And There’s A Tea For That

I believe Earth is our eldest ancestor and in the ways of old she speaks to us and has or had plants for all of our needs. Whether we needed food, clothing, or cordage there was a plant or plant fiber available to humanity. My first experience with plants and herbs of course came at the hands of my mother. I was responsible most times for caring for her plants when she could not. That meant watering them regularly, pulling off the dead leaves and upgrading their pots when necessary. As a young girl I did not really see the importance of it, but as I got older I too returned to the connection with plants.

As much as my mom had plants around the house, she had a tea and tried to remember as many old time remedies as she could from her parents and grandparents. Things like regularly taking castor oil and drinking tea when our throat hurt or rubbing ear wax on a sty on someones eye. It did not have to make sense for it to be healing and it always worked.

Outside of planting plants my relationship with herbs came from teas. My siblings and I now laugh and joke about mom having a tea for just about everything and our favorite tea being Lemon Zinger by Celestial Seasonings because it reminds us of my mom or Passion Tea by Tazo before heading to bed because she did. It feels only right that becoming an herbalist would be along my path of healing modalities. Only now after much study, research and apprenticeship- I have learned of what type and kind of herbalist I want to be. I do seek to provide service for others in my family and community/village but I desire to do it in such ways that are not extractive from the Earth and that don’t merely replace allopathic medicine (western society, i.e Big Pharma) with a herb prescription instead.

My thoughts around herbalism is to work closely with plants that I have relationship with and that tend to be both culturally relative and local. I am not saying herbalist that work in different ways are not valid or are doing it wrong, I am simply living my values in my herbal practice and as I continue to learn and fine tune my skills, I fully intend to pass these practices along to my little people and let them know there’s a tea for that too.