Why Plants Bring me Hope
and my winding path to becoming an herbalist
Hello dear readers. Thank you for being here. I hope that you are feeling the first whisper, budding, and chirping of spring in these longer sunnier days. Up here in the mountains it comes a bit slower than what I am used to in my usual southern city of Richmond, but I feel the wait is worth it. My kind neighbor Priscilla took me to see the beginning burst of skunk cabbage growing on a nearby creek bed. These odd and wondrous plants will grow bigger and bigger throughout the season into the summer. They are hard to spot at first, making their way coyly through the damp brown leaves and woody matter of winter, and what a beautiful bright contrast to all that lays around them. Dandelions and daffodils are just starting to pop up, and the caramel color of the grasses on the hills have a glowing green just below them, in anticipation of the verdancy awaiting them.
One of the reasons my husband and I moved out to Appalachia this winter was so we could live closer to nature, and closer in rhythm to the seasons. It has been well worthwhile, and every day I realign myself to what is happening outside these walls, with more energy coming into my thawing bones, more movement returning to my body.
I’ve always loved the natural world and been drawn to plants. My grandparents were farmers and I grew up visiting their home frequently. The table was always full of delicious pickled beets, corn and butter beans, and the best tomatoes in the world. They taught me the love of good food grown on the land, and how nourishing and abundant that world truly is. My grandmother also tended to a lot of flowers and every year, she would expertly trellis her clematis around the front porch.
As a teenager I fell in love with herbalism. I would make myself dream pillows after reading about different plants that would induce different qualities into your dream life if you slept with them in a little satchel inside your pillow. Cloves for remembering, lavender for protection, mugwort for opening up your psychic third eye. I was SO into this stuff, and loved the idea that plants could transport us into both new and old magical spaces.
I became a baker after graduating from college and was constantly looking for ways to use different flowers and herbs in my baking. Lemon and basil scones, rosemary and orange shortbread, black sesame and rose cake. I used flowers to decorate everything, my favorite part of baking being the part where I got to make things look beautiful, with the natural world as my muse.
And then of course, plants are what brought me into the career I am in now, painting foods and plants with a deep devotion to their intricacies and details that we might take for granted otherwise. When I lived on Maui, the vibrant colors and aliveness of the fruits growing there inspired my painting practice. I still remember this dragonfruit being my first real watercolor subject after learning how to paint with watercolor from Lara Gastinger in Virginia, right before we moved to the island. I couldn’t stop once I started, wanting to honor every single living thing I found beauty in. Seven years later, I am still at it.
And here I am now, almost 25 years later from that 15 year old herbalism loving self, finally enrolled in my first Foundations of Herbalism course for the next 8 months with TwinStar Tribe. We had our first class yesterday and I can’t tell you how lit up that 15 year old me was. She’s like, FINALLY!! Sometimes we keep things on the back burners of our lives, and have to trust that they just bloom at the right exact moment. It couldn’t have happened any other way.
I’ve dabbled in herbalism courses over the last couple of years, taking Asia Suler’s Intuitive Plant Medicine program, and am currently enrolled in Motherwort and Rose’s AMAZING Tears of the Gods class (I am a big fan of Mara June and all of their offerings). I’ve also done a ton of my own reading and studying and found plant allies I’ve worked with and befriended over the years. But this 8 month foundations course, partially held in person so we get to make plant medicines together, feels like the real thing to truly commit to this passion. And, it feels like it’s all in the right timing.
While the world falls apart in so many ways around us, while this country becomes scarier and more divisive, I return to the plants. The plants know no divisiveness. They will not treat you differently based on your skin color or your political standing. We learned yesterday in class that even invasive plants offer cures to current ailments. For example, Japanese knotweed growing all over the northeast, holds medicine for lyme’s disease, which is rampant especially around the state of Connecticut. During times of slavery, cotton bark root was made into a tea that could bring on a miscarriage, so enslaved and abused black women could take the power of their own bodies back. Currently plants like burdock and dandelion grow like weeds just outside our front doors, which just so happen to be great natural cleansers for our organs, that are all full of toxins and chemicals making us sick. Nature has always shown the way. The rupture between humans and the earth has lasted a long time, but I feel the way she is pulling us back into alignment and remembering. We are nature. When we can remember that and trust our bodies to connect back into what has always been here for us, a great healing can take place. And, I find it all extremely hopeful. Plants have always had answers for us, and we just forgot how to listen.
While becoming an herbalist is a goal of mine, it isn’t to turn it into a business. It is to have the knowledge and tools to provide for my community, my family and myself. I feel that as the times we are living in become more and more intense and heavy, due to genocidal wars, climate disasters and unchecked fascist extremism, we can ground ourselves in our immediate communities and provide care for one another. Plants were here before we were, they will be here after us. It would do us good to listen to what they have to offer, and offer back in return. It is a remembering, our inherent relationship to the natural world.
Reciprocity is abundance.
Thanks for reading my plant love story. Do you have a special call to working with plants? If so, what is it?
What plants are befriending you/calling to you right now?
How has nature saved you?
Feel free to leave your answers in the comments below. I LOVE hearing from you.
Announcements & Happening….
and I still have a couple of spaces left in our Rising Up Creative Retreat happening in Marshall, NC next month, as well as several spots in our Warm Springs, VA retreat! They are going to be beautiful nourishing days of creativity with plants, painting and baking. No experience is needed in baking or painting! Come join us and remember that spring rises again. I’ll be participating in Field and Supply’s Spring Market this year up in Kingston, NY! It’s an incredible 3 day craft fair with so many talented makers from around the area. It is a ticketed event, so find out more here and grab your spot now. I’ll be selling both prints and cards as well as some original framed pieces.
Thank you Deb of Smitten Kitchen for sharing my calendar with your audience this week! I’ve still got a few left to sell, and you can find them majorly discounted here in my webshop.
I’m having a Spring Print Sale and you subscribers are the first to hear about it! Everything in my online shop will be discounted by 15% March 24-31st. Use the code SPRING2025 to claim your discount.
Wishing you beautiful time outside this week. May you find hope in the natural world still beating and coming to life around you.
Spring Blessings to you, Molly!❤️