The mission of the Solidarity Apothecary is to materially support revolutionary struggles and communities with plant medicines to strengthen collective autonomy, self-defence and resilience to climate change, capitalism and state violence. Each year, I review the work towards this goal.
This year I came out of the newborn trenches and into the toddler phase, a whole new level of joy, and exhaustion at the same time. But it’s meant I’ve been able to reconnect with myself again and focus more on the Solidarity Apothecary and its offerings, which I’ve loved.
On a personal level, the year brought some of the most challenging months of my life, leaving me as a single mother. I will share more when it feels right. The year also closed out with a three week inquest into the death of one of my closest friends, Taylor, who bled to death in prison in 2022. It was a harrowing time for so many reasons but I am grateful it is over and I pray that he can rest in peace while the rest of us continue trying to build a world without prisons.
Here are some of the things that went down in 2025 with the Solidarity Apothecary:
1. Herbal Care Packages
Herbal care packages have continued to be sent to people around the world! I’m so relieved that the request form system has been working so well and reduced so much work and friction. I feel it has also enabled people to feel more confident in asking for herbal support.
Here are some numbers. These are based on my database where I track what I send. It doesn’t include all the times I’ve shared medicines at events or informally amongst friends and comrades.
- 87 care packages went to people experiencing repression
- 18 packages went to prisoner family members
- 192 packages went to people involved in grassroots groups working for liberation in different ways. 56 medicines were also sent for use at the Earth First Winter Moot.
- 57 packages went to hunt saboteurs
- 2 sites of resistance requested packages receiving a bigger volume of medicines to distribute
With an average of 5 items in a pack, this is around 1780 medicines 💕.
On the form people have the option of saying they’d like a social media post for example to amplify their project or anti repression work. I’ve been absolutely hopeless at doing these posts, and it’s something I want to improve on in 2026.
Some of the groups happy to be publicly named include Abolitionist Healing Collective, Black Youth Project Jacksonville, Bournemouth Anarchists, Bristol Anarchist Black Cross, Bristol Free Shop, Devon County Hunt Sabs, Mad Pride Sheffield, Motor City Mobile Wellness, North London Hunt Saboteurs, Prisoners For Palestine, Radical Youth Space for Educations, Resist + Renew, Root and riot, Sheffield Radical Pride/Trans Support, Southampton Animal Action, StopL3Harris, Three Counties Hunt Sabs, and Trans Kids Deserve Better.
Individuals with solidarity call-outs include artist Tasnim Amin who is a working class artist who was violently arrested after stopping a raid on refugees and asylum seekers who were being sent to Bibby Stockholm barge. Donate here.
As well as Kendra Hannah who is asking for support to get out of a nursing home and into suitable disability accommodation. Donate here.
If you are interested in requesting a Herbal Care Package, please check out the page here with all the info.
2. Distributing the Prisoner’s Herbal to prisoners worldwide
It’s been a big year for the Prisoners Herbals distribution! Active Distribution, the anarchist publishers who printed the book, fronted the costs for 3000 more to get printed! Two thousand made their way across the Atlantic and the one thousand are now in the UK.
I cannot say thank you enough to Active for making this happen, as well as Midwest Books to Prisoners and Irelia from Cosmic Rose Apothecary for receiving the books and getting them out to people behind the prison walls.
It was also amazing that the book was translated by comrades into Romanian! Learn more here. Translated versions are available on my store in Spanish and Italian too. I cannot thank these comrades enough, who are quietly distributing books to prisoners across their regions.
If you’d like to request a book for a prisoner or prisoner book project, please pop your details through this form https://solidarityapothecary.org/prisonersherbalrequest/
I’m also incredibly grateful to the comrade in London quietly packing and posting the books!! I’m not gonna lie, I don’t miss that packing labour!!! 😅
3. Herbal Support through Repression with the Hawthorn Programme
This autumn, I launched my first group programme called Hawthorn. And omg it was dreamy! For a long time, I’ve craved a more collective setting in which to offer herbal support. Where the medicine is in the relationships between each other as well as the plants.
Hawthorn was for people experiencing repression. I obviously want to safeguard people’s confidentiality, but all I can say is the group was a mix of amazing humans. We had calls every two weeks and I had 1:1 calls with everyone, creating individualised herbal recommendations and blends. It’s definitely a programme I plan to repeat in 2026 (as well as other group options). Look out for the post on 2026 plans!
4. The Frontline Herbalism Podcast
The podcast has been a challenge to maintain. My little one only started nursery this August, (three mornings a week) and before then childcare help was so limited. I failed to make interviews happen and more often than not I would record mini solo episodes in the car park down the road from the nursery. Talk about single mum life!
I did manage to create some solid podcast series, however, and probably need to be less hard on myself (damn that moon in capricorn).
Series in 2025 included:
Herbal Support Through Repression with episodes on herbal support through repression (an overview), personal experiences of repression, herbal support through court cases, herbalism as rebellion against self-neglect. Burnout in movements, prisoner support, defendant support, making and distributing herbal care packages,
Soothing Survival a series about herbal support for the fight response, flight response, freeze and shutdown state. I also shared a general overview on herbal support for trauma.
A three-part series on learning herbalism, sharing themes about DIY learning vs formal clinical training, my experienes of the Plant Medicine School and so much more.
Other episodes shared calls for global herbal solidarity, and shared a replay of a workshop on herbalism and border violence.
You can find all the episodes of the Frontline Herbalism Podcast here: https://solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/
5. Herbalism Courses & Workshops
This year I launched the Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress course twice. I’ve now anchored a new pattern of launching with the spring and autumn solstices which feels good. Unfortunately this autumn, the launch was met with a very unwell baby sick from nursery nearly the entire time and I took quite an income hit. Without nursery hours, it was back to the nap time hustle of drafting emails and social media captions while he was asleep.
I also taught two Practical Medicine Making Intensives, which were awesome!!! Absolutely incredible groups of people and a joy to host and facilitate.
My Making Herbal Medicine with Glycerine workshop continued to generate sales and support folks to make amazing medicine quickly and effectively.
This year I was so honoured to be invited to speak at various events online. These included:
- A workshop for the amazing SLEEC crew who support survivors of sexual violence about Herbal Support for Trauma. Listen to it here.
- A talk on Herbal Support Through Repression for a Feminist Congress in Switzerland. Listen to it here.
- A talk on the politics of burnout for Zagreb Anarchist Bookfair. Listen to it here.
- A talk about the Prisoners Herbal book and project for the Plants, Mushrooms and Resistance Gathering in Romania (damn I was jealous to not make it in person as it sounded so great!!).
- I was also on a panel for the wonderful Project LETS about Madness, Disability and Herbalism.
- And finally, at the start of the year I published a talk on Herbalism and Border Violence for the Railyard Apothecary that you can find here.
Honestly, I cannot say thank you enough for these invitations. Looking after a little human alone can be incredibly isolating. I miss traveling to gatherings and events and experiencing that affinity. So it’s so nice to be able to join online however briefly to get that feeling of connection.
6. Systems, Systems, Systems
So my word for 2025 was root systems. I’m not gonna lie, I love systems and am a real systems thinker but prioritising them over other projects (especially new shiny ones) can take discipline!
Systems I focused on building for the Solidarity Apothecary this year included:
- Improving the Herbal Care Packages Request and Distribution systems
- Hiring the amazing Chantal who supports with my emails two hours a week (absolute game changer)
- Creating a secure online drive of files accessible from my phone so that I can work more effectively at nap time
- Improving the onboarding system for learners enrolling in my courses through automated emails
- Setting up a frequently asked questions page on my website
- Updating and redesigning the Prisoners Herbal database (thanks to Chantal!)
- Moving all of my 1:1 client info and clinical data to new software called WriteUpp, including creating new intake forms and scheduling systems. This has been mammoth but will pay dividends going forward for all my clinical herbalism work.
The grand finale has been I finalllyyy formalising my GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) systems for my medicine making. This means everything is completely traceable from production to distribution. I’m grateful to a course I took with the Herbal Medics Academy that made GMP make sense! It’s then been slow and steady at creating all the forms themselves, printing them and integrating them into the Solidarity Apothecary.
I’ve also been doing my best to document my medicine making instructions so that they could be picked up by anyone in the future (I have plans to hire a dispensing assistant, watch this space!).
7. Solidarity beyond the Solidarity Apothecary
I try to see the Solidarity Apothecary as one part of a broader solidarity ecosystem. It’s hard to feel at peace with what we can do and not do. Especially in adapting to motherhood and recognising that many of my previous ‘frontline’ roles are just not possible as a single parent. However, I’m grateful that this project has built up a strong supporter base that makes solidarity possible beyond the Solidarity Apothecary.
Some things that happened this year included:
- Organising a large merch fundraiser for the Mobile Herbal Clinic Calais. As well as setting up the infrastructure to enable people to donate monthly (please become a supporter if you can!)
- Some happy helpers and I also made shit loads of cough syrup for the clinic through the year. An epic mission – please get in touch if you’re in Somerset and would like to help with this in 2026.
- We also raised funds for the DouglaPrieta Trabajan, a mutual aid project based in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico through the Plants Know No Borders fundraiser.
- Running an ebook fundraiser for Hatem and his family in Gaza that raised over £1000
- Participating in the Seeds of Solidarity funding drive organised for Sudanese & Palestinian Farmers. We raised 1000 CAD.
- Promoting the Giwaabamin Herbal Street Clinic fundraiser on my podcast, newsletter and Instagram. Please, please, please support them here.
Please reach out if there’s a herbal project I can support in this way!
The other project I’ve been stoked to support is No Borders Herbals. NBH is a self-organised project of grassroots herbalists and organisers distributing herbal medicine packs to people on the move along the Balkan route. Rooted in mutual aid and solidarity, the project supports people facing border violence and denied access to healthcare.
Our t-shirt fundraiser raised over £1700! Check out the info page here for how to get involved and support.
Goal Accountability
I’m not going to go through all of them like I normally do as most of them are featured above.
However the things I did not achieve this year are:
- Redesigning my herb garden
- Doubling enrolment in the Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress Course
- Being involved in some kind of herbal harm reduction project locally
- Organising an online prisoner solidarity training
- Get fit postpartum! (How people manage to do workouts with a toddler is beyond me, ha!)
- Get surfing and paddleboarding in Cornwall
Things that were renegotiated/that I decided not to do/or didn’t happen for reasons beyond my control:
- Volunteering with the People’s Apothecary
- Finishing and launching the Do No Harm course (this has been integrated into the Frontline Herbalism Hub)
- Developing distance learning workbooks for prisoners who want to keep learning after reading the Prisoners Herbal
- Work with my partner to do a fundraiser for his rehab (it’s a charity)
- Participate in some online family anon meetings
- Complete my foot health diploma theory course
Okay, that’s a wrap!
As always – THANK YOU to everyone who has supported this work this year!!!!! It would not be possible without you!
