal and having another dish to tend doesn't feel relaxing. So I tend to scoop the seeds and put them in a bowl with water and salt. The soak makes it easier to separate the seeds from the flesh of the squash, the salt soaks into the seeds for good flavor, and if I don't get around to it and they end up in the compost, I'm no worse off than I began.
Another thing Maria Popova mentions in the introduction to her bird deck is that, "One rainy afternoon, I watched two night herons sleep and wondered whether they were dreaming, went down a rabbit hole of research, wrote a New York Times piece about how the evolution of REM in the avian brain shaped our human dreams." The resulting essay, "Do Birds Dream? What new research on the avian brain and REM sleep in birds might reveal about our own dream lives." is exquisite! If you enjoy thinking about birds, consciousness, dreaming, neurology, flight, or how we learn, you'll want to read this. It opens, "I once dreamed a kiss that hadn’t yet happened. I dreamed the angle at which our heads tilted, the fit of my fingers behind her ear, the exact pressure exerted on the lips by this transfer of trust and tenderness." and goes on to discuss all the topics I've just mentioned.
Resistance
I recently passed the one year anniversary of my commitment to daily resistance action. When I read about the failed efforts of what my friend Allison described aptly as "extreme grift", it is profoundly satisfying to know that I'm a drop in the tide of resistance. What I heard Rebecca Solnit say about the potential joy of belonging via civic activism in Hope in the Dark is now a part of my lived experience. It's so good! I say this not to toot my horn but call you into the water, which is really good, darling.
Today someone told me that they felt guilty that they haven't done more to get active. They were moved when I offered them the reframe that perhaps that feeling was the call to taking action arising within them. Feeling guilty about it leads us to push the thought away. What if we let it call us forward?
I've got big piles of letters I'm writing for Vote Forward on the table beside me. Every night I sit down and work on them for a few minutes. It's easy and it feels so good to imagine myself in lineage with women working for change over their kitchen tables throughout history. This is how we make a better world: we try. You can still join in! Vote Forward has lots of projects afoot.
Opting Out of Big Tech
Ana, who describes herself as a "designer, illustrator, doodler" has created a charming little zine entitled Internet De-Shittification Starter Pack 2026 which lists a diverse array of alternatives to common big tech tools. I'm not familiar with every alternative that she suggests, but all the ones I recognize are widely-respected. Ana says, "Big tech wants us to feel like we don’t have a choice, so why not choose to prove them wrong?"
I like this challenge. I'm planning to give some of these options a try. It feels like everywhere I can redirect my energy is a tiny win. Maybe you'd like to join me? If you use Instagram, it's here. Yes, I see the irony in that. It's also here on the Ana Draws Substack.
Supporting me in supporting you
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