I went to an old saloon last night with a new friend staying here at my Grandmas. It was so cute. There was a bachelor's party from Calgary who sat next to us. They were very drunk and sort of didn’t know what to do with themselves. They got rejected by a group of bachelorettes. It was surprising to see two wedding parties there, but I guess it’s a popular spot in the country.

I learned this morning that my Grandfather, when my Grandmother divorced him, went to the school she worked at (she was a Principal in Los Angeles) and threatened to bomb the place. I’m just rolling over. It’s incredible and hilarious, and horrible, and I both love the fire my grandfather had and know how tough he was. I am my father’s child. We all have this unique fire, and thank God, I’m well past any stage of bombing a school. You have to laugh.

Juniper for asthma

I’m sitting outside right now. Watching the hummingbirds on the bird feeders. They rest on the juniper trees, flying between them to find the sugar water we made. I can count at least three. When they go into the juniper, I can’t see them anymore.

The other day, I found out juniper was historically used for asthma. I’ve spent a lot of time with the juniper plant lately. Naturally, being called to its beauty, but I wonder if it’s been calling me for its healing.

Historically, the Juniper plant would be steamed or smoked to inhale the oils. Juniper is a giving plant. Its scent is big and robust. You can make teas from the berries for various things. Although modern science and institutions recognize a lot less effectiveness for what the plant can heal, they do recognize it as anti-inflammatory. Asthma is and remains an inflammatory condition. I’m going to spend my life looking for a cure for my asthma. I have had a chronic condition since childhood. If I had been born 200 years ago, I might have died of pneumonia at four. My dad and I both suffer from severe asthma. I am my father’s daughter.

Juniper, as I’ve written about before, is an ancestral medicine.

For tribes across the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountain regions (Blackfeet, Crow, Cheyenne, Nez Perce, A'aninin), the Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) was a primary medicine. Infusions of berries, leaves, and bark were brewed into teas that treated coughs, colds, fevers, pneumonia, and even asthma. The A'aninin, for example, ate or pulverized berries into a tea specifically for asthma relief. Cheyenne and Flathead peoples drank teas made from branches and cones to relieve colds, tonsillitis, and persistent coughing.

In Montana and the broader Northern Plains, juniper isn’t as commonly cited as sage or sweetgrass in ceremony, but it’s still significant. Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) grows wild across the region along cliffs, dry valleys, and ridgelines. The plant’s presence is a sign of endurance, often growing in places where other plants can’t survive. It's likely been used in more local or household healing ways, especially by mountain people, settlers, and homesteaders who learned to rely on what was around them.

In Montana’s high plains and foothills, Rocky Mountain juniper grows naturally, and the tribes of this region held it in sacred regard. Its presence in landscape and ritual make it a living link between the land and ancestral memory. A medicine not just in remedy but in relationship.

It thrives in harsh wind and cold. That makes it such a powerful ally in a place like Montana, where the landscape asks something of you, where the medicine needs to match the elements.

Juniper here is less a gentle herbal tea and more a firekeeper. It holds heat. It teaches you to be resilient, to stay rooted in dry ground, to endure sharp weather, and still carry a scent of something holy. If you’ve ever had juniper tea, you know you really have to want to drink it.

Juniper, as all plants do, carries a lineage like our own. Ancient time, experience, trials and tribulations, all held in the bark and the roots of the plant. Are you here because your mother liked this spot by the river? Do you share your father’s asthma, too?

Fahtha oh fahtha

Spiritual traditions often frame the Father as authority, God, or the sky.

I’m asking myself today: How has your relationship with your father affected your relationship with authority, with God, or with the masculine principle in general?

I think a lot. I think it’s a primary reason my life had no sense of God in it for years. I haven’t had a healthy masculine around (my Grandfather threatened to bomb a school). I’ve never liked authority. I do now more than ever, but I’ve never been a big fan. I was mostly a punk as a teenager. I had boots that I painted ‘Rude Girl’ on. Rude on the left foot, Girl on the right. My Mother threw them out.

Part of the feminine experience, for which I am learning, is a true submission and surrender to the masculine. To God. That’s part of the work here for me.

Even as I write that, I have a part that says absolutely not, we could never. It’s partly a lack of understanding of what that even means or looks like. I’m smarter than most guys, I’m confident, and industrious. I have strengths I’m not going to stop using.

But I don’t think that’s what submission actually means. This is why, from my post the other day, I don’t think the Bible got it all right. It seems to give such a blueprint for men and not for women. But, there’s a whole way of being, being in the feminine, that I believe we are both uncovering for the first time and remembering. That’s my thesis right now. I’m exploring and seeking for that body of knowledge as best I can, if it even exists or If my lived experience might create it.

But, I have to acknowledge that the relationship with my father, who does have a very wounded masculine her self, has absolutely affected me and my relationship to God, authority, and the divine masculine. In turn, it wounds my feminine too. I am finding all the ways in which I can love, understand, honor, and cherish the masculine more. The ways I can relate internally to the masculine first. To my own inner healed masculine, strong, and safe.

Who says the things I need and want to hear first. Not waiting for an outside man to be the healed, perfect masculine I need and long for. They can’t be. That’s an unfair thing to put on another human. I crave the divine in a way only the divine can be perfect, unfaltering, everything I need. And I have to be tapped into that. In relation with that, with Him.

Sometimes when I’m on the motorcycle lately, I might get a big wind that picks up and pushes the bike, or I come to something that gives me anxiety. I hear the divine masculine in my head say, ‘you got this, baby’. And I repeat it back, I got this. And together, I find a grounded place, clear and centered. And that’s the best way right now that I practice holding myself in the ways I long for God to hold me.

Love,
Val