 I do really feel that all of the solutions to kind of the all of the kind of societal ills that we face can be found in the arms of nature and I feel like plants are just a really beautiful window into kind of returning to our nature which is very land-based and earth-based. A lot of the work that I do is about creating accessibility and I do that in various ways from like working with extremely common plants that are found right outside your doors to using like very easy uncomplicated medicine making techniques and then I also try to make things as low cost as possible if not free because that is a huge barrier to keeping folks out of herbal medicine. I just really feel strongly that like herbal medicine you know is the medicine of the people. The kind of first moments that kind of led me on this path of plants and herbalism in medicine started like after high school. I started doing a bunch of migrant farm work so I would detastal corn in Iowa and red blueberries in Maine and pick apples in Vermont and then honestly just someone gave me a book. It was a book by Deb Sol who's a herbalist in Maine who I love. I was like oh my god like plants are medicine like I had no idea until that point. As soon as I realized that that was a thing that was just my whole like trajectory was just like I want to know all that I can know about how plants are medicine. I just was reading all the books about herbalism I could then I apprenticed with a few different herbalists. Just this was continually learning like in all the ways and then started like growing and making medicine myself. The People's Medicine School is one of my educational offerings. It's a kind of six month introduction to herbalism course. It's focused on making herbalism very accessible very user-friendly and easy to take away kind of the intimidation around starting something new. Kind of what makes it a little different from other herbs schools or programs out there is that we really try to uplift like black indigenous and folks of color and their histories with herbal medicine and their experience and how they are able to access herbal medicine because in our world today BIPOC folks are so marginalized. There's so many things systemically stacked against them that impacts their health that impacts their access to medicine. I feel like when we are uplifting the most marginalized folks in society that that only makes the whole like so much stronger and so much beautiful and so much better and I feel like my life's work is to help facilitate mutually beneficial relationships between plants and people and that's again a place where I really try to break away from what I was taught in herbalism which is just like you see a plant and you think about it for its uses and how it can serve you and you take it and you make medicine with it and that's herbalism. I really just love kind of facilitating people having like one-on-one relationships with plants like getting to know a plant like you get to know a person because I really feel like once you have a relationship with that plant and you can kind of figure out what's good for that plant that what's good for that plant is good for that land is then good for the earth is good for people you know what I mean it's all the same. When I'm teaching or when I'm making medicine I primarily only do that with what people consider weeds and I feel like the more people can like realize like what they need is like right outside their door so these things that we're weeding out of the rows are medicine and so that again blew my mind like okay plants aren't only medicine but it's like super accessible plants that are overlooked by most people that are just everywhere are like actually here and can help us to heal and nourish us. Some of the really common weeds that I love to work with are dandelion, fur duck, yellow duck, red clover, nettles, plantain, yarrow, and motherwort. I see herbalism as just such like a beautiful remedy for really all of the ills of society and it's just like healing on all of the levels so it's going to be healing physically like if you're ingesting the plant using it as medicine it's going to be healing emotionally it's going to be healing spiritually again you're going to build this connection with the earth so it's going to be healing like at an environmental level. For me it's just like really about zooming in and focusing with the things that I can immediately change right now with my hands when I think too big it becomes overwhelming and I feel paralyzed by all of the things that are going wrong and like how could I ever do anything to affect that how could I ever do anything that's gonna make a meaningful change but then you know when I zoom back in to like immediately like okay it's just like me in this plant and it's like me in this relationship with this plant and then it's sharing relationships with other folks in plants and just seeing like the like little moments of joy that it brings me and the little moments of joy that it brings other people I feel like that can't be underestimated like that's so important one of the most beautiful parts of the things that I get to do with my life is just seeing kind of these like aha moments for people like when I first realized plants for medicine like being able to see that and other people and people who you know didn't think about plants at all are now like you know in these love affairs with plants it's amazing and I feel like so honored to be able to be a part of that process