The Apothecary

03/08/2026

03/08/2026

A century ago, March 8 was not only a celebration. It was a cry for dignity.

In 1909, women in New York marked a National Woman’s Day organized by the Socialist Party of America. They were fighting for better pay, safer work, and the right to be heard. At that time, many women worked long hours. They earned less than men. They had little power over the decisions that shaped their lives.

Then in 1910, at an international conference in Copenhagen, a German activist named Clara Zetkin shared a bold idea. She said one day each year should belong to women everywhere. A day when women could unite their voices and demand equality.

The idea spread.

In 1911, more than a million people across Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland joined the first International Women’s Day events. Women marched not for attention, but for rights. For work. For respect. For a better future.

But the reason March 8 became unforgettable came a few years later.

In 1917, in Petrograd, Russia, women went into the streets demanding “Bread and Peace.” They were tired of war, hunger, poverty, and loss.

These were mothers. Daughters. Wives. Workers.
Women who had carried pain in silence.

But on that day, they refused to stay quiet. Their protest became one of the sparks that helped start the Russian Revolution.

That is why March 8 matters.

It is not just another date on the calendar. It is a date written by women who stood up when the world expected them to endure in silence. Women who fought not only for themselves, but for generations they would never meet.

Years later, the world officially recognized what history had already shown.

In 1975, the United Nations began observing International Women’s Day. In 1977, it called on countries around the world to honor women’s rights and international peace.

So today, when we say Happy Women’s Day, we are not only celebrating beauty, kindness, and love.

We are honoring the woman who cries in private and smiles in public.

The woman who gives up her dreams for her children.
The woman who holds the house, the family, and everyone else together.
The woman who keeps giving even when no one asks if she is tired.
The woman who survives things she never speaks about.
Women’s Day is not only about celebrating women.

It is about thanking women for carrying life, pain, hope, and love all at once.

Some women changed history in the streets.
Some changed history inside small homes that no one will ever write about.

Both matter.
Both deserve to be remembered.

Remember the women who changed the world and were often never fully thanked for it.

March 8 belongs to them.

03/07/2026

Please reflect on this if you have a matriarchal role. Are you stretching into a space for the discomfort of integration rather than taking space in a narrow identity?

1. Nurturing others from genuine abundance, not depletion or obligation. This means your care comes from a place that is actually resourced; emotionally, energetically, spiritually. You're not giving because you feel guilty if you don't, or because your worth depends on being needed. The distinction matters because care from depletion tends to breed resentment, and care from obligation tends to breed control. Abundance-based nurturing is sustainable and clean.

2. In comments

03/06/2026

Love the four agreements, and the fifth. 💚

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“We can perceive millions of things simultaneously, but using our attention, we can hold whatever we want to perceive in the foreground of our mind.”― don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements ✍⁠
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Your mind absorbs so much at once, but attention is the gateway—it allows you to focus on what truly matters. ✨⁠
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03/02/2026

This land embraces me. Where ever I am nature shows up, expands my awe and teaches trust and surrender. So grateful. PHOTO CREDIT: Silvie Smets

02/28/2026

Truth...

The “empty mind” idea sets people up to quit.

Because most minds do the opposite when you sit down.

They get louder. Faster. More dramatic.

That doesn’t mean meditation isn’t working.

It often means you just removed the distractions that kept everything quiet.

The practice is not wrestling the mind into silence. It’s watching the agitation without feeding it.

No arguing. No chasing. No panic.

Just noticing, returning, and letting the nervous system learn that it can ride out the wave.

Eventually the mind does what all tantrums do when they aren’t rewarded.
It runs out of fuel.

02/24/2026

It is not easy when we all carry wounds and nervous system responses to them. Life brings experiences and challenges that make finding space for others difficult. As we stretch, we can discern how to make space for our own activations and lifelong learning. We find ways to navigate honouring self empathy and self advocacy that will equate to the same for others.

Have compassion for someone, of course. See their wounds. Understand their trauma.

But do not let your compassion erase your discernment. Compassion does not mean removing accountability.

You can care about someone and still hold them responsible for what they do.

In fact, that may be the most loving thing of all. To love them and require them to face themselves.

- Jeff Foster

02/24/2026

Our development -and apparently that of nature overall- doesn’t move in a perfect straight line. It circles, at times in the same place, without depth, without elevation, and other time we assimilate, click, experience epiphanies. The latter is what can make us spiral deeper in knowledge and higher to broaden our perspective. This has nothing to do with accumulation of information, even though it can be of help in the process.

More often than we’d like to admit, we need to return to the same themes we didn’t give much importance. And other times we even experience the same wounds, in the same or a different form. The same questions we were sure to have figured out might pop out in our heads and make experience a sense of confusion and insecurity.

When we go through this, the first feeling that might come without much warning can be discouragement. In some corner of our mind we think that we’re back right where we started. Don’t accept this suggestion without critical thought. I found out that more often than not, it was an automatic, self-imposed illusion.

With more discernment and self-compassion combined, we can see past that veil of illusion the fact that we’re meeting the same lesson -or this lesson with an upgrade, now that we’re ready- from a different “level” of awareness.

That what it means for the path to be like a spiral. We move (symbolically speaking) “two steps forward” to explore, to overcome our limits, to open our mind which tends to crystallize if we live it passive for long enough, and “one step back” in order to assimilate, feelings, experiences, lessons.

When we confuse these lessons for standing in one place, miss what’s really going on. What’s truly going on is that we revisit what we thought you understood - it can be patience, boundaries, discipline, love- and we see something we couldn’t see before.

We don’ outgrow every mistake once and for all. We integrate them gradually. And often pain of the ego, or pain of regret is part of the ‘package’. In cases like this, the pain we feel in this return is another layer of illusion that is striped. The less friction, the less resistance towards this fact, the less we suffer.

02/24/2026

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