Introducing The Medicine House
So Long, Wounded Healer
My book, Materia medica: Memoirs of a Wounded Healer, is complete and is currently being shopped to literary agents and publishing houses. This blog, originally titled Wounded Healer, was grounds to bounce drafts off of you, my dear readers. Now that this (heavy) chapter of life (accepting my disability, learning the rules of my new body, medical trauma, etc.) has come to a close, it is time for this blog to evolve along with me. Thank you for being here for the latter writing stage of my debut book. I can’t wait to share it with you. Stay tuned, Wounded Healer.
The Medicine House, or TMH, sits along a river ridge of industry, steel, coal, coke, and glass in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a big town with a long blue-collar history. The 1900 home is paved with broken brick and solid stone and stands on hill made of concrete slabs and trash. The earth is crumbling from the Japanese Knotweed invasion that has overtaken our hills, where the deer, groundhogs, and other urban wildlife live.
I’m on a mission. Healing the land, heals humanity too.
Wounded Healer becomes The Medicine House
TMH offers a monthly newsletter with a featured herbal medicine recipe, and the option to purchase the small batch botanical, unless otherwise stated. along. Each of these recipes will be accompanied with a writing prompt or poem/meditation/prayer/spell to deepen your relationship with the medicine.
The Medicine House is not only a physical space that I call home and hope to one day form into a (very) small herbal urban farm, but it is also a community herbalism movement.
Community herbalism is the practice of providing health freedom to communities with herbalism education, herbal support, building bridges between people and plants, and practicing sustainable and regenerative gardening. I have been a practicing community herbalist since 2016 and am thrilled that I get forge my healing and creative writing paths into one.
Photo of tea bag on flower wreath with old steel mill photo in background
So, What’s Next?
I’m about to hit your inbox with the very first herbal medicine recipe release for The Medicine House! Keep you eyes peeled. And if you don’t see it by next week, check your spam.
Thanks for traveling through this transition with me. I’m glad you’re here.
Offerings
(((The next Medicinal Teas workshop will be announced soon)))
On April 4th, I am hosting a creative writing workshop, Foraging Poems, at The Pittsburgh Botanic Garden with Write Pittsburgh. If you’re in the area, please join!
Updates
I was promoted to Program Manager at Write Pittsburgh, a nonprofit literary arts organization that centers voices that have been historically silenced or excluded—especially those impacted by racism, incarceration, addiction, poverty, and other systemic barriers. Make sure to check out our workshops for the general public here.
An excerpt from my upcoming book was published in the nonprofit newsroom, Public Source. Read it here.
One of my medicinal teas was published in Nourishing Our Bodies, Nourishing Our Movements Community Cookbook, which was put together by Abortion Care Tennessee to fundraise abortion access in northern Tennessee. To get your copy today, check out Abortion Care Tennessee.
Ways to Help
Consider Donating to Families Effected by ICE
Three (anonymous) siblings whose father was detained
Consider supporting the ACLU who are fighting to keep families together.
Consider donating to downing Russian drones that threaten Ukraine
Consider donating to families affected by the genocide in Gaza
Hurray - I love this news! Welcome Medicine House, welcome wonderful nourishing, healing plants and teas and community and connection <3