107 – Herbalism: A Rebellion Against Self-Neglect

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the

Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello. Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.

Guess where I'm recording this?

That's right.

In a car park because of my baby.

Well, dropping off my baby.

Anyhow,

I'm not gonna bore you with those details, but I just.

Yeah, I just want to replug that the Herbalism PTSD and Traumatic Stress course is open for

enrollment.

Yeah, please, if you, yeah, if you've joined the course before, I would love you forever if

you could share it on your networks.

My Instagram still gets like zero ******* views because I talk about genocide and Sudan

and all the things and yeah, just antifascist stuff and it just gets invisibilized, which is

frustrating.

But yeah, if you can share it just like DIY amongst your friends, like in signal groups

and chats on email list, you're on, like, I would really appreciate that.

As I've said before, it's like completely sliding scale offering.

No one's turned away Flacco funds.

And yeah, you can,

yeah, access it for free if needed.

It's ******* amazing.

Offering eight modules from everything from the politics of trauma and how trauma affects

the body and all the geeky anatomy and physiology around the nervous system as well

as like different kind of evolutionary nervous system states.

And then just all about the herbalism, like, you know, which plants are like relaxant to

the nervous system, which are more sedating.

How can we work with stimulating nervines when

appropriate?

How do we work with nerve tonics to recover from,

you know, chronic stress or trauma?

It's all in there.

And yeah, I, I only open it twice a year, so

it's not going to be available until next March.

So please, please, please get stuck in if you can.

Hello.

So, like everyone I know,

I've got a little bit of a sore throat.

I've been fighting a virus.

Yeah, most people I know have some kind of upper respiratory infection.

So me and the bubs stayed away from everyone last week, but I'm feeling a lot better.

But I'm just a bit nervous of tiring my voice out.

So I'm only going to record a short,

a short episode today and then, yeah, we'll hopefully come back and record some things.

I really want to focus on like nerve tonics and all about support for chronic stress.

But I just wanted to share something that I wrote back in the spring also when I was

Promoting the PTSD course, but it's kind of stayed with me and since kind of starting to

facilitate this Hawthorne program for people experiencing repression.

I guess it's like, emerged as like,

important theme that I'm still really seeing in kind of movements and in, you know, my

social groups, which is really this like,

you know, kind of relationship to, like, self neglect.

So I'm just going to read what I wrote and then I will talk a little bit more about it

and how it, you know, relates to herbalism more.

Okay. So the piece is called Herbalism, A Rebellion against Self neglect.

When my parents broke up and my dad moved to the other side of the world, to Australia,

I was left with my mum's deep depression and the grueling reality of bringing up two kids

alone with no financial support in a system designed to keep you in poverty.

From four years old, I was left with the impression that I had to take care of myself.

I became the hyper responsible, hyper independent child.

Forced to be an adult,

I learned that to receive love, I had to give emotional support.

It was no wonder that prisoner support became the heartbeat of my life for 20 years with its

comforting familiarity and proximity to suicidality, distress and despair.

The elders around me in the social movements I found as a child rewarded self neglect and

self sacrifice.

The more I threw myself into full time organizing risky actions, arrests, and

repression, the more validation I gained.

I had no idea how to take care of myself or see my own needs beyond the codependent blur

of being useful to others.

It was in a prison yard that I found herbs, or they found me.

I realize now that plants taught me how to receive.

I learned it was okay to eat bowls of their leaves to help ease the hunger.

In prison,

I learned it was okay to drink a tea to help me sleep through the screaming on the wing.

I learned it was okay to sleep with a dandelion root under my pillow to feel safer

and less alone in my cell.

Embracing herbalism meant learning about the body, about anatomy and physiology, illness

and disease, and so much more.

Over the years, subtly and unconsciously, I learned to take care of myself.

Not in a hyper independent, trust no one kind of way, but in a way where I could feel my

body's cues.

I could understand my different nervous system states.

I could recognize when I was exhausted, I could notice when a cold was coming on.

And for all these cues, I knew that the plants would take care of me.

In that moment,

I made medicine for myself.

I eased flashbacks and volatile dysregulation

through foraging and harvesting herbs from the hedgerows.

I allowed myself to receive this love, care and company.

Company and nourishment from plants.

Herbalism was an act of rebellion against self neglect.

In the words of Potawatomi author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer.

In some native languages, the term for plants translates to those who take care of us.

I hope you will let them take care of you too.

So,

yeah, I guess don't know why I feel so emotional today.

I think I'm pretty mental.

But I just wanted to talk a little bit more about this and that.

