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I’m alive! Practice updates, announcements, and all that jazz

Posted on by herbalistatlarge

Hi everybody. It’s been a minute!

Over the summer I became homeless again, had to part with most of my belongings, and landed in a part of the world I’ve never been to and never particularly had any intention to live: small town Oregon. I’m no stranger to being uprooted though, and pretty fast at putting roots down, so it could be a lot worse.

Not being able to practice much herbalism over the past few months has been rough on me to a degree that’s hard to communicate. This is my passion, it’s what I’m good at, it’s how I can impact the world around me in line with my values… Having begun to establish a public facing practice that allowed me to really dig my hands into everything I love about it, allowed me to really help others, and then immediately having to let it fall by the wayside because I was no longer stable enough to afford the time or resources really hurt.

I am ashamed of flaking on people and projects. I am embarrassed that I went too big too fast and was not honest to myself or others about what would be sustainable for me. I don’t want that to happen again, so, I’m focusing more on educational and informal offerings that have historically been a lot easier for me to be consistent with, as well as moving more slowly and deliberately with projects.

Consultation offerings on hiatus

I’m not at a point in my life where I feel able to support people on a one-on-one basis, so I’m putting all individual consultations and services on hiatus. I still welcome people reaching out with questions and I’ll do my best to find answers or point you in the right direction, I just might take a while to reply and I can’t do full workthroughs with people or offer sustained support.

Open study night!

Starting next month, I will be hosting Open Study Night, a public digital meeting (with an accompanying email newsletter!) for herbalists of all stripes to connect, share announcements, and collaborate! Learn more here.

New & more frequent online workshops

In addition to the Herbal Emotional Support workshop, which I plan on announcing a new session of in the near future, I’ve been working on a few other courses that I’m very excited about. Most are much shorter–single sessions over the span of one to three hours–and should be a lot easier for me to put on as I have time and the ability to plan a few weeks ahead. I’m hoping that as I put on these newer, more experimental workshops, I can get feedback, continually improve them, and add them to a more regular rotation.

The first of these will be announced shortly 😉

And no, I haven’t gotten any better at naming workshops lmao.

Sliding scale updates

This is a hard one for me. Previously, I have run my practice on a “pay me or don’t, whatever” kind of model, with more intense fundraising as the need arises, and hiatuses when I need to spend my time making money to survive. This is my ideal.

However, as I’ve mentioned…my life is tenuous. Some of that is by choice, but most of it is unavoidable as a multiply disabled person with no familial support network. I can’t just get a shitty part time job and supplement with gig work because it’s physically impossible. The ways I make money are paid below minimum wage, occasionally dangerous, usually unpleasant, and INCREDIBLY unreliable. I can’t always promise that hiatuses will be short. This one definitely wasn’t.

So here’s the deal: I will not hound or shame people I work with about their ability to pay. I will not means test or ask you to prove yourself. I will not turn people away for not being able to pay. But I am going to start being more transparent about my needs, because even the limited income I get from donations makes a huge difference in how I can afford to spend my time, my ability to do this work, and my physical and emotional wellbeing.

This is reflected on the Fees? page of this site, where I talk a little bit more about donations and have provided a sliding scale self-assessment for anyone who has a bit more flexibility in what they are able to donate for workshops

Writing projects

Finally, I do wanna mention that the herbal harm reduction zine I announced on instagram right before my hiatus is still being worked on. It’s going a lot slower than I would like it to, but it’s a project I’m extremely passionate about and do intend to release in whatever form ends up being manageable.

Thanks for sticking with me!

I’m really excited to be back. Here’s to the future!

What’s in the works: February 2022, or: A lesson in creating backups

Posted on by herbalistatlarge

Yeaaaaah…. Hi y’all.

Some variety of catastrophic failure befell my website, ending in me having to reinstall WordPress entirely…and, uh. I never backed up my damn posts. Luckily, this site was pretty new, and the only thing I really lost was my post about Oxymels, which I will recreate at some point.

We’re due for a what’s in the works, though, so what better time to rebuild!

Winter 2022 herbal emotional support & Regulation workshop

As of earlier today, we wrapped the winter session of the herbal emotional support & regulation workshop! It was lovely. I will likely write a reflection post in the coming days.

self-check guide (1.0)

Finally finally finally, I am releasing the self-check guide I’ve been working on since December. Here is the post with a PDF.

I feel the slightest bit conflicted about releasing this piece, honestly. I think it’s better than it used to be, for sure, and enough people have asked me for it that I feel like it’s the right choice to release it instead of sit on it for another few months, but at the same time I worry. Self-policing is an issue I don’t think is taken seriously enough, and I have major concerns about presenting to the world half-cocked practices that give a veneer of mad liberation but fail to actually dismantle the ideas that western psych rests on.

Suffice to say, new and updated versions will be coming.

Summer planning

Extremely excitingly, I will be spending the summer on a breathtaking patch of land in the Appalachian mountains, re-establishing and encouraging native plants (including a breathtaking array of woodland medicinals), and building trails and… well… a whole-ass cabin.

Internet privacy and good sense dictates I not share too much about this project, but I am so, so, so thrilled. I have never tended a garden I knew would still be there in a year, much less potentially lasting for generations, and to do so surrounded by friends (human and otherwise) is the greatest honor I can think of.

A lot of my plans are heavily dependent on site assessments, and considering I’m 2k+ miles away at the moment it’s been difficult. I’ve done quite a lot of research though, and there’s tons more to learn before I return to the holler.

For the cabin we (my compatriots and I) and building, we’ve decided to go UNDERGROUND–this is because 1) There is no flat land that doesn’t flood in the holler and 2) I’m heading up this particular construction project and I would rather dig than fuck with trying to build level above-ground platform. This will be the first permanent structure on the land, and it’ll basically just be a big kitchen–massive stone fireplace included :Hearteyes:. The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House book by Mike Oehler and Chris Royer (link) has been a fascinating starting point. Despite being sexist as fuck and having the worst opinions about carpet on god’s green earth, this book has some really valuable insight about eliminating the drainage problems of underground houses. I’m especially excited about the construction method they suggest, which incorporates terraced gardens and as much grow-able outdoors space as indoor space.

The main goal on the land is forest gardening, but having some easy-to-access more developed space as a nursery and for growing food close to the kitchen will greatly lower the energy needed for long-term occupancy.

Ideally, I’ll be able to finish the cabin at the beginning of fall, in time for fall seed sowing. Even if the terrace gardens aren’t finished, I’ll be getting native ginseng sowed in the forest this fall so-help-me-god in order to repopulate the area that has been wracked from decades of overharvesting. Other exciting plants on the list include wild columbines, maypop and wild yams snaking up the terraces, and wood betony (a hemiparasitic plant) interplanted with the native sedges that are going in as structural support for the terraces and cabin roof.

I FINALLY GOT A DAMN HORI HORI

Is it worth this kind of update? Probably not. But I’ve been wanting a hori hori for months and FINALLY got one, so I wanted to share.