My Clinical Herbalist Journey
Where One Good Salad Took Me
Greetings. I’ve been blogging and writing A Happy Home since 2008. Since then, we incorporated podcasting (2010), began publishing books (2015), and changed the name to A Happy Home Media, which you can now find HERE.
I’ve been wanting to begin a second endeavor around health and well being, specifically around nutrition and herbal medicine within a Christian worldview, and so I am hereby launching Benevolent Healer. If you’ve already found yourself here as I was sneaking behind the scenes (I do see you!), you’re already way ahead of me and I am thrilled to walk into a room where some of you are already here and waiting. My hope is that this place will be inspirational, educational, and encouraging to incorporate real and practical helps in navigating an increasingly toxic and, dare I say, corrupted world in the realm of healthy living.
Below is a reprint of my journey into clinical herbalism, first published on the sister site of A Happy Home Media. I’d love for you to comment below, and tell me (us!) where you are at in your own walk in holistic nutrition and herbal medicine, what you’d love to specifically learn about, or just what part of the world you’re living in and what’s growing around you right now.
Whether you are here as a subscriber or not, free or paid, I want to welcome you and I look forward to learning and growing together 🌿
3 John 1:2 Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
Long before I started putting mushrooms in my coffee and calendula oil on my face, everything I understood about food and medicine came from the commissary on base for our weekly shopping and at the doctor’s office to get my regular shots. And although my mother kept a sanitary house and a little garden, all I really remember from that time regarding cleaning practices and harvesting are the yellow rubber gloves and plenty of red geraniums. I think I had a pretty normal childhood in the 70’s and 80’s: no one I knew ate kale chips.
When my husband and I got married in 1992, we were happy to have health insurance through my teaching profession, and our meals revolved around easy, processed foods: Hamburger Helper (Italian!), bagged salad, English muffins, Little Caesar’s Pizza (pizza! pizza!), skinless chicken breasts, lowfat milk, and I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter (and it wasn’t!).
And what does food have to do with a herbal journey? Everything, for food IS medicine and is good for strengthening the heart (Ps 104:15). I just didn’t know it at the time; I thought food naturally came wrapped in plastic or cartons or cans or wax. It was cleaner that way, at least, and of course USDA approved.
I first have to give appreciation to my teacher friend, Jennifer, for the pebbles she put in my shoe regarding my understanding of food. For when Tom and I joined her and her husband for a home cooked meal, she served us fresh pasta (what?! you can MAKE this?), grated parmesan at the table (what is this flaky dry and slightly salty thing? and why don’t you have the green can?), and finished everything off with baking a cobbler that began with melting an entire stick of BUTTER (!!!)*
During this time in our lives, Tom and I had had enough of southern California’s smog, heat, concrete, and crowds, and we began our search for a place with clean air, trees and water. A few years later, I resigned from my job, we packed up the yellow truck, and we drove ourselves and our dog and cat to the Pacific Northwest. Little did I know the town we would land in, and the old hotel restaurant we reserved a table at, would introduce us to new wild foods (otherwise known as “fresh-from-the-farm”). That night, we both stared at the magnificent salads before us. On each plate was a beautiful array of greens in multiple colors, fresh chopped fruits and vegetables, edible flowers, and an in-house made salad dressing on top.
“What IS this?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Tom responded, “but it is aMAZING.”
I’m sure we licked our plates clean. I’m sure we savored our suppers. And I am definitely sure we ordered dessert. Our eyes AND our palettes were now wide open.
It didn’t take me long to discover the town’s natural foods store. All of the produce was so fresh, and I immediately chose organic (why, oh why, would anyone NOT?). The bulk foods area was impressive and I introduced myself to cranberry beans, unsweetened coconut flakes, bright green dried seasonings, and unrefined sugar. The grocery store became my playground, and I quickly got to know the fishmonger, the butcher, and the multitude of stockers and checkers.
It took a couple of years of detoxing from being on the Pill before my body would cooperate with me to conceive a baby. No doctor ever told me that this drug would not only rob my body of B vitamins, but would act as an abortifacient. I’m sure I wouldn’t have cared anyway, and it wasn’t until I repented and put my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ that He saw fit to grant me motherhood. I wish I could say I put massive action behind eating nutrient dense foods during my pregnancy, but in reality I was flippant about my meals, despite that incredible grocery store. I wasn’t drinking soft drinks every day but I also didn’t change my diet at all—which included soft drinks. “After all,” I recall thinking, “even younger women than I eat worse than I do and their babies are fine.”
I suffered at the end of gestation with dreadful edema, my ankles like pudgy sausages. We passed the due date, my blood pressure took flight, and suddenly my plans of a dreamy home birth were slayed. I spent three days in the hospital getting pumped with awful drugs trying for an induction, and though I used my Bradley Method training to get through the bogus contractions without pain relief, we ended up with a doctor at the door relaying the news our baby was no longer doing well, and we needed a cesarian. “No s…,” I replied, “you’ve been pumping this baby with drugs for three days.” My language obviously had yet to be sanctified.
Once home and recovered (partially, anyway, the physical and emotional trauma took years to heal), the gravitas of raising this very real person in my arms took root. I also suffered greatly from the lack of sleep and my hormones were in a monstrous state; I needed help to heal, settle my emotions, and overcome the ignorance I had regarding nutrition. I’ll say right here how grateful I am this was 1997, and I had no access to a smartphone or social media whatsoever. I would have utterly drowned in scrolling. Instead, I had a book in my hand each and every time I nursed my baby. I read while my baby napped and I read before bed. I read books on theology, vaccination, nutrition and natural healing. I read cookbooks and books on motherhood written by Christian women. I went through stacks and stacks, and spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on books to open my eyes and give me hope.
By the time my maternity leave expired, I knew I needed to stay home with my baby. Unfortunately, my sense (or nonsense) of obligation kept me teaching in the classroom until the school year ended, when my baby was nine months old. I finally resigned (no one at work said “congratulations” or “you’re doing the right thing”) and that summer was glorious, even though I gave up steady pay, health insurance, and a retirement plan. I plopped the whole responsibility onto my husband, trusted the Lord, and began to learn to love homemaking.
I was a little unsettled however when the leaves turned. September was, for my entire life, “back to school”. It was odd to hear children marching off to the bus stop in the early foggy mornings without finishing my makeup to rush out the door. I needed to “go to school” myself, in order to keep my mind occupied, so I not only followed whatever rabbit trails my reading invited me to, I applied for and was accepted into the Holistic Nutrition program for a Bachelor of Science, through Clayton College of Natural Healing in Georgia. My father tried to discourage me, as he confessed his own lack of discipline to continue studies via post (there were no online courses!), but I knew I needed the accountability and a bit of hand holding to wade through the overwhelming amount of material available on nutrition. The school I chose wasn’t accredited, but by then I was already growing suspect of whatever the government said was good and right and true so I didn’t care. By that time, I already had several awakenings through gaining my first Bachelors at the University of California, teaching in the public schools, reading the food pyramid guidelines, understanding what the FDA and USDA approves of as healthy, and in my experience with my first pregnancy and delivery. I no longer blindly trusted the corner supermarket or the pharmacy, started buying real butter, and cancelled my subscription to Cooking Light magazine.
Meanwhile, I had to learn how to cook. I mean, really cook. From scratch. I wasn’t sure what that genuinely meant, even though my mother cooked many meals that way. I was usually at school, outside playing, or upstairs doing my homework. And if I wasn’t, I was getting shooed away so that she could get her work done in peace. So food just appeared on my plate at suppertime, and I had no idea how it got there. I began to learn with a cookbook I had purchased from La Leche League, from when I had sought their help in learning how to breastfeed. I was practicing with a doll on top of my rounded pregnant belly, and noticed that the snack foods on their table looked nothing like Ritz crackers and Hershey’s Kisses. There was homemade hummus, cut celery sticks, cheese, and interesting green things. The book LLL published at the time was titled, “Whole Foods for the Whole Family”, and as I flipped through the pages one afternoon considering where to start, I decided it would be with brown rice. Because brown rice: that sounded healthy, right?
Thankfully, there were no deadlines in my Holistic Nutrition education, because raising a fresh baby and caring for a home as a new mother and homemaker was a full time job. I simply read one book at a time, did one assignment at a time, took one test at a time. I mailed in my work, I received feedback and my grades back. It felt good not having to decide which book was next. I needed the assignments decided for me because my life was suddenly full of decision making and I was already overwhelmed. I enjoyed every book I read, every counselor I had, and, in fact, the entire process. I got my Bachelor of Science with High Honors in 2002, and then a Master of Science, again with High Honors, in 2011. I was offered the PhD program, but by then I was a mother of six and getting a little bored with learning about nutrition. I turned my focus to medicine.
Growing up, medicine in my world looked like the round plastic bottles in the bathroom medicine cabinet, cherry flavored cough syrup, and regular vaccinations. Although I began life as a healthy and plump baby, I had many races to the emergency room for febrile seizures. I recall looking back at my records and wondering if they were vaccine injuries, and was horrified to learn I was prescribed barbituates until I was a toddler (presumably to keep from having these seizures). My parents were attentive and loving; they trusted their doctors to know what was best. I think most of the entire world at that time did that.
The conditions that hounded me throughout my growing years were post natal drip (“Stop sniffing!” I recall being told, over and over and over again), strep throat, teeth crowding and cavities, and painful menstrual cramps. I caught chicken pox and mono. I took Flintstone’s multivitamins, brushed with flouride toothpastes, and when needed, swallowed syrups, pain relievers, fever reducers, and antibiotics. I still can recall the scent of Vick’s Vapor Rub. It was, as I already mentioned, a typical childhood.
Perhaps it was that original farm fresh salad that opened my eyes to a world of fresh, organic foods that led me to consider alternatives to factory pharmaceuticals. I don’t know. But when my firstborn child had a small rash on her neck, I wanted a more naturally minded physician, and discovered naturopathy. The doctor there gave me a bottle of small, white pellets, which was my introduction to homeopathy. Also during that time, I saw an ad in our town’s Parks and Recreation Guide for a “Herbs and Kids” class, and was intrigued enough to go. The speaker, a herbalist, didn’t send me marching to an allopathic doctor for the rash. Instead, she talked to me about chickweed and food allergies, and about wholesome foods, made from scratch. I remember asking her, “And where do I get this fresh flour you’re talking about to bake bread with?” Her answer: “Grind your own.”
Grind my own? GRIND my own? What did that even mean?! I had never seen a wheat berry in my life. I never even considered how bread was made. I never even considered that bread WAS made. Back to the whole foods cookbooks I went.
I wanted to find a Christian perspective on using herbs as medicine. Although the school I found did not outright state, “We are Christian”, I found their evidence based education a safe place to begin, and paid my fees to the Vintage Remedies School of Natural Health. Much like the schoolwork I had done with my Holistic Nutrition endeavor, I simply moved forward little by little, one book at a time, in between caring for all of the children I had, homeschooling them, taking care of a home, milking goats, and birthing more babies. I was again grateful for the lack of deadlines. I got my certificate as a Family Herbalist, and then continued on to gain my certificate as a Clinical Master Herbalist in 2014. I remember laughing even then, “master”! I knew I had a LOT more to learn and would never in my lifetime consider myself a master of anything at all.
Somewhere in that timeframe, I learned about the Weston A Price Foundation, and joined up as a chapter leader for our local area, in order to help other people also have their eyes opened to uncommon salads, real food, and alternative medicines. I gave classes and talks and went to conferences and workshops. I also made gallons of herbal tincture and oils, probably a hundred or more salves, and more tea blends that I had room to store. I saw clients here and there, educating and inspiring them to make the great shift in their heads regarding food and medicine, and wrote up many case studies. My kids grew up (and are growing up) with regular chiropractic care, homeopathic remedies, droppers of tinctures, mugs of hot infusions and decoctions, cod liver oil, plenty of bone broth, and their foods enriched with sea vegetables and foraged greens. Only one of my nine children thus far has had need for antibiotics (after getting bit by a dog), and none had cavities until they were old enough to independently partake of the world’s Vanity Fair offerings.
Today, I am still practicing quietly within my own home, as my family is my priority. I still see clients now and again, perhaps a few times a month. We normally cook from scratch three times a day, and we don’t own a medicine cabinet in the traditional sense. Our cabinets instead overflow with herbs (bark, leaves, flowers, roots, powders…), sea vegetables, traditional Ayurvedic and Chinese blends, homeopathic remedies, and seasonings of every sort. And although I’ve decluttered and minimized my household goods over and over again (that’s what moving three times in eight years will do), I still have a condensed beloved library that helps me to do my job as well as I can. And yes, I’m still learning.
The last few years, however, of the fiasco of COVID and all that it entailed, has spurned me to share what I have learned over the last couple of decades. I desire greatly to be the friend who puts before you the lovely and tasty fresh-from-the-garden salad, introduces you to arnica, and teaches you how to make the salve you’ll want for the boo boo’s of your little ones. I hope that my story inspired you. There are further reasons of why to start this journey into natural healing, and we’ll get into that soon.