Movement is Medicine

A view from Sunrise Park Resort.

Who in my sphere is struggling with resistance? executive dysfunction? paralyzing anxiety? stagnant depression? apathy in any form? fear of rejection/abandonment? healing the inner child and trauma?

I think pretty much everyone can say at least one of these modes of being is relevant to their lives…and for some of us, it could be all of them at once or all on a wave.

Our world would like to medicate us with pharmaceuticals and shame and toxic love and light bullshit. It would like to tell us we are broken for not pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps and making shit happen. And yea, we are 100% responsible for our own lives - NO ONE ELSE IS. But when one lives in the context of merciless and unsympathetic expectation without a framework for actual healing, it can feel really impossible to crawl out from under any of the above struggles and bring ourselves to fruition.

Y’all know I’m an herbalist. And a shamanic healer. I do good work with the spirits of suffering people in my community. I know the herbs to support the brain, the heart, and the energetic channels that get clogged. I can guide someone in meditation and prayer and undo generational curses on the astral planes. I love this work. It is necessary, and usually herbs, nutrition, and the spiritual work are the FIRST STEPS. The ones that guide us. And when it comes to issues of an emotional or mental nature, they can help us discover deeply buried aspects of ourselves that need light. They can support us and strenghten us and build us up to the tasks involved with doing what needs done to make a change. But I’m gonna be bold here and make a statement that might get me some flack - these practices and tools are not the answer.

What is the Answer Then????

MOVEMENT.

Most of have had to sit down and be still and quiet since childhood. Be seen and not heard. Don’t speak out of turn in class. Don’t make unnecessary movements in church, in public, or anywhere you could embarrass an adult or disrupt the larger group. Don’t air your dirty laundry no matter how affected you are by violation. Being the people pleaser that I am, I learned this quickly and didn’t usually act up in those spaces. Although it was always REALLY HARD for me to not talk. I was always talking. And getting in trouble for it.

Being forced into quiet stillness as children was the culture’s way of preparing us for school. For college. For working at a desk. It’s the way we’ve been convinced and conditioned to relinquish ownership of our souls to a bigger machine, gaslit into believing the machine was the dream. They want us quiet. They want us sedentary. They want us dependent on 2 day shipping and mass produced pricing.

All of the struggles I mentioned at the beginning are the result of us not being encouraged to be free humans. Not being supported in our individual uniqueness. They are the result of traumatized people traumatizing people in a traumatic and traumatized system. The result of an educational system premeditated and designed to make you a part of a productive and profitable society - not the enlightened and liberated artist you actually are. It’s no one person’s fault - there’s no blame being cast on anyone here because everyone alive has been on the receiving end of this system abuse - but we do each have something called responsibility for ourselves, and one by one, we have to break out of this mess. (In no way am I suggesting you shouldn’t be angry/heartbroken/etc b/c of what’s happened to you. You should. Feel very fucking thing.)

Soaking in the silence of a snowy alpine forest.

As much as they fucked up the development of our brains and stunted our emotional growth, they never took our actual power away. We may not be able to change the system. But we can change ourselves. Hard as it fucking is. It’s really hard. Really really really hard. Any type of trauma or neurodivergence, and finding your own sense of power can be like climbing a frozen waterfall without an ice pick.

Which leads me to the whole point of this writing to begin with.

If you have nothing at all to work with, no resources, no community, no insurance, no tools, you have YOU. You have your body. And in order to to bring your true self to the surface and begin the journey of collaborating with your struggles, you have to use your greatest asset and sometimes adversary - your physical body.

I think the most important part of the work I do is not teaching people how to avoid medical doctors in treating illness, it’s helping people reestablish the relationship between themselves and nature, by using their bodies to navigate Earth.

Moving our physical vessels in the wilderness is THE BEST MEDICINE THERE IS. Nothing is better. Bold statement, but true. Our neurochemicals are all fucked up and we can’t focus and we’re intentionally distracted by a bunch of nonsense that doesn’t actually matter and we’re forced into unnatural spaces and required to ‘earn’ to live and I could go on and on and on about how antithetical to humanness, it all is. Yea there’s lots of beauty, I’m not saying all of humanity is fucked and doomed. Just that we’ve been set up. And the remedies on offer are not gonna do shit if we don’t move our bodies.

