Summer Solstice: A Subtle Reemergence

One of the easiest ways to start living with more intention is to pay attention to the seasons.

Not just the weather, but what’s happening in and around you as the seasons shift. Living in the Northeast, we get four very distinct seasons, so it’s a little easier to give them their reverence. When you start tuning in, they become less about temperature and more like subtle markers of change— personally and environmentally. I always take time to find some quiet and check in at each of these markers in the year.

On June 20, we mark the Summer Solstice: the longest day of the year. A moment where the light peaks before slowly tipping back toward the dark. It’s both a high point and a turning point. That duality is part of what makes this time so vibrant and powerful.

Personally, this is the season where I feel most alive. Days at the beach, flowers in full bloom, the warmth of the sun— it all speaks to my soul and essence. As I begin my own check-in, I reflect back to the Spring Equinox. Where was I? Who was I at the time? How was I feeling? What were my thoughts like?

With this moment to pause, I can appreciate the transition I’ve been in right alongside nature. These seasonal shifts are more than dates on a calendar; they reflect how we are also changing.

I’ve been trying to share this particular experience throughout the spring. I wrote two different versions, but the words just wouldn’t land. I see now that the story was still unfolding.

Part of this story begins years ago, when I met Terra. I had just finished grad school, was in my first real job, and thought I had some kind of handle on how life was going to go. Terra and I met through attending an online program, although at different times, our paths still crossed. She was generous enough to entertain my twenty-something energy, and even invited me to a few nights at her house with a group of women in her circle. I was completely out of my league in terms of life experience, but they welcomed me anyway.

As life does, it created some distance. I kept up with Terra’s world through social media and always sent her well wishes from afar— especially during the bigger transitions I could see she was going through.

Fast forward to earlier this year... I wasn’t exactly in my healing phase anymore, but I wasn’t fully out of it either. That grey area can be such a strange place to live in. You’re ready to move forward, but you’re still being gently held back. I think of it like the universe playing protective mom: not quite yet, my dear.

That was when flower essences and human design both started showing up in my orbit. Giving me a nudge to explore. I had brief dabblings in both, but very surface-level. This is where Terra comes back into my life. She self-describes as an “Intuitive Herbalist, Soul Cartographer, Eco-Feminist, Ritualist, Cultivator of Community, and Disruptor of the Patriarchy.” I knew she had created a program called Herbalism by Design that wove together human design and herbalism so it made sense to reach out to her now. 

I set up a session with Terra with the safety of knowing I could tell her where I’d been and what had fallen apart. I knew not only would she meet it with compassion, but probably a knowing that this was part of my journey. She gave me the same “yeah, that makes sense” that I’ve heard from others in this space when I share that it all started to unravel at 30.

We talked for about an hour about where I’d been, where I thought I might be going. She encouraged me to come back to my sacral authority and reminded me that this was a time for experimenting— not perfection. Find what lights me up, follow what speaks to me. She also invited me to join her Patreon community for deeper plant wisdom and access to her apothecary.

Right before the Spring Equinox, I felt pulled toward two of the flower essences she offered: crocus and morning glory. Despite considering myself a plant person, neither of the flowers felt particularly familiar. In what now feels serendipitous, they arrived around my birthday in mid-March. I got the sense that it was time to work with crocus—morning glory would be for later.

Crocus and Morning Glory Flory Essence

Wild and Unruly Soul Apothecary

What are flower essences?

If you’ve never heard of flower essences before, here’s the best way I can explain it from my own experience:

They’re a kind of emotional and energetic support made from the vibrational imprint of a flower. You take a few drops under your tongue or in water, and the essence gently meets you where you are. Flowers can offer companionship, insight, or clarity. Each flower has its own energetic signature and can give you little nudges around when and how to work with it. The most important part is being open to the experience.

I was first introduced to flower essences in graduate school through the work of Dr. Edward Bach, who created a system of 38 remedies in the 1930s. His research helped bring this modality into broader awareness— but he didn’t invent it. He simply gave language and structure to what many cultures had long known: flowers are sacred emotional healers.

