Plants as Home as Self

What brings me back to plant medicine again and again is amazement – plants have an incredible power to allow us to reclaim our story. To take plant medicine or develop a relationship with plants is to take an active role in our health and in our world. Not to nerd out too hard but plant medicine is inherently more complex than, like, taking an aspirin. Like eating, to take plant medicine is to link into the plant, its preparation, the ground it grew in. Plant medicine reminds us of our place among nature