July is a busy month of harvesting fresh plants, both wild and cultivated.  One of my favourite herbs of the season is St. John’s Wort, the latin name Hypericum perforatum. This bright little yellow flower is named after St. John the Baptist, a holiday celebrated in June,...

This is the time of year where I’m reaping the benefits of my harvest.  Not to say harvest season is over – in a lot of ways it’s just begun! But I harvest most of my flowers between April (when dandelion begins) through July, when the sun is the strongest.

Right now,...

About a month ago, my very sweet cat, Leo, came home with a serious wound on his tail: It was an open, bloody, angry sore.  His tail was swollen and extremely tender to touch.  The wound looked deep.  I took him to the vet because I wanted to make sure there was no foreign material...

This recipe is from traditional healers of Mexico, who shared it with Stephen Harrod Buhner who shared this publicly on Facebook and in his (incredible) book, Sacred and Healing Beers.  Everything Buhner writes is extraordinary.  He’s a prolific, and poetic writer....

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Below I share what I do to create an Equinox ritual for letting go, and a link to my ever-popular hawthorn berry syrup (it’s very easy to make). 

There are two equinoxes every year – the...

It was the late 1990s when, at 19 years old, I found myself in a circle of multi-generational teachers who taught me how to heal. The sound of the drum and the lift of the song woke something up in me as we sat in a circle singing and sharing our life stories. It woke an ancient remembering; that...

My best friend Robert Birch and I have taught together for nearly as long as we’ve known each other. We met in a workshop in 2003, and since then, we’ve facilitated more large community rituals than we can count. Here, we discuss our backgrounds and relationship with ancestral...

This recipe is from my well-loved copy of Herbal Healing for Women by Rosemary Gladstar, published in 1993. It's a wonderful book, I highly recommend you pick up a copy! 

Rosemary calls it Iron-Plus Syrup.

The 'plus', is the addition of vitamin C and other mineral-rich herbs that...

I was 22 years old and working in a health food store when I met a frazzled customer asking for help for her hot flashes and insomnia.

Her eyes were anxious, her voice raspy, and the feeling was desperate.
Out tumbled the story of her heart-wrenching divorce that coincided with her mother's...

When I need to regroup and pause, I go and sit by the Poplar tree. Perhaps it’s the convergence of elements they live among that’s so soothing, with that borderland where river meets rock and gnarly root. Poplars are majestic. Sturdy. Powerful. And in the in-betwixt season of late...

The coronavirus's quick travel around the globe in a few short months in early 2020 highlights our connectivity as human beings. As the metaphor goes, a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and sets off a tornado in Texas. The hygiene practices and social distancing you or I practice has a...