My love of plants goes back as far as I can remember. I grew up in a very rural area where I quickly developed a kinship with the trees, rocks, and plants around me, and I’ve cultivated this relationship in each place I’ve moved since then. I planted my first herb & flower garden when I was around 10 years old, and dreamed of one day having my own apothecary.

Life took me in many other directions in the meantime. I studied social work and became a consultant for the UN; I studied somatics and became a queer & trans sex educator; I spent years as a community organizer and activist; I held healing circles with facilitation teams around the world; and I designed ancestral healing spaces for white folks to unlearn white supremacy and work toward racial justice. I studied linguistics and worked toward fluency in Scottish Gaelic, spent years as a freelance writer and editor, and adopted an adventure cat who travels the world with me.

I began studying herbalism in an official capacity about five years ago, and I’ve been making herbal remedies ever since. I’ve studied in Scotland, Malta, Sicily, Costa Rica, and the United States, and I’ve learned from many people and schools to whom I am deeply indebted. This is a study that will never be finished.

My approach to herbalism is based in both intuition and science; while the science of herbalism is essential, being able to listen to and truly hear the plants is just as important. Ancestors across every lineage around the world historically turned to plants for healing and nutrition — plants are at the basis of all modern-day medicine — and they didn’t always have the science to turn to. Instead, they learned through intuition, through study, and through developing a deep kinship with the plants and more-than-human kin of their environment. This, to me, is the core of herbal medicine.

Grass Roots Remedies: Wild Things: A Year of Wild Foods & Medicine (Scotland)

Wild Ginger Community Herbal Center: Community Herbalism Training (online) and Foundations in Herbalism Certificate Program (Costa Rica)

Radici Siciliane: Botànico Sacro Herbal Immersion & Ancestral Arts Training (Sicily)

Cimaruta Remedies: Summer Italian Folk Medicine and Mediterranean Plant Series

Red Autumn Apothecary: Herbal Allies and Deepening With the Plants