the plants are calling. what are the ways that you can imagine pausing to welcome them in? how can we as humanimals move into relationships with plants based on mutuality and interdependence rather than extraction and speciesism? throughout time and intact lineages plants have offered healing on many realms. they move through our physiology, impacting blood and bone and sinew. they travel through our nervous system, just by being in their presence or simply inhaling them. they are our ancestors and have shaped us in resourced ways through food, prayer, smoke and ritual.

as a community herbalist first and also trained clinical practitioner, i offer sessions designed specific to your body’s needs within the container that makes most sense for you. this could look like gathering at the garden’s edge to meet some of your plant accomplices as we talk about what’s up with you. it could be a zoom session from bed while you sip on a cup of tea that we co-created from our first consult together. it could be setting aside time where we pay more attention to the body’s internal landscape and bring plants directly to the spaces your body is calling.

i also want to name the complexity of my coming into plant wisdom. as my ancestors were burned as witches for being herbalists and protectors of the commons, they were also assimilating into whiteness and exporting genocide onto intact cultures. where plant knowledge wasn’t violently erased, it was stolen. as i attempt to honor and learn plant knowledge of my own celtic lineages, it is also clear to me that much of what i know has come through indigenous and black and brown lineages in so called america in distorted ways.

may my work be a lifelong reckoning of this complexity, in a commitment toward healing my own lineages, repair of fracture caused by whiteness and settler colonialism, and deeply honoring where plant wisdom and teachings come from.

in a small act of reparations, i annually tithe 10% of my earnings to the peoples of the land i work with, the Abenaki.  Abenaki Artist’s Association, and the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi or this womxn-lead effort for Abenaki Cultural Restoration. i also regularly donate herbal remedies to BIPOC organizers/frontline folks through the mutual aid and herbal solidarity project i co-crafted: Rose Core Collective.