As Terra reminded me, the lineage of working with flowers goes far beyond Bach. It’s rooted in animism, ancestral ways of relating to the land, the elements, and the unseen. In her lineage of blood and bone, this practice is anchored in Celtic cosmology and the mythic traditions of the Tuatha Dé Danann— a people deeply connected to the natural world and its elemental guardians.

In Irish and Scottish folklore, dew was collected at dawn from flower petals for its healing and beautifying properties. Flowers weren’t just pretty or symbolic, they were threshold guardians, emotional allies, and keepers of wisdom.

This isn’t new work. It’s ancient work.

Crocus

I started taking crocus in the mornings around the Spring Equinox. A few drops under the tongue, no expectations. My past experiences with flower essences had been subtle. I used to tell people they took the edge off emotional challenges. I had never felt anything hugely transformative. I was a different version of myself back then, and I now see how much intention matters when it comes to preparing subtle medicine like this.

A few days in, I started noticing tiny purple and white blooms poking up through the grass everywhere I went. To my surprise, I learned they were crocus. It genuinely felt like the first time I’d ever seen them in real life, which can’t be true— but that’s how it felt.

Crocus is one of the first flowers to return at the end of winter. It leads the way. Its timing felt like no coincidence. Taking the essence while it was emerging from the ground felt powerful. I started to feel a soft reemergence in myself too. Something gentle was waking up, and my path forward began to reveal itself with more clarity. I stopped feeling like I was suspended in that grey in-between. I finally felt like someone stepping into something new.

I reached out to Terra to share what was unfolding. The essence had quietly given me permission to stop trying to return to my old identity just because it was familiar. I started to feel like I could present myself with confidence, as someone who’s been through burnout, and is now ready to support others moving through it too.

As we approached Beltane, the halfway mark between spring and summer, I felt the shift: crocus had done its work. It was time for morning glory.

Photo of Morning Glory from Terra IG @wildandunrulyterra

I started that one on a Monday morning. By Thursday, I messaged Terra something along the lines of: I don’t know what kind of magic you’re making in New York, but I am completely transformed.

She told me morning glory is a powerful weed that pushes through concrete to get where it wants to go. Hearing that after the four days I had made complete sense. Morning glory disrupted situations I had been tolerating and firmly said “no more.”

As much as I could feel she was a force to be reckoned with, there was also a softness to working with her. Yes, she shook things up. But I also felt held, I knew I was getting a safe landing pad despite the shake up.

That little bottle of is almost gone now. Morning glory made space I didn’t know I needed. I got an emotional and energetic growth spurt that created a firmer foundation under my feet and a clearer path to step into this Summer Solstice with. Most of all, she shifted my energy back to me and reinvigorated my ability to create. I’m so proud to share what’s been birthed from this subtle medicine.

Now we are here at the Summer Solstice.
The longest day of the year.
The peak of light.
The height of the growing season.

A moment to look back on everything that’s come alive since spring and to ask how you’ll carry that energy forward.

Notice...

Where have you grown?
What’s shifted?
What’s left to make space for new?

However summer meets you, I hope you’ll find a way to connect with it. Sometimes I go to a local ceremony. Other times, I sit outside, breathe, and take in the colors around me. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Just a few minutes to feel the air, touch the grass, maybe hold a flower in your hand. Find beauty. Feel life.

In a world that wants you to keep producing and pushing through, there is something radical about slowing down long enough to notice that your body and the earth are on the same timeline. Coming back to that rhythm, opens the door to yourself and where you’ll go this season.

Wishing you a blessed Solstice,

Tracey

I highly recommend connecting with Terra if you have any interest in flower essences or other herbal preparations. The thoughtfulness and care she provides far exceeds what you can buy at any store.

More on Terra: Terra walks the intersection of earth-based healing, energetic sovereignty, and conscious legal stewardship. Her work bridges plant spirit medicine with the stars through Human Design, guiding others through the unraveling of colonial frameworks while helping them remember how to live in right relationship—with themselves, their communities, and the land. Through words, ritual, and deep listening, she holds space for those reclaiming their wildness, tending to their sacred work, and choosing to build lives rooted in beauty, truth, and liberation. Herbalism by Design offers Community Supported Deconditioning, courses, celestial elixirs, flower essences and Electromagnetic Blooms that support healing, evolution, and reclamation. Connect with Terra  IG @wildandunrulyterra