About the Artist—Charlotte Hough, Ph.D.
 

We have chosen to feature this artist/writer as a way of showing that it is not only the clinical aspect of flower essence therapy that is profoundly important; the flowers move in the soul life as an artistic expression. The Flower Essence Society honors the inner dimension of soul life, of which the writings of Charlotte Hough are a lovely expression. We invite other artists to share with us as well!

Charlotte Hough discovered the Bach flowers twenty years ago in Seattle, Washington. She had been reading about the life and work of Dr. Bach, and a connection took place between Bach, the flowers, and her soul. These connections, she says, are always present, but are not easily explained, and they began to open doors to healing for her. “What we trust, what we love, unconditionally leads us,” says Charlotte. This trust and love later helped her to recover from a serious accident that left her, for several years, unable to walk and replete with tremendous challenges.

Living in Dallas, Texas, Charlotte began to work with the North American flowers intensely seven years ago. Charlotte discovered she responded more strongly to the North American than the Bach essences. With her healthy, busy lifestyle, she notes that “there are things I can work with, that my body and soul love, and others not. FES and Bach flowers are two things my entire being loves.”

“Learning to breathe the flowers evolved through a long process of growth and discovery encompassing a seven-year period. While in graduate school I was faced with many healing challenges (both physical and emotional), and so I willingly gave my self and my work to an opening of soul. As I learned to breathe, I also learned how to walk again physically and spiritually, but walking in the field of soul is a life-long journey.”

With the completion of her doctorate in literature, she notes, “I realize with even greater clarity that the opening given to me is both a gift and a challenge; for once my heart has learned how to see differently…. No one can ever rob us of our birthright in freedom.

“Sometimes we must persevere great ordeals, but as we allow ourselves to experience the freedom and the beauty in our own souls, we can learn how to walk, breathe, and live again.

“People always want a quick fix,” Charlotte says. “The flowers are not for this purpose. They allow us to grow, to accept challenge, to develop the capacity to transform and transmute the energy we breathe and live and thrive with. The flowers are aspects of ourselves, and as we trust this process, we shed the skin of that energy that no longer serves us.” Charlotte has neither worked with a practitioner, nor gone through any training program; her learning was more experiential. “My training program was life and graduate school,” she says. “Some people think graduate school is escapism, but it's as much the world as any place you can think of.

“The secret to the flowers is the individual’s capacity to get oneself out of the way, and let the flowers heal.” Rather than lulling one to sleep or to follow old worn-out patterns of another time or place, Charlotte notes, the flowers instead “get us unstuck from the beliefs of others, and into the process of reshaping, creating, and renewing our own.

“Those beliefs can start with something as major as learning how to walk again, learning how to talk again. The flowers give us a chance to express the creative expression of life that we are. I am whole. I walk in ease with the flowers. I have embraced a new life.”