Back in the day humans pretty much lived gym bro lives in terms of how much we worked out. We moved around, we carried, lifted, crafted, hunted, rode, walked, harvested, foraged, and forged. Everything we did impacted our survival, and everything was weight bearing exercise. We did these things in communities too, but that’s a whole other topic I can’t get side tracked on. Our biggest threats were predators and the environment, and we had to stay active to survive. Like animals in the wild, we could shake off traumatizing events and return to a balanced mental state. Something that’s very hard for us now. Because we have no support and haven’t been shown how to get our nervous systems back to a regulated state. We’re told to forget the past that hurt and be happy now even if we can’t get anything done. We’re expected, even from people with good intentions, to keep pouring ourselves out, despite the cup being empty for a long, long time.

In order for us to overcome the limitations imposed upon us by society, culture, environment, and physiology, we have make a conscious decision to find some way in our own personal lives to return to our physical bodies.

All the science shows that the chemicals released when we do hard exercise improves our mental health. It gives us clarity and helps us change the way we think. It reinforces the connection between our hearts and Earth’s and all creation. It builds resilience and strength. It empowers us.

And what I think we could all use a heaping dose of is, empowerment. It just doesn’t come from the outside. We can receive support and love from our friends and teachers and muses, but true empowerment is something that comes from within. It is the inner knowing of I CAN that comes when we rise above a challenge or solve a problem. Working our bodies, is the most potent, satiating, and long lasting source of empowerment we can get our hands on, and it’s made even more effective when we do it outside.

It’s free, and it’s still better than ANYTHING you can put in your body.

I know it can be hard to get started because of the resistance, executive dysfunction, paralyzing anxiety, stagnant depression, apathy in any form, fear of rejection/abandonment, healing the inner child and trauma. I’m in that place a lot, where it’s hard to scrape myself from the floor in order to move. Especially b/c I deal with a few conditions that literally disable me for days, weeks, or even months at a time. But I always know that I’m going to feel better when I do something. And I’m a big fan of walks, gentle yoga, swimming, anything that gets your blood flowing. But the really good medicine is when you get after something that’s scary, dangerous, or really difficult.

If you’re on the struggle bus and can’t get shit done that you want to do, or you can’t overcome something, here my suggestion.

Pick an extreme sport. The easiest and free-est? Hiking. You can wear regular clothes, sneakers, and use your old Jansport backpack. Get stuff at Goodwill. Repurpose old bottles for your drinking water if you need to. Make sure you have a rain jacket and layers. But you don’t need anything fancy. If you don’t have a car or can’t get to a trail, do an urban hike. Fill your pack with books or rocks or cans of food, plan a route in your town, and go for it. This is also a really awesome way to discover hidden gems in your area that you may not have known about. Walk. Walk with purpose. Walk faster. Get your heart rate up. Set a target. Sweat. Make your goal. Go home and take a hot shower and let the dopamine saturate every fucking cell in your body. Fall asleep feeling like a badass b/c you did something new.

The important thing is to find an activity that isn’t easy. One that forces you to pay attention - to your surroundings, to your body mechanics, and to how your gear functions. Choose a sport that has obvious challenges and set yourself to meeting them. Maybe you’re urban hiking and each week you set yourself to go a little further, with a goal being to hike up a local mountain. Celebrate EVERY SINGLE accomplishment, even if to the outside world it seems simple/small. Find a way to get out of your comparative mindset and do this just for you. Again, JUST. FOR. YOU. The benefits WILL ripple out. But who gives a fuck if that dude over there climbed Kilamanjaro? You’re here to do you. He’s got his own set of struggles to deal with. Get that shit out of your periphery and constantly remind yourself that this is your journey, and the ONLY. thing that matters is getting yourself clear and getting some dopamine and overcoming something.

Keep aiming higher.

In my current life, my favorite medicine is snowboarding. I’m not gonna lie, it’s really hard. It’s a total body workout that requires you to pay incredible attention to micro movements in your body, subtle changes in the terrain and weather, other people coming down the mountain, and your own perspective. It’s meditative AF for me, and it’s one of the only activities that allows me to feel hyper aware of the present moment. The normal chaos of my mind shuts down b/c if for one moment I don’t pay attention to how the entire experience FEELS, I’m gonna fall and bust my ass. And falling while moving at speed down an icy mountain with a board attached to your feet SUCKS. I know. I’ve done it a lot and I’ve gotten hurt.

Last run of the day, completely exhausted and untouchably happy.