I think lots of people who will listen to this podcast will,

you know, be kind of like organizer, activisty, anarchist types, right?

Like you're my kind of people, you know, like you're involved in some kind of social

struggles or social change work.

You know, whether that's just like working at a community garden or whether that's, you

know, like frontline doing like direct actions, going in and out of prison,

you know, living on a protest camp or you know, running an anarchist bookshop or all the

things, like all, you know, massive diversity of tactics we have.

There is just such a culture of self neglect and self sacrifice.

And you know, I was completely invested in this.

Like in the second chapter of my overcoming burnout book.

It's called like, when did I get so Mean? And that's because the judgment of everyone of

like, oh, that person went on a ******* holiday.

Like, how the **** did they afford that?

Or we really needed them at that anti fascist demo.

Like, and they're on a ******* holiday on the beach.

Or you know, oh, that person says they're a comrade, but they're going off to do some like

master's degree.

Like they've just sold out or you know, like this person can't come and help cater at this

like prisoner letter writing event.

Like they got period pains.

Like, just ******* man up, you know, like everyone gets period pains.

Like I had such ******* like internal horrible judgment of other people.

Worst of all myself, you know, not letting myself rest, not letting myself do anything,

anything for myself, you know, like not buying like new ******* clothes or you know, like

never going on a trip.

Like I literally didn't want to go abroad in

case something happened to my friends in prison for so many years.

And then eventually I did start going abroad, but only to do like solidarity tours or anti

repression events.

Like never just to like have a ******* relax

or a rest or anything like that.

So yeah, it was, you know, like, I'm talking like years and years and years of self denial

and Just kind of like,

yeah, like all of my self worth being based on what I give to these struggles, how hard I'm

working.

And I actually wrote another Instagram post

recently about self neglect and how my mentors in the animal liberation movement, you know,

like I got involved in these movements.

I was literally like 10 years old.

So I was just like soaking everything up as

like a sponge.

And I think compared to my mum, these people

were like really active, had really good mental health, were like phenomenally

organized and you know, I was sort of coming from this kind of like chaotic home

environment,

I guess.

So I was really like putting all of these

people on a pedestal in the movement.

And one of them, Jilly, who was like my best

God, like ******* timey.

She like,

you know, she was like the epitome of self sacrificing, organizer.

Like she never had any money.

Like she was on benefits like near enough her

entire life, not as a child, but as an adult.

She was like full time in the struggle, like doing the badger cold, not sleeping,

not eating properly, never buying supplements.

It was like every.

Not that she had any spare money, but if she ever did, it was always donated somewhere.

And this path of neglect just, you know, I hate to say it, but it did lead her to an

early grade wave, like as well as constant chain smoking.

But it's like I grew up seeing these people around me,

their needs were always last.

And that taught me a lot, right?

And it taught me to feel included.

I had to earn it through organizing the way that I had to earn my parents love or my mum's

love through emotionally supporting her and listening her and being kind of like, I kind

of learned similar in movements, right?

And then I had all this time in the prisoner support world, which I'm still in, but really

intensely codependent of my self worth is based on supporting people in prison and you

know, like, are they supporting me back?

I don't know.

Like, okay, a handful of them are amazing

friends who have been amazing for me through my pregnancy and through having my baby boy.

And some of them after, you know, 15 years of like giving them everything,

haven't, you know, just dropped me out like when I got pregnant.

So it's like,

you know, but that was my choice.

Even though my choices were driven by really

intense like subconscious drivers of.

I'm not allowed to rest, I'm not allowed to prioritize myself.

PTSD episode, like after a bunch of bereavements.

And I, I think I've written about it, but I was like, you know, every time a friend was

calling from prison, I was like violently throwing up.

Like, I couldn't sleep.

I had like horrific nightmares,

you know, like daily panic attacks, like, could barely leave the house.

It was actually the first time I stopped visiting people in prison for like two months

because I was in a really bad state.

And it was then that I was like, right flag in the sand, like, I have to matter here.

Like I have to start prioritizing myself.

And I really feel like herbalism was the thing

that enabled me, you know, like I've written in this self neglect piece that enabled me to

take care of myself.

You know, it was like the foraging and the medicine making and the studying.

Like, the clinical training was like one of the best,

like times of my life of just learning and learning and learning.

And okay, I was doing that for the solidarity apothecary and because I wanted to support

people.

So, you know, there was an element of it being

driven.

But it felt so amazing to me that it was actually doing something that was like, this

is for me.

Do you know what I mean?

And I think that's what I want the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress course to feel like

for people.

Because yeah, I'm not the only ******* one

with this pattern, right?

I'm calling you out if you're listening to this.

But like,

I wanted to create a course that had no pressure, that had no deadlines, no

assignments, no ******* relationality of you have to be in a forum and you have to be on

group calls and you have to navigate this person and that person and their needs and do

they like me?

And what was this conflict about? Like, you can just study in solitude and

nourish yourself.

You can go for a walk and listen to a plant

profile in your headphones.

You can go and harvest medicine and, you know, actually get into a more parasympathetic

nervous system state because you're doing something so primal and delicious that's

engaging all your senses.

You know, if obviously if you're able to move like that, not everyone I know can, you know,

walk and forage.

But I mean, doing anything like herbally

related can be so nourishing.

And I wanted the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress course to feel like that for people

because I know obviously studying trauma is a bit gnarly, but like, it's only the first

module where I really talk about how trauma affects the body and, like, different patterns

of distress.

But I haven't found anyone that said to me, like, you know, what?

I couldn't cope with this material.

In fact, the opposite, I feel like people have said, like, you know, has given me a language

to describe how I'm feeling.

Like,

it's like super non pathologizing.

I'm being, like, really kind to myself now.

I've got this, like, framework.

But yeah, I just wanted the course to feel like a comfort blanket for people who struggle

to prioritize themselves.

Because, you know, even if you have dreams and ambitions of doing herbal projects and herbal

solidarity work for other people, which is awesome, I'm all about that,

it is also important for you to invest time and energy in yourself, you know, Like, I

don't know who needs to hear it as a permission slip, but, like, it is okay to have

a ******* holiday or to have a ******* rest or to eat a healthy meal or to have a lion with

your partner,

you know, Like, I had this partner, Anna, who got killed in Rojava, and I never *******

spent a day with her, you know, and in her Valentine's Day card to me,

you know, which she gave me, like,

not long before she left to go to Syria, she said to me, like, we'll get that whole day

together one day.

And that ******* hurts now because I wouldn't give her a whole day, you know, I wouldn't

give this person that I loved my time and energy and that, you know, and I'm

compassionate to myself about that now because I know that that was like a trauma response

of, like,

not being able to, like, sit still for two seconds, to sit with my feelings.

Does that make sense?

But, like, yeah, if you're listening to this, like, I know there's all this up stuff going

on in the world and that.

Like,

you know, you,

you know, like people in survival,

you know, in Sudan or Gaza or even Calais, you know, like, they don't get a day off or they

don't get to go swimming or go to a spa or whatever.

But, like,

we have to do this work for the long haul, you know, like, nothing is going to get easier

anytime soon.

Like, we're not going to have some magic

revolution and then that gives you the opportunity to rest and live the life that you

want to live, you know, or learn the skills you want to learn or paint or do whatever.

Like, this is our lives now.

Like, this is what we got.

So, like, you have to be able to take some time to, like, nourish your spirit and nourish

your body.

And you know, and I feel like herbalism is like such a gift because if you struggle to do

that stuff, I'm not saying, okay, put yourself first in an individualist, like, horrible way.

Like, I'm saying it in a way that like, you ******* matter.

And our politics of care and solidarity and love also ******* mean that you matter and

your needs matter and that it is okay to ******* rest and take a break.

And it is okay to,

you know, invest in something that will improve your life, that will give you a

language to name your nervous system, that will give you this amazing herbal toolkit of

ways to take care of yourself and your loved ones.

Like, it's ******* okay.

So anyway, yeah, I don't, I didn't want to like end this with like, oh, a shameless plug

for the course, but I did just want to say, like, I do think this course is very

compatible for people who are self sacrificing, Marty kind of organizer types.

Because you can do it whenever, you know, there's no pressure.

It's not like going to university and then you have to prioritize this institution.

It's like you can study when you're on a train for a prison visit or you know, like waiting

for someone at the police station and you just, you know, you're sat there for six hours

and you want to just listen to something in your headphones.

Like it is really flexible and you know, you can pick it up and put it down or start doing

one module every six months.

Like it's, you know, lifetime access.

So yeah, I just wanted to say that.

And I don't know why I'm so emotional, but I'm not gonna apologize for it.

And I will be back soon with a podcasts with like more specific herbal related content.

We're going to look at some of my favorite nerve tonics and some of the nerve tonics

explored in the course.

I'm also going to do a specific episode about sleep and I'm going to share an episode all

about my favorite like anti repression resources as we're still in this like herbal

Support through repression series.

But yeah, I better stop there because everyone's looking at me because I'm in a car

park.

Anyway, thanks so much for listening.

Okay, take care.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the

show@solidarityapothecary.org podcast.