Opossum Medicine

Opossum ACEO Print by WoundedTreeGallery on Etsy

Welcome to my teacher today, Opossum!

There are 60 different species of possum, and the females can have up to 20 babies in their litters.  The babies are the size of honey bees when they are born, and immediately crawl into their mother's pouch, but usually less than half survive.  Possums eat grass, nuts, fruits, small animals including chickens and also like carrion, and in some areas of this country, people in turn eat possums.  They are most well know for playing dead when threatened and can even emit a  "death musk" at will.

Possum can teach us how to "act" in certain situations. Some examples would be not reacting to hurtful words or actions by others as they might expect you to (thereby spoiling their fun), not responding to aggression with aggression, or pretending to be unafraid when you are actually scared to death.  And regarding the last, pretending to be as we would like to be can be a powerful tool to faciliate real and permanent change.

I have no idea why Possum has appeared as my teacher today and am not even going to try to guess but will just go with the flow and see what comes up :)