Snowboarding is so physically and mentally challenging that every time I make a gain, it feels like the biggest accomplishment of my life. Like learning to carve and actually use the toe edge of the board…I was high as a kite for a week when that clicked for me last season, after 10 years of not riding. Natural drugs y’all. And if you’ve got one of the many mentioned struggles, there’s no doubt you are a dopamine deficient person. LET’S FIX THAT.

Every time I do something on a snowboard for the first time, it changes me. I get that natural dopamine fix from the payoffs of embodied persistence. The anxiousness in my brain and all the fears and worries about bullshit adult stuff fade for a while. And the best part is that usually, the next day, I find myself motivated. Less resistant. Ready to tackle the responsibilities and obstacles that have been sidelined. All most likely because my neurotransmitters were off. We are all dopamine addicts y’all. We have to have it. And most of us don’t have enough of it. And that makes EVERYTHING really hard to do. There is something alchemical that happens when we participate in extreme sports - giving ourselves the opportunity to push our bodies to their limits, allowing our minds to function as meditative allies rather than slave drivers, and liberating our spirits to reunite with the essence of nature, profoundly and fundamentally alters us. More than any psychedelic, more than any therapy session, more than any soul retrieval or self help book.

The next time one of your wild friends invites you to do something crazy, do it. Especially if you don’t want to. If there’s something you want to try but you don’t want to do it alone, go do it alone (just let people know where you’ll be and have a safety in check!). Hire a guide or instructor if you need to (like me! I can teach you a bunch of stuff, and if I can’t, I’ll find you someone who can!). The more it takes you out of your comfort zone, the better. Scared you’re gonna look like an idiot? You will. It’s ok. Everyone did when they started. If you don’t have the funds to do something that can be pretty expensive, like snowboarding, borrow gear. Find the cheapest rental place. Stop buying lattes and save your money for a lift ticket. Find a carpool or bus. Change your mindset to looking for possibilities instead of barriers. NO MORE EXCUSES. But if something you’re into is really out of reach, pivot. Pick something different. Join meetup.com and start doing active stuff with people - because it’s HIGHLY LIKELY that you’ll meet someone along the way who is also into that other thing you want to try, and then that entire world opens up to you.

Remember. That heaviness you feel, the fear and stuckness and the weight of all the SHOULDS. Nothing is wrong with you. You’re not broken. You probably have some incredible gifts that are buried beneath the lifelong conditioning that you should be something different from what you are. If you are desperate to get back to your core, to unveil your truth, to allow your unique gorgeousness out into the world, go do something insane that will make your entire body sore for at least 2-3 days. If you’re not sore, you need more. And do it outside so you can soak up all those tree pheromones and absorb all the delicious golden sunlight and breath fresh air and satisfy your very human need for novelty. You never know what crazy or beautiful thing you will see, and those profoundly spiritual experiences just from BEING in a place and participating in the place, is a vital component of this movement as medicine I’m talking about. So much in this world is medicinal. It’s just that above all, we were designed to move our bodies through to and through survival.

View from the top of Sunrise Mountain <3

As always, I got you. Let me know what you need to get there, and I’ll hold your hand to the edge.

Here’s some little things that have inspired/motivated/supported me lately:

I realize this writing doesn’t take into account folks who have physical limitations that prevent them from getting into extreme sports. It’s not intended to be exclusive, but to encourage those that are able. There are other tools available for empowering folks to get out of the rut if physicality is not possible. That’s another article that will come in time <3

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Not sure what activities you want to try? Here’s a fun list. I recommend watching videos on YouTube/Instagram to get stoked about it.

• Snowboarding/Skiing

• Surfing

• Skateboarding/LongBoarding

• Backpacking/Hiking/Mountaineering

• Rock Climbing (my next adventure sport!)

• Mountain Biking or Road Biking

• Trail Running

• Kayaking

• Backcountry Hunting with a Compound Bow

• Wakeboarding/Waterskiing

• Spelunking/Caving

• Horseback Riding/Rodeo

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A book I’m reading: Rick Rubin - The Creative Act

A book I’m listening to: The War of Art - Steven Pressfield

7 Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Get Stuff Done - Zen Habits article by Leo Babauta

Living the Seasonal Life - Building Fires to Heal the Heart

A lovely roaring fire in my home last winter.

Being an herbalist, witch, gardener, hunter, or homesteader, a person gets acquainted with the nearly ritualistic way of living by the seasons. By the moon and sun and stars. By weather changes and mood shifts and the cycles of the body. By the rising and setting of the sun.

