The threads of the world are fraying. Each day, we lose species, language, soil, and culture. In just a handful of generations, we have been sold the narrative of radical independence: Be the army of one. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Strive for the picket fence and the giant bank account. The philosophy and practice of extractive capitalism have created a world of loneliness and division.
But how do we even begin to imagine and understand the potential for solutions when the problems are so vast?
(Video and Narration by Sarah Wu)
Remembering Connection
In times like these, I remember. I turn to the soil and ask it what it needs. I turn my face to the sun and feel the ancient kiss of warmth that every single one of my ancestors felt. That luminous, animating force—so simple, so eternal. When the sun touches your face, you are reminded that it touches every living creature, past, present, and future.
To remember is to throw out threads, hoping they catch on the spinning wheel of life—turning round and round into the cords of existence. To be shuttled through the warp and weft, weaving the tapestry of life.
Yet, our world has slowly become like a microfiber blanket—extracted, industrialized, shipped around the globe to fit the latest need and style. And when those microplastic fibers become obsolete, ugly, or forgotten, they drift to the forest and ocean floors, where they remain, obstructing the vital flow of life. Unlike the feathers of birds, they do not decompose. They do not nourish the cycle of renewal.
Our being is deeply interwoven with every other living creature and biological system on Earth. With each breath, each tear, each laugh—with the newborn and the recently passed—our being becomes part of all. Our fluids and tissues eventually turn to nitrogen, carbon, and water. Our bones return to fragmented stone.
And where do our spirits go? Perhaps only the trees really know, for they have seen countless of us rise and fall.
Interconnection and interdependence—these are not just buzzwords for the ecological movement. They are the Sacred Balance itself, the rhythm that swings from night to day, through seasonal shifts and tectonic dances. But we, in our crazy, beautiful humanness, have been taught that radical independence is the path to success.
This ethos has made us ravenous consumers, selfish opportunists. It tells us: Freedom at any cost. At the cost of lives on the front lines, of animals dead beneath the rubble. It may even be the root of the epidemic of loneliness, of our obsession with beauty and youth.
I feel the tug of this within myself. After all, weren’t we all once asked what we wanted to be when we grew up? Doctor. Lawyer. Engineer. How cute it was when we said artist or astronomer. How they patted our heads and told us we’d grow out of it.
And how crazy did I sound when I told people I wanted to be an herbalist?
How do they look at me now?
One of the greatest gifts my father ever gave me was a phrase he would say whenever I complained about work as a teenager: “That’s why they call it a job, babe.”
That phrase pushed me to dedicate myself to something more. I refused to just work for a living—I wanted to do what I loved.
When the plants found me, they took a lonely, angsty, defiant young person and showed her that she had a place in it all. I found my ecological and social niche. I found home.
Herbalism isn’t just a medical profession or a community service. It reminds us that when we work with living beings, we have a responsibility—of care, of humility, of reciprocity.
This is the part of the classical alchemical proverb that speaks to the pattern-based, corresponded relationship between human experience, planetary life systems, the universe, and the soul.
Through the lens of science, we see the same patterns repeating across all ecosystems and organisms. Take the hydrological cycle: water molecules rise from deep reservoirs, pulled by capillary action through the roots of plants, traveling through their branches into the leaves, to be transpired into the lower atmosphere—condensing, forming clouds, returning to the land as rain. This cycle mirrors our own: our skin, our lungs, our inner waters. Each inhalation and exhalation is a ceaseless flow of life force, moving from one organism to the next, and to the next.
Our bodies contain hundreds of trillions of microbes—our second genome. These unseen life forms are the diversity needed for our survival and health.
When we imagine our flesh as a landscape, our breasts as mountains, our bellies as fertile valleys, our knees as deserts, we begin to see ourselves as Earth itself. From space, the microbial life covering our skin is as we are to the crust of the planet.
To reclaim our relationship with land is to know, deep in our bones, that they are kin to stone. To know that our living journey is one back to soil. One day, our vital force will transfer to another being.
This is the nature of eternity. This is life everlasting.
To reclaim our relationship with land is to treat the soil as you would your own skin. The waters as your own tears. Because essential and elemental—they are.
Knowing that we are both uniquely diverse and completely interconnected is the key to nurturing empathetic relationships—with ourselves and with life itself.
There is a mission, deeply embedded within extraction-based politics, business, and religion, to tear us apart. To convince us that we are separate. That we should hate, harm, and consume.
But with every breath, we are connected. With every tear, every bite of food, we share something in common with another.
To see yourself as a thread in a great, colorful tapestry is to know yourself as essential to the vitality of the whole.
Not just to humankind—but to all kind.
You may also enjoy
Topics: Sustainability, Herbalism
Sarah Wu is a passionate educational curator, facilitator and mentor dedicated to adult learners of all backgrounds. A representative for Mother Nature as a writer and teacher of Deep Ecology, Therapeutic Ecology and Whole Systems Design shared through the lens of Herbalism and Permaculture. Sarah Wu has 21 years studying and practicing the science, art and craft of Planetary Eclectic Herbal Medicine. Her foundation is in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Wise Woman Traditions, actively practicing clinical herbalism in the Neo-Tropics for 12 years. With 27 and counting, 75+hour Permaculture Design Courses (PDC) in her portfolio. Sarah along with her teaching partner Lala Palmieri wrote and developed the unique 200-hour, four week curriculum, Permaculture for the Herbalist’s Path, a merging of the two broad interdisciplinary studies into a whole systems perspective on human health in relation to the natural word of the practicing herbalist with the foundation of the PDC. A producer at heart, Sarah loves curating courses, workshops and events tailored to community, deep ecology, regenerative design and holistic health that highlight diverse and dynamic facilitators. Sarah is one of three founders and facilitators of Ecology Academy, an international school of Permaculture, Herbalism & Mycology. Sarah is the friendly Village Witch, co-founder and producer of Envision Festival, Costa Rica (2011-present), where she curates the educational offerings spanning six stages and 300 hours. She founded the unique Herbal First Aid Clinic Training that merges conventional allopathic and natural alternative first aid. Graduating over 125 students over the past 5 years, the clinic cares for over 2000 patients at Envision Festival annually.
The threads of the world are fraying. Each day, we lose species, language, soil, and culture. In just a handful of generations, we have been sold the narrative of radical independence: Be the army of one. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Strive for the picket fence and the giant bank account. The philosophy and practice of extractive capitalism have created a world of loneliness and division.
But how do we even begin to imagine and understand the potential for solutions when the problems are so vast?
(Video and Narration by Sarah Wu)
Remembering Connection
In times like these, I remember. I turn to the soil and ask it what it needs. I turn my face to the sun and feel the ancient kiss of warmth that every single one of my ancestors felt. That luminous, animating force—so simple, so eternal. When the sun touches your face, you are reminded that it touches every living creature, past, present, and future.
To remember is to throw out threads, hoping they catch on the spinning wheel of life—turning round and round into the cords of existence. To be shuttled through the warp and weft, weaving the tapestry of life.
Yet, our world has slowly become like a microfiber blanket—extracted, industrialized, shipped around the globe to fit the latest need and style. And when those microplastic fibers become obsolete, ugly, or forgotten, they drift to the forest and ocean floors, where they remain, obstructing the vital flow of life. Unlike the feathers of birds, they do not decompose. They do not nourish the cycle of renewal.
Our being is deeply interwoven with every other living creature and biological system on Earth. With each breath, each tear, each laugh—with the newborn and the recently passed—our being becomes part of all. Our fluids and tissues eventually turn to nitrogen, carbon, and water. Our bones return to fragmented stone.
And where do our spirits go? Perhaps only the trees really know, for they have seen countless of us rise and fall.
Interconnection and interdependence—these are not just buzzwords for the ecological movement. They are the Sacred Balance itself, the rhythm that swings from night to day, through seasonal shifts and tectonic dances. But we, in our crazy, beautiful humanness, have been taught that radical independence is the path to success.
This ethos has made us ravenous consumers, selfish opportunists. It tells us: Freedom at any cost. At the cost of lives on the front lines, of animals dead beneath the rubble. It may even be the root of the epidemic of loneliness, of our obsession with beauty and youth.
I feel the tug of this within myself. After all, weren’t we all once asked what we wanted to be when we grew up? Doctor. Lawyer. Engineer. How cute it was when we said artist or astronomer. How they patted our heads and told us we’d grow out of it.
And how crazy did I sound when I told people I wanted to be an herbalist?
How do they look at me now?
One of the greatest gifts my father ever gave me was a phrase he would say whenever I complained about work as a teenager: “That’s why they call it a job, babe.”
That phrase pushed me to dedicate myself to something more. I refused to just work for a living—I wanted to do what I loved.
When the plants found me, they took a lonely, angsty, defiant young person and showed her that she had a place in it all. I found my ecological and social niche. I found home.
Herbalism isn’t just a medical profession or a community service. It reminds us that when we work with living beings, we have a responsibility—of care, of humility, of reciprocity.
This is the part of the classical alchemical proverb that speaks to the pattern-based, corresponded relationship between human experience, planetary life systems, the universe, and the soul.
Through the lens of science, we see the same patterns repeating across all ecosystems and organisms. Take the hydrological cycle: water molecules rise from deep reservoirs, pulled by capillary action through the roots of plants, traveling through their branches into the leaves, to be transpired into the lower atmosphere—condensing, forming clouds, returning to the land as rain. This cycle mirrors our own: our skin, our lungs, our inner waters. Each inhalation and exhalation is a ceaseless flow of life force, moving from one organism to the next, and to the next.
Our bodies contain hundreds of trillions of microbes—our second genome. These unseen life forms are the diversity needed for our survival and health.
When we imagine our flesh as a landscape, our breasts as mountains, our bellies as fertile valleys, our knees as deserts, we begin to see ourselves as Earth itself. From space, the microbial life covering our skin is as we are to the crust of the planet.
To reclaim our relationship with land is to know, deep in our bones, that they are kin to stone. To know that our living journey is one back to soil. One day, our vital force will transfer to another being.
This is the nature of eternity. This is life everlasting.
To reclaim our relationship with land is to treat the soil as you would your own skin. The waters as your own tears. Because essential and elemental—they are.
Knowing that we are both uniquely diverse and completely interconnected is the key to nurturing empathetic relationships—with ourselves and with life itself.
There is a mission, deeply embedded within extraction-based politics, business, and religion, to tear us apart. To convince us that we are separate. That we should hate, harm, and consume.
But with every breath, we are connected. With every tear, every bite of food, we share something in common with another.
To see yourself as a thread in a great, colorful tapestry is to know yourself as essential to the vitality of the whole.
Not just to humankind—but to all kind.
You may also enjoy
Topics: Sustainability, Herbalism
Sarah Wu is a passionate educational curator, facilitator and mentor dedicated to adult learners of all backgrounds. A representative for Mother Nature as a writer and teacher of Deep Ecology, Therapeutic Ecology and Whole Systems Design shared through the lens of Herbalism and Permaculture. Sarah Wu has 21 years studying and practicing the science, art and craft of Planetary Eclectic Herbal Medicine. Her foundation is in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Wise Woman Traditions, actively practicing clinical herbalism in the Neo-Tropics for 12 years. With 27 and counting, 75+hour Permaculture Design Courses (PDC) in her portfolio. Sarah along with her teaching partner Lala Palmieri wrote and developed the unique 200-hour, four week curriculum, Permaculture for the Herbalist’s Path, a merging of the two broad interdisciplinary studies into a whole systems perspective on human health in relation to the natural word of the practicing herbalist with the foundation of the PDC. A producer at heart, Sarah loves curating courses, workshops and events tailored to community, deep ecology, regenerative design and holistic health that highlight diverse and dynamic facilitators. Sarah is one of three founders and facilitators of Ecology Academy, an international school of Permaculture, Herbalism & Mycology. Sarah is the friendly Village Witch, co-founder and producer of Envision Festival, Costa Rica (2011-present), where she curates the educational offerings spanning six stages and 300 hours. She founded the unique Herbal First Aid Clinic Training that merges conventional allopathic and natural alternative first aid. Graduating over 125 students over the past 5 years, the clinic cares for over 2000 patients at Envision Festival annually.
