Ask yourself one simple question: what would be most nourishing to me right now?
That was the question posed by herbalist Marysia Miernowska as I apprenticed under her for two years. It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t know the answer.
When I was growing up, nourishment was never brought up. No one thought about it let alone discussed it. I distinctly remember the excitement over Little Debbie Cakes, microwaving pepper jack cheese on Ritz crackers until those layers had become perfectly bubbled, and being glued to a small television in the kitchen watching a cartoon about gnomes who lived in the forest. Meals were often cans of Hormel chili layered over Evangeline Maid bread and hotdogs that had been boiled in tap water. Sometimes, we had Hamburger Helper. The first things I ever learned how to cook were Betty Crocker cake mixes from the box with matching frosting in a cardboard tube. The worst thing I ever made was gumbo from a box — and even thinking about it still makes me turn green.
Healthcare wasn’t much different. My grandmother had never brought her kids to the doctor. Determined to be a better mom that her predecessor, my own mother brought us to the pediatrician for every case of the sniffles. Hours upon hours of my childhood were spend in the doctor’s office looking at Norman Rockwell prints and flipping through old editions of Highlights. Additional hours were then spent wandering the aisles of the local pharmacy, known back then as “The Cottage.” I’d read the labels on Centrum multivitamins, explore the flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans, and carefully study all of the porcelain knick knacks on the top shelves, wondering which one I’d buy if I ever had the money.
I bit my nails growing up, so badly that they often bled. When I’d lose a tooth, I’d push the sore in my gums to taste the iron. I loved to be outside with my dogs and horses, but more often than not, I found myself in the car — running errands, darting from one place to the next, often sitting in the front seat while I tried to finish my homework or read whatever had been assigned. I was a year younger than everyone else in my class, and I struggled to connect with others. We were never exactly on the same page, and I always felt perpetually behind. Maybe that’s why I became a sick child. Maybe it was all the processed food; maybe it was lack of sunlight; maybe it was the hours on end spent sitting in front of the microwave watching cheese melt — but I never felt well.
The only option available back then was the Scientific Tradition — the pediatricians, the specialists, the diagnosticians. Soon words were being thrown around like mono, asthma, and bronchitis. In time, medical offices felt like revolving doors in which my mother and I would spin in and out of in exchange for some fabulous word. Of course that word always led to more problems, more money, more experts, more pills, more misery. I learned how to become the perfect patient. I could practically draw my own blood. But at some point, something snapped. I was tired of inhalers, labs, and pills. I was tired of evolving stories and their mosaic of matching words. One doctor thought I had scarring in my lungs from whooping cough, another diagnosed chronic bronchitis, a third said it was asthma, and a fourth did a complete scan of my lungs to conclude that nothing at all was wrong. Which was it? I’ll never know.
Yet the Scientific Tradition seemed to fail us year after year, diagnosis after diagnosis, one prescription after the next. That’s why my mother turned to the world of supplements. Instead of going to the doctor’s office, we went to the bookstore and purchased massive tomes on vitamins. We spent hours reading, researching, learning, and seeking. Instead of wandering the aisles of the local pharmacy, we were meticulously searching GNC for powders, pills, and gel caps. Gone were the Jelly Bellies and porcelain figures; now I’d entered the world of protein shakes and SAMe. And it was around this time that my father realized that his arteries were clogged, requiring multiple stints. The candy I could live without; the salt — not so much. Nevertheless, salt was completely removed from our family diet at the exact same time my mother started taking the concept of food more seriously. Goodbye Little Debbie — hello steamed vegetables.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that shift in diet (and away from pharmaceuticals) was opening the door for another healing tradition: the heroic one. I was in college by then, so I joined the local gym and started training for marathons and triathlons. I would eat the same six meals every single day, spread out over a perfect schedule to include an extremely precise number of calories. Egg whites only, broccoli steamed in plastic (in the microwave), extreme lean proteins, and dense protein shakes. At first, I was chiseled like stone; then I became puffy, inflamed, and sick. “You’re the healthiest sick person I’ve ever met,” was a phrase I heard often.
But in the heroic tradition, you’re supposed to suffer. Suffering is the path to wellness. And that path soon led me to drastic and aggressive detoxes, liver and gallbladder flushes, green smoothies, 4oz of wheatgrass a day, and the raw vegan phase (which could bankrupt a person before they could even start an argument about raw honey), regular colonics, hot yoga, and all the alfalfa sprouts you can eat. At first, I felt AMAZING as the inflammation subsided; but then it all came back with a vengeance. That’s the trouble with the heroic tradition. You convince yourself that you deserve to suffer, that denying yourself what you really want is actually good for you, that it will be worth it in the end — but when the whole lie collapses right under your feet, it feels as if there is no one to blame but yourself. After all, if you constantly tell yourself that failure is not an option, when you inevitably fail — and you will — that leaves you with nothing but frailty, malnourishment, and heaps of self-loathing.
In my case, that self-loathing brought with it depression and the kind of “fuck it” attitude that leads you to gorging on cheeseburgers, tater tots, old fashioned cocktails, lots of Belgian beer, and finishing an entire large pizza by yourself in front of the TV. I had been starving for so long I couldn’t resist the steaks, mountains of cheese, pints of ice cream, or any other indulgence that crossed my path. That’s how I gained about forty extra pounds. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to be healthy; it was because both the Scientific and Heroic Traditions had led me directly to that point. I had tried the way of the experts, the MDs, the gurus, and the granola-types. Neither extreme had been sustainable or truly helpful. And so I ate and drank myself to rock bottom, which, oddly enough, is the name of a bar I frequented at the time.