We have evolved over the last 100,000 years to live cyclically. To orient our lives by what’s happening in the natural environment - of which we are a part, not separate from.

Technology, while amazing, and providing the outlet for this here post, has dissociated most of us not only from natural world, but from the truth of our needs, and who we actually are. We have lightbulbs to provide artificial sunlight, allowing us to stay awake performing tasks at a time when our bodies would really rather be sleeping. Water is pumped in, giving us more time for tv but removing the reward of going out and getting the water to hydrate our homes. A variety of heat sources are radiated through our homes, warming us without effort and depriving our bodies the opportunity to strengthen and minds to plan and execute and souls to heal from the crackling heat of a fire on a cold day. Something visceral within us in enlivened by the experiences of water, warmth, and natural light and darkness.

I use all of these technologies - not because I want to necessarily - but because I’ve grown into adulthood in a world that is dependent upon them, in a world that requires more of my energy and mental effort to ‘contribute to society’ than is natural for the body I was born into. All of us are in this same predicament. We can not do anything about what we were born into. But I have discovered for myself over the last year, that I am bound and determined to separate myself from the trap of modernity to the extent that it is possible. My body wants a slower pace. My brain is smart, and people expect a lot of me that I don’t want to give, becuase it doesn’t seem right to use my intelligence to feed into a modus operandi that does not suit me - body, mind, or soul. I want to use the gift of thinking to solve problems creatively, to create a life that is aligned with my nature, to fulfil the needs of my home and family in a way that extracts as little as possible and returns as much as possible to the Earth, while being as comfortable and colorful and connected to community, as possible.

For the last year I’ve been living in a little mountain town in Arizona. It was my first experience at high elevation (6600 feet), and in the most snowy and cold winter the area has experienced in 10 years or so. Aside from the loneliness of living 2.5 hours from the network I built over 10 years, and 2000 miles from my family of origin, and working from home in a job that was both unimportant (in the grand scheme of things) and felt like a total waste of time and mental energy, I loved this new experience of solitary rural living. I am blessed to reside adjacent to 4 million acres of national forest land, which has provided the most abundant and beautiful playground for me to explore. The juniper and wild horses and bugling elk have become my neighborly friends.

My little cottage came with a wood burning stove, and I expected to have fires here and there. But the man in my life at the time and his dad had another plan - they knew wood burning heat was the way to go in the mountains - and they helped me collect, haul, split, and stack 2 cords of wood. Two full weekends we were out there with chainsaws getting downed oak and juniper. That wood was a precious gift that warmed my cottage all winter, and the last fire it built was the same week that man and I ended our relationship. It was a very peculiar synchronicity.

My first day ever using a chainsaw =)

Needless to say, this year the idea of getting wood has been heavy on my mind. I no longer have the human resources I had last year. That season of my life has changed, and I have no choice but to accept it. It hurts sometimes, and until yesterday, I have occasionally felt bitterness that I was set up to live the kind of homesteading fire building life I wanted, with a man I loved, and then the capability of reproducing that year after year, seemed to have been stripped from the realm of possibility for me. Last winter, I felt that man kept me warm every day, even when he wasn’t there, because he prepared me so well for the fires I lit every morning.

But yesterday, a new season began for me. I decided that no matter what, no matter who is or is not involved, I want this way of life. I am so deeply satisfied by the act of finding and procuring the heat source for my home, and then generating that heat with my hands every day, that I want to keep it going even though I don’t have a chainsaw, a crew of masculine support, or the physicality of the men who helped me. Despite that, I want to feel the deep sense of connection with the Earth and her seasons that comes from being on the land and respectfully harvesting what I need - knowing I will not use more than is necessary, I will not intentionally take any life that is not required for my survival (I don’t kill trees - I only take what’s already fallen). Knowing that I will respect and honor the trees that have given their lives to fire or lightening or old age, and with each fire I light, I will give them and the soils that nourished them, gratitude. The emotions of longing and resentment, I turned also into gratitude, for the skill, and the knowledge, and the ability I received last year that encourages me through this one.

I decided to shift some things around to generate a new energy of this endeavor for myself. I relocated the wood pile so that this year it would be mine. Only my energy would go into its placement, its collection, its stacking, even though the materials themselves came from someone else. I cried a lot as I released my dependence on what once was. I also cried tears of thankfulness for him, the kindness of his heart, and everything he and his dad taught me. There is no way in hell I could even begin this journey of wood collecting and fire tending had I not learned so much from him. No matter what happened between us and how sad I can sometimes still be, that man was the most skilled and talented man I’ve ever met besides my brothers and dad (my mom would go in there if she was a man but she’s not - she’s definitely the most talented and skilled woman I’ve met and I gotta say, this determination and inner strength come solely from her. Thanks Mama Sugie!) and I learned quite a lot from watching him, and the patience in his teaching me. How to split, stack, use a chainsaw, build a solid fire, select wood, etc. It hurts my heart that the season has changed, but the change and what I learned from him, empowers me beyond my own belief.

The new location. The big stuff needs to be chainsawed.

So I set about the task. I got the new location set up. And I got a fuelwood permit from the forest service and set out to collect. I don’t have a chainsaw. I don’t have a truck. I don’t have a trailer. But I have a hatchet, a splitting maul, and an AWD Subaru Impreza with seats that fold down. Me and my doggo filled my hatchback and took it home. It was one of the most painfully proud moments of my life, even though I’m gonna need to do it like 15 more times to get enough to last through the winter!

A small load in the Subi and a super dirty face on me!

Here where I live, at 6600 feet in a town of 5000, summer is fading. I’m beginning my second year. There have been times when I wanted to leave because there are reminders of what I’ve lost everywhere, but Fall is my season. I was born in the most beautiful part of Fall in Virginia, a truly magickal time, and I always feel revitalized when it comes back around. I can move through what needs moving through - I’m tired of running. Up here in the mountains, it’s happening a little earlier than I’m used to. It’s shifting me away from a time of depending on another to make my dreams come true, and into a time of taking what I’ve learned from that past to create a present and future of my own. I’m seeing my strength and resistance to what we’ve been told is the right (easiest) way to live. I’m giving my energy to tasks that align me with the very essence of being alive on Earth. I’m spending my time creating, organizing, rearranging, so that my home is my own. My life is my own. My wood is my own. That’s not to say I wouldn’t accept help if it showed up - I’m not an idiot. But I won’t use the propane unless I have to. I won’t buy the wood so long as I can go get it myself. Now if the snows come and I haven’t collected enough, I might not have a choice, since I don’t have a truck yet.

Living the seasonal life is a choice. It didn’t used to be. It’s not easy. It’s not for everyone even though I wish it were. But it is singularly the most profound, enriching, and spiritual way of living I have experienced, and I hope that as I progress through my life, I find ways to live even more entrenched with the natural cycles of the Earth, befriending seasonal struggle and turning it into seasonal abundance.

I will keep looking for chances to refine my life away from a technologically oriented one towards a nature bound one. I hope the seasonal shift upon us grounds you into the core of who you are. How are you going to more deeply connect with this time of change?

Simmer Down, Sweets

A few days ago I found myself on the phone with a good friend who calmly told me it sounded like I had a lot of fire inside of me and that perhaps I needed some cooling foods to help me get back to equilibrium.

I was detectably out of balance and emotionally worked up, and she knows me well enough to comment in a way that didn’t fan the fire scorching my insides, but instead touched me like a soothing balm so that I become of a mind to take heed.

We all find ourselves this way from time to time, mentally charged and physically ready for battle over something that really would be best handled with a cool temperament and quick step outside of the Self so you can see that forest instead of only burning bushes…some of us get heated more than others (strong Mars in your chart, anyone?) but we can all relate on occasion, can’t we?

Having good friends you trust to point out your bullshit is one of life’s greatest gifts, so if you have that person who will call you out when you’re being insane, don’t let them go. That conversation helped me channel my emotional fire into a creative one, one of my favorite things about being an herbalist. I now had a tangible problem I could set to work solving instead of just burning the blaze inside me brighter til it eventually would burn me out. And for no good reason.

Getting to it, I knew I needed some herbs to cool down the emotional intensity, balance my hormones a little bit (I was in the midst of moon time and RAGING), and reconnect me to the cycles of living that I’d gotten a little bit detached from. It was also really f***ing hot at that time, which surely contributed to my turmoil. What I came up with is one of my FAVORITE herbal teas ever generated from this here herbal witch, and I now present to you, Simmer Down - A Tea for Calming the F Down! It helped so much that I coulnd’t even tell you what the hell had me so tied up in fiery knots! During the blending and prayer process, a medicine song came to me, and I’d like to share it with you too.

It’s a delicious cooling, modulating, and soothing blend of herbs that immediately took me down a notch, to a more manageable state of affairs. It tastes so good cold I’ve been having a cup or two every day when the summer sun is hottest. It can help alleviate menstrual cramps, promotes relaxation, and helps us restore a balanced connection with the many emotion bearing fluids of the body. It would also be useful in mild fevers, overheating, overexertion, and irritable, agitated, and bad moods that are quite possibly covering up some other emotion we’re not ready to process. In the soothing of the agitation, it will help you ground down into the Earth and flow like a river through a forest, giving you access to your psyche, and whatever is really going on down there.

Check it out in out in our shop, and be sure to let me know what you think and how it helps you. If you know someone who would benefit from it, it would make a great gift!

I hope you love it as much as I do!

Write Your Timeline of Awesomeness

When’s the last time you considered your badassery?

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Footbridge in the rhododendron forests of Southwestern Virginia.

Making a visual representation of all the awesome things you’ve done in your life is a sure-fire way to boost your self esteem. It reminds you of the stuff you probably forgot about when you were so busy thinking about how lame your life is, or how you never do anything cool, or how impossible it feels to get this next big thing off the ground. Your timeline is an incredible tool to keep handy for any time you’re feeling kinda sad and sorry for yourself, or struck by a terrible fear of failure/success that’s preventing you from moving forward.

I’ve decided to share my own timeline to motivate you to create yours, and also because potential customers and prospective clients need to know who I am - what I’ve done and where I’ve been - so that they trust what I’m putting out in the world, and understand why I’m asking them to trust ME.

So without further ado, welcome to my Timeline of Awesomeness, beginning in 2005, at the age of 22.

• Graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University - B.A. Political Science, Minor Developmental Psychology (Can you believe the Poli Sci part??!!)

• Moved to Eugene, Oregon - Drove from Virginia to Utah, then California, then Oregon, with my pet ferret and a Peace Lily

• Met my first herbalist, Candace Hunter of the Practical Herbalist, who became my first herbal teacher. Kept on meeting herbalists everywhere, and becoming tight with them, started learning more about herbalism.

• Worked for an environmental non profit, Cascadia Wildlands.

• Drove from Oregon to Virginia with my cat, Griffyn.

• Drove from Virginia to Arizona, where I moved to study herbalism at SWIHA. Made amazing lifelong friends and began building community.

• Started The Growing Project, LLC, which is the parent company of Rebel Herbal.

• Interned with Katie Hess, creator of Lotus Wei which is the most incredible line of flower powered pampering you’ll ever find.

• Wrote a paper on herbal contraceptives, which you can read here.

• Spoke about using Arizona native plants and Vitamin D deficiency to the Arizona Herb Association (seriously there were like 75 people in that room - it was nuts).

• Received a certification in Western Herbalism - 600 hours of plant science, pathology, physiology, life coaching, and more.

• Worked for my teacher, JoAnn Sanchez, who created and directs the herbalism program at SWIHA. For her I was an assistant instructor, editor (2 editions of 4 academic texts), curriculum creator, student supervisor (for a 6 month stewardship project that included: ethics of wildharvesting, ethnobotany, field studies, and meditative practices).

• Worked at Desert Sage Herbs which is my home herb shop. Retail work is fast paced client work at its best and I recommend it to any herbalist coming out of school who wants to get familiar as heck with plant medicine and Latin binomials, quickly.

• Had a small clinical practice for 5 years, working with clients to heal infertility, autoimmune diseases, acne, adhd, and more.

• Moved to Austin, where I saw clients and sold products, gave lectures at corporate lunch and learns and local holistic fairs.

• Hiked 600 miles of the Appalachian Trail over 7 weeks. During this time I got involved in an intimate relationsihp with Appalachian plants, using Solomon’s Seal to treat pain issues and Plantain for blisters and infections, as well Dandelion in its entirety as an amazing food source. You can read my trail journal here.

• Traveled down the West Coast where I was a doula at a close friend’s home labor, was interviewed on Real Herbalism Radio (listen here!), worked with some green plants in Northern California, and took a Greyhound from Sacramento to Phoenix (never do that).

• Got a job as a demo rep turned account manager turned business development leader for Watusee Foods, where I pretty much hustled chickpeas all over the US. Still the best hiking food I’ve had. Got our product into Kroger!

• Broke my tailbone and my literal foundation was razed to the ground in what turned out to be one of those pivotal spiritual moments that changed me forever by forcing me to face myself and REBUILD.

• Started Rebel Herbal, and flopped. But didn’t quit it.

• Got Wilderness First Aid Certified - one of the most amazing trainings I’ve ever done.

• Had a full year of healing from addiction, emotional abuse, and inner child stuff, while living with my little brother and creating a beautiful new adult bond with him. This entire time was hard as hell but so important and special.

• Moved back to Arizona! Did not drive - I flew to Vancouver to visit a friend and her newborn, then to Phoenix, with 3 suitcases and a pack full of all my hiking gear and my Vitamix (duh).

• Got a job in sales, which taught me more than I ever could have imagined about myself regarding money, confidence, ability, determination, and perseverance. It also taught me how to consult business owners, which is incredibly useful in my work now.

• Saved a bunch of money and took a leap of faith by quitting that job and working full time on my passions (what you’re seeing here, basically).

• Started the Arizona Herbalist’s Coalition, a community resource for herbal practitioners and businesses to get professional development, academic advancement, and self-care advice, and to contribute to Stewardship of land and indigenous wisdom.

And so here I am, doing this thing here on Rebel Herbal. I mean of course there are a whole bunch of other awesome events I could add to this timeline, but sometimes it’s good to keep it focused. If you find yourself in a slump though, go ahead and write out as thorough and detailed a timeline as you can, and review it often.

Now it’s your turn =)

~Candice

Globe Mallow for Determined Patience

Globe Mallow

Sphaeralcea spp.

Harvest: 4.11.19

Seed, tea, flower essence

Globe Mallow teaches lessons in patience, trust, and determination. (Survival, self assuredness, self confidence, self esteem, trust, unfolding, perseverance)

This year I’ve been on the hunt for Sphaeralcea incana, even though it is quite a common desert wildflower. I have long loved this beautiful glowing flower. So when return from Tucson I drove past miles of desert floor ablaze in its ethereal orange blossoms, I knew I needed to connect it with it deeply, and soon.

This led to a series of weekly attempts at finding a grand stand of Globe Mallow, abundant enough to gather, prepare, and share. Revisiting old sites where I'd found it before proved fruitless, as the community I'd previously seen seemed to have packed up and moved to someplace more suitable.

I drove many miles as if on a quest, and eventually the insecurities arose as I sensed the plant's spirit evading my own - maybe I wasn’t supposed to harvest the herb this year, or maybe my understanding and memories of its qualities were incorrect. I had to surrender to the experience of not finding what I was looking for, and maintain the fire of determination at the same time. Glad I did! One of my girl crew was able to point me to a good grove of globes, and then the real magick started to happen.

One week before I sat down to write this, I quit the job to pursue my actual purpose, undeniable and indescribable as it is. Part of that is connecting people to nature and to each other, and to begin to understand the relationships between plants, people, and place, a little (a lot!) more. In order to do this I aspire to spend a lot of time in Nature as an observer and co-creator. In reality, I’m pursuing Nature as a lover in a longterm healthy relationship (and hoping she’s ok with with a non-monogamous affair).

So the day after I quit my job, I rode out to the ‘for-sure’ spot described by my friend. It was early-ish, the desert was still quiet but coming to life, and there was only one other person nearby. I hiked into the desert a little bit and found the stand she was talking about. Except! There were no flowers.

I peeked around a bit more and discovered that while there were no flowers, there were tons of seeds. Literal tons. It became clear that perhaps part of my purpose in seeking out Globe Mallow was not to blend a tea, but to provide seeds from wild plants so that others could experience its healing in their own back yard, just through being with it one on one. A giant orange lightbulb went off and I felt so aligned with everything that I set happily out to gathering seeds with gratitude in my heart and respect in my hands(it would have been too early for the seeds on my previous forays, keep in mind).

A few minutes into this I wandered farther up the hillside and down through a ravine, finding a blossoming Sore Eye Mallow (one of its other names) with enough blooms that I felt good about harvesting a few to make a flower essence (link to flower essence here). The blossoms were bigger, the stalks taller, and the leaves greener than I'd remembered.

Flower Essence medicine is pretty special for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important ways from an ecological perspective is that you only need to use a few blooms to make an ounce of mother essence (link to mother essence here). Flower Essences are vibrational medicine, which means they work to align your own energy/aura/spirit/mind/all of it with the energies of the plant. It raises your own vibrations to meet the plants’, and therefore heals you on the level of your psycho-spiritual self, rather than only on the level of your tangible self. Although the effects are tangible and palpable, and the healing spills over like sunlight onto all the parts of you in need of healing and balance.

I cut about 4 flowers from different stalks, and let them do their thing in their morning sunlight water bath. I sat to think about the meaning of of it, and as I meditated on all the changes I’d just made to my life, my pursuit of Globe Mallow, the sheer bliss of the moment I was experiencing right then, a flood of ideas entered into me. New ways of thinking about herbalism and my professional life, recipes, rituals, classes to write, work to do. It was a moment of divine union as inspiration poured right down into my crown and filled up my heart. I had a deep sense of knowing tuned-inness that I rarely experience indoors.

Sitting there in such quiet stillness, I saw a ton of wildlife. Lizards felt comfortable coming out of hiding, a giant black beetle with red wings walked by on long legs that elevated its body an inch off the ground. There were butterflies. I sat directly across of a giant Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata), and began to have ideas for how this, my most trusted and well known ally, could provide healing in ritual and ceremonial ways I hadn’t tried before. As thoughts of our relationship floated through my mind, a hummingbird came to the tree and sat on the highest branch. It was so close I could see its tiny body and long bill, I could see where its colors began and ended and blended. And this was an incredible confirmation for me, sealing in what I knew to be true.

I stood up to have a good look around, and so discovered that there were more Globe Mallow Flowers. As it turns out, they opened up as the sun got warmer. I had wondered if that could be the case, and everything worked out perfectly to where I was still in the same meadow when they began to open. Something, some deep inner knowing, had kept me there to witness the grand opening in a way I’d never before.

Getting to see the flowers open all around me and being in their midst was more amazing than actually getting to harvest. The message was clear: Experiencing is more important than the experience.

Sitting there with an open heart and notebook, Globe Mallow medicine came to me.

This is medicine to support gradual unfolding. We must place unshakable trust in the process of our own opening. The journeys each of us take, the paths we are on in pursuit of goals and success (whatever that means is individual and of the time) come before the achievement, and so we must keep our minds in the moment, without frustration. There is a greater plan than the ones we devise, but they do indeed merge - and this is Alignment.

This medicine supports you in the risks you take, to grow brightly, colorfully, into you as you are meant to be. It helps you to support yourself by recognizing your own robustness and strength. It encourages you in your remembrance of self love, self care, rest, healing , and calmness and the memory that it is ok to slow down. You don’t have to know EVERYTHING Right Now. When you stop moving, everything reveals itself to you.

Here’s the thing. If I had found a bunch of globe mallow the first time I went looking for it, I wouldn’t have kept looking. If I’d found it before I quit my job I might not have made it my first priority after to quitting to go to the desert and harvest. If I’d found it in another location it would have been too early for seeds. I’d never have experienced Globe Mallow’s vulnerable expansion to receive the Sun exactly when it was supposed to. If I still worked in the office, I wouldn’t even have been there, right then. I’d have missed the other messages and the hummingbird, the spotted lizards and giant beetles. I’d have passed over my own process of unfoldment. I’d have missed my own personalized, universal memo!

Hindsight is not always 20/20 but it’s usually a hell of a lot easier to see the past than the future and for many of us, even the present. If you are struggling with feeling like you aren’t where you’re supposed to be, or if you’re facing a big decision that is scary or difficult to make, but you feel it pulling you from deep down in your core, Globe Mallow medicine will be your ally in progress and process. It will help you notice the subtleties and nuance of your life that actually play a bigger role than you expected on your journey. Gently it nudges your mental acceptance of where you are, it reveals that you can open yourself to new ideas and changes that need to be made in order to proceed. Globe Mallow holds your hand as you learn to trust Divine timing, and holds the candle as you illuminate the intersection of your plan with a greater one.

Aligns 3rd and 4th chakras, balancing will, determination, ambition, and outward expression with vulnerability, compassion (for oneself and others), receptivity, healing, trust, and soul knowing.

**Rebel Herbal recommends that you try any new flower essence for a full lunar cycle (28 days)**

**DISCLAIMER: Any information contained in this article is for educational purposes only and not intended to replace professional health advice. Need a professional herbalist? Contact us!**