Maybe it’s my aries nature, but I often channel my fire and rage into a project. Many years ago, after a second, pretty intense and devastating miscarriage, I tore up a huge grove of bittersweet in our yard and then turned my tools to an old overgrown patch of daylilies and forsythia. My friends and lover watched with a mix of fascination and concern as I hacked and shoveled and sweat, muttering things about how blue hydrangeas are the repressed suburban housewives of the plant world and need liberating. I still kind of think that.
Anyway, there is much to be rage full about, pretty much all the time- and this past week I was ignited by the passing of abortion bans in five states. So of course I began to dig up a patch in my yard to grow an abortion garden. I dream that many of us will start cultivating these powerful plants and tend to them in the wild- plants that have been used for centuries to support people to have sovereignty over their own bodies. Planting and tending plants is an embodied liberation and pleasure practice for me and for so many others, so I wrote a little post about my CSA (community supported abortion garden) to celebrate these fierce plants allies, which was met with so much excitement and interest and love.
I’m a witch and a plant lover, so I almost always will turn to the plants first when I’m needing support. I believe not only in the profound healing power of plants, but also in the profound ethics of community care, mutual aid, self-determination, & anti-capitalist, accessible medicine that is ideally rooted in our own ancestral lineages. My healing work is also rooted in, inspired by, and dedicated to disability justice and the belief that all bodies are unique and essential and that access to all kind of medicine and healing modalities is essential. In my healing practice, I have supported people moving through the depths of pain and suffering with ritual, remedies, touch, magic, and meds. As a practitioner, I have moved with intention and right pace, never offering more than my knowledge, capacity, or experience could hold. Now, in my 15th year of practice, I mentor others, and the first thing I often find myself saying is slow down.
I recognize that we are in a moment of crisis on this planet and that many of us are feeling an urgency and a call to bring our gifts and find new ways of living and healing and being – and that feeling of urgency, plus the intensity of capitalism and the pressures to perform, produce, and survive can sometimes push us to rush our own process. There is a funny meme (I’m not that old, I know about memes) of a person walking up stairs, but skipping like 4 steps, and the joke was about people who haven’t studied or apprenticed with elders and put in the time before declaring themselves a healer, a bruja, a witch, a shaman etc. On one hand, I’m so here for young people giving the finger to youth oppression and hierarchy and gatekeeping! As a middle aged lady I am amazed on a daily basis by the brilliance and wisdom of young genius organizers and witches. And also there is no substitute for what is gained with time and experience. This is especially, especially true for white people with no connection to a root tradition, who are quick to pick and choose and appropriate and mine healing traditions and practices of BIPOC folks. One of my teachers believes that you really should study under mentors and be in practice for 10 years before you start teaching others. Another teacher told me I had to sweep the floor and wash the bottles for a year before I could work with clients. I started my practice before social media, and also before the wave of witch chic, and I worked my ass off to build a practice through word of mouth – giving readings in dyke bars and at street fairs and art parties and sex worker benefits.
I share all of this in light of this outpouring of excitement and interest in herbal abortion care. I work with plants because I am in love with them and also because they offer themselves as a glorious Fuck You to white heteropatriarchy, and as accessible support especially to folks for whom the medical industrial complex is a site of violence and oppression. And let’s not forget that these healing traditions (often held and remembered by those on the edges, BIPOC folks, trans and GNC folks, those for whom these practices have been life saving) take time to learn and are not to be held lightly, especially when talking about herbal abortifacients. If you are inspired to learn more, start small. Read as much as you can (there are folks who are busy compiling resources and I will share those as soon as they are available) and more importantly, find humxns who have been doing this work for years.
Crisis often gifts us with the opportunity for forging and deepening connection- do some work to find herbalists in your area who have loads of experience and find out how you can support and learn with them. They probably don’t have a website. Grow the plants (rue, pennyroyal, black cohosh, blue cohosh, parsley, wild carrot, mugwort, tansy- to name a few). Get to know them well. They are power plants – most of them range from a little toxic to highly toxic. And finally, do not try this alone or practice on someone without consulting a VERY experienced practitioner– it can result in severe organ damage or be life-threatening, and seriously it is not a walk in the park physically.
There are people creating lists of practitioners doing this work- let’s keep weaving and making sure no one is left out of the circles of care. Let’s be crafty, wise, fierce, and resourceful, and also let’s know our limits and be humble.
And in the end, fuck this because we should not have to be scheming underground because abortions should be free and legal and accessible to everyone who wants one.
Hell yes, let’s learn more. And also, proceed with caution and wisdom.
some resources to start with:
http://www.sisterzeus.com/PregT.htm
http://www.sisterzeus.com/Abortif.htm
https://we.riseup.net/assets/231618/herbalabortion.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/27/inside-the-secret-network-providing-home-abortions-across-the-us
some books:
Eve’s Herbs by John Riddle
Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance by John Riddle
Sex and Herbs and Birth Control by Ann Hibner Koblitz