Back then, I was running a boutique copywriting agency in Chicago, working 80-hour weeks, smoking non-stop, drinking way too much alcohol, and imagining my perfect MadMen life without the constricting lingerie when suddenly, acid reflux brought my best Don Draper impression to a screeching halt. Oh, and gout. Let’s not forget the gout. Most painful experience of my life! But I suddenly went from gorging on anything and everything in my post-vegan existence to not being able to eat anything at all without excruciating pain crawling up my esophagus like the Lamisil goblin. My diet then became watermelon, grapes, and celery juice — leading me right into my fruitarian phase.
Somehow falling for the heroic tradition yet again, I found guru after guru who recommended lymphatic cleanses, fasting, ferments, alkaline diets, and more. And I tried them all, with the crown jewel being a 15-day grape fast that promptly removed all of the extra weight and then some. (When I visited my hometown, people asked my family if I was horribly ill and dying — that’s how thin I became.) But unsurprisingly, health continued to elude me as I read book after book convincing me that humans were only meant to eat fruit, and that such a diet was in fact, all I’d ever need. Of course, if you only eat fruit for months on end, eventually you’re going to want a salad, a crunch, or even a piece of meat. So there went that theory…highlighting the reality of so many extremes that are promoted as the perfect human diet.
But the silver lining of that experience was that I finally started learning about herbs. My neighborhood’s local co-op had a wall of medicinal herbs you could buy by the ounce for next to nothing, so I made little baggies of the stuff and headed home, ready to experiment. Shortly thereafter, I realized that I wanted to study herbalism, but it was so overwhelming. I’d get books on the subject, but all of the recipes required twenty different plants, all kinds of powders, mix and match, yada yada. To make one recipe would end up costing two hundred bucks of start up cost, and I had no idea which plants were the ones I needed and which were just extra. Visiting MountainRoseHerbs.com without knowing wtf is going on is like getting dropped in a foreign country and suddenly realizing everyone’s drinks were put on your tab. Not ideal.
So I dabbled, and I learned. I found Burdock root at my local Korean grocery store and spent about an hour finely shaving the root into strips, then drying them in the sun for storage. I remember smoking Damiana, and becoming obsessed with all skin products and lip balms that used it. I continued to play with ferments, I created medicinal broths, I infused honey, and made friends at the farmer’s market with a couple of kids who foraged Stinging Nettles to make extra money. Little by little, plants wove their way into my life.
Then, after an eight year stretch in Chicago, doing everything from journalism and theatre criticism to playwriting and brand consulting, I moved back to my native Louisiana to write my novel about plagues and pandemics. And just as an actual pandemic began, I discovered The School of the Sacred Wild. Two years later, I was certified in holistic herbalism. I then went on to study with the great herbalist Matthew Wood, then branched out into honeybee medicine, or apitherapy, with Ariella Daily. I got Circadian Certified with the Quantum Biology Collective then took an opportunity to be mentored by Carrie Bennett, who is absolutely amazing. But through all of these ups and downs, and all of these extremes, I learned that there is no-one-size-fits-all solution to every situation or every individual.
Over the years, I have seen plants do magical things, and I have experienced that magic for myself. I have first hand knowledge of how circadian rhythms and quantum biology can completely transform human health. I know the healing power of the honeybee. But even then, I know it’s not all or nothing. When I recently learned that an old trauma to a tooth had caused a serious abscess that required a root canal and antibiotics, I followed the Scientific Tradition. When my stomach felt heavy and sick from eating rich foods, I used the tools I had gained from the Heroic Tradition to rebalance my digestive fire and support my lymphatic system. But on a daily basis, I choose to the follow the Wise Woman Tradition.
That tradition is the one that focuses on nourishment, which is the one thing that seems to be lacking from all other options. Wild weeds, like Stinging Nettle, Chickweed, Burdock, and Red Clover, are deeply nourishing. They fill us up with trace minerals, vitamins, and fortitude — far more than any supplement I’ve ever purchased at GNC or otherwise. When I’m feeling ill, healing plants like Elder, Echinacea, and Calendula have personally helped me more than Sudafed or NyQuil. And during times when I can’t sleep or feel groggy, nothing has transformed my health more than sunlight, grounding, and energized water. Yet our culture always emphasizes the extreme; it pushes us towards self-sacrifice and punishment rather than nourishment and following the cycles of Nature. We seldom rest when we know we should, we rarely eat what we’re really craving, and, in some cases, we no longer know what will nourish us. We have lost that connection with ourselves, probably because it was severed at childhood under the pressure of doing everything right.
But the truth is, there is no perfect solution. Sometimes we need a surgeon, and sometimes we just need a cup of tea. There are times when we might need meditation or yoga, and there are times when the right flower essence will do. The trick is knowing which tea is the one you need, which flower essence you should purchase or make, and what will be truly nourishing to who you are right now. That’s why I am writing this. Not to tell you my entire life story, but to reassure you that I’ve been there. I probably know why you’ve become jaded or cynical or frustrated. And even in a world of powerful algorithms, we still can’t seem to find what it is we’re really hungry for — what we really need. But maybe, just maybe, I can help you find it.
Book a Clarity Call and let’s see if we can find it together.
Amber
I absolutely love ALL of this! You have literally captured all the things so articulately 🙌🏻…I remember as a little girl always being hungry eating crap pizza like 4-5 slices or Bologna sandwiches and still being hungry… I didn’t understand then what my body really needed and was telling me! This holistic health rabbit hole is such a different journey for everyone but once you “get it” it’s the most rewarding… I see things so clearly now as I reflect on my past we have been so misled by “doctors” but very grateful for my experience to learn and teach my children what it truly means to heal and be healthy! Great post!! ❤️❤️❤️I am excited to learn more from you!