Sweat Lodge One of the very cool aspects of being involved with herbalism is that there are so many avenues to take. Just when you think you’ve ‘mastered’ the art of one understanding, you realize there are three more ways to understand them that you never knew existed. And sometimes we may have started on the plant path with one goal in mind, only to find a decade or more later that we need to circle back and revisit that goal. To work with herbs is a journey. You can choos

Me and Peony Let me start out with- I love my home. LOVE. But there are times when home, no matter how amazing and magical it is, can be a bit too much. Working from home while maintaining a homestead can often feel very overwhelming. If my eyes are open I see dishes to be cleaned, floorboards to wipe down, jars of herbs to dust, or food going bad in the fridge. Even outside, I am bombarded by all the ‘shoulds.’ I should weed one of the gardens. I should divide and replant th

how plant medicine helped my panic attacks

Supplements and herbalism are two different things. Both have their purpose in supporting the body, but they are very different worlds.

Swapping out clinical herbal approaches for folk traditions. How animal guides can lead you to the right medicine.

A medieval herbalist, abbess, composer, artist, mystic, and scientist, St. Hildegard is a remarkable woman with a unifying presence today.

One of the interesting things about being an herbalist is that there are so many herbs to get to know. And when I say ‘get to know,’...

Anxiety. Remember when this word wasn’t part of our day-to-day vocabulary? When it wasn’t one of the common ways we described ourselves?...

Wild St. John's Wort OK. Here goes. I avoid talking about St. John's Wort. In my clinical practice I tend to dose pretty conservatively....

This is a horrible time. I don't care who you are, what political lines you fall on, or how optimistic or 'enlightened' you are. You...

I’ve said this before- I’m a summer gal. Being a teacher for all of my professional life (aside from now) has left some indelible marks on me: being chronically on time, planning things in the Type A fashion which I am not, living for the summer, and having mixed feelings come fall. There is still this sense of both excitement and dread when summer winds down. I believe part of that is built into our DNA. In many parts of the world, for millions of years, winter was a time of

While I’m fascinated by growing all types of plants, and feel especially proud when I get a good harvest of an exotic species, I feel...

Working with herbs? Here's why you need to build a relationship with your plant medicine.

I can’t afford me. It’s true. As I’ve been spending the last 3-4 years building a couple of businesses from scratch it has been a newish...

When you’re interested or passionate about something it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of it, or to be led down some deep...

It's September. It's starting to get darker earlier. But even if I wasn't able to see the world around me, my body would let me know. I'm...

I know I said I'm not doing many more of these 'casual' posts anymore, as part of my business plan was to blog once or twice a month...

I know you know what melatonin is. You may fall on the Melatonin Fan bandwagon, or you might be fed up with it for whatever reason. But...

One of my favorite and earliest memories was seeing the big glass cylinder, the one with the muted orange and yellow citrus slices...

I find there are often 2 types of herbalists that I tend to run across: the science-based and the woo-woo. Neither are wrong or right....