Through the ups and downs of planetary, interpersonal, and intercultural changes, plants have always accompanied, inspired, and nourished us. We are surrounded by plants. We eat, wear, live in, and live by plants. Plants remind us of what’s most important: sun, soil, water, time in nature, friends. The power of slow growth and mycelial interconnection, of building communities and sustaining mutual flourishing.
When we bring awareness, intention, and love into our relationships with these plant beings, we call on our ancestral and plantcestral wisdom to persevere through seemingly insurmountable odds. This is the ineffable power of roots rooting and leaves rising, of cooking fires,bubbling teas and soups, rendered fats and delicious concoctions, of survival– and thrival.
Herbalism is activism. Tend to the people, plants, and places that you love, and let them tend to you. Sit with plants. Drink your tea, eat your weeds, tend your gardens, make your art, and love your life. Share that love, and ripple your personal activism into the world. What are the plants calling forth from you? Listen for your personal call to action, then change the world in your own unique way. Small, authentic actions grow large, together. These are simple medicines for complex times; the everyday plant-powered quiet, but life-changing magic of cocreating with plants.
Get to know yourself and the world through the Five Elements of East Asian medicine. The Elements are archetypal mirrors of the natural world within and all around. They reflect the cycles of the seasons and our lives, the sacred ecology of our individual and collective bodies and Spirits.
In this series, five plant representatives will guide us on a journey through the Elements, illuminating different facets of herbalism as activism over the coming months:
Stay tuned for the next part of this series in just a few weeks!
This series is adapted from my keynote for the 2026 Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference, “Herbalism is Activism: Simple Medicines for Complex Times.” In the original talk, we practiced Qigong, touched and smelled five plants, shared our voices, danced with our hands, and were moved by plants. Engage with these articles in a similar spirit: read aloud, practice the movements, do the visualizations. For each plant, hold them, sip them, or spritz their hydrosols. Breathe these words to life.
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