This past week, I gave a talk to my colleagues at the College of Pharmacy at the University of New England to be considered to join the department as an adjunct faculty member. While pondering my talk, I struggled to think about how best to present myself to a room full of scientists, since I am much more aligned with my intuitive mind. I recalled how, when I began to practice herbal healing, I was trying to fit myself into an idea of what an herbalist is and does. I had difficulty finding my true path because I started the way many people start: making products. I loved sharing medicine with people, but I also had a hard time keeping up with a schedule of production. It was fun, but it was also not how I wanted to practice.
I stumbled into teaching because of the encouragement of a few friends. I both deeply enjoyed it and doubted myself. I found myself wishing that I could hold all of the anatomy and chemistry and clinical knowledge as I created my lesson plans. For a long time, I felt like a phony, a failure, a lesser herbalist. I idolized people who could rattle off all of the alkaloids in a plant and tell you what action each one potentiated. I wanted to have a different kind of brain than the one I have. Slowly, I began to understand that my gifts are about intuition, deep feeling, listening and connection. I began to teach from a place of affective understanding rather than a position of knowledge–not that I didn’t learn a great deal in order to teach, but I spoke about the plants in stories, as other beings with whom I have shared intimate experiences, instead of as things in jars on a shelf waiting to be used. This was liberating, and it was when I found myself really able to shine. What good is simply rehashing what we have been taught? It is all about synthesizing the gifts we bring individually with the knowledge that has become part of us through study, listening and experience.
So, this past Thursday, I stood in a lecture hall and presented a talk on Building Resilience after Trauma, which is something I feel passionate about and which I think the world needs a lot more of. I watched faculty sit in the audience working on their computers or scrolling through their phones while I talked. A lot of other people were attentive and seemed to understand what I was getting at. I walked in that afternoon thinking that if they don’t like what I have to offer, it’s just fine with me. I know that what I am doing is important, and I will find the way to get the information to the people who need it, even if that is not in a college classroom. I am planning to launch an apprenticeship program that will help people connect with the Earth, their spirits, the plants, and each other through writing, herbal study, plant spirit connection, and deep listening, beginning next spring. I have spent the last few summers getting the ground work laid (quite literally!), and I am looking forward to offering what I feel is mine to share.
While I do not know if I will ever be a faculty member again, I feel that my forty-sixth year is proving to be a good teacher about how to be in right relationship with myself, and to offer my gifts without reservation, because the world needs all of us to give what we are here to give, not because I am some kind of gifted unique healer. I love to work with people on mending their spirits, and whether I have one client or a hundred, this work makes me feel like I am contributing something important to the enormous project of healing the wounds of generations. I am so grateful to be in a place in my life where I feel like I can do something authentic and meaningful. This time is asking us all to show up fully. Here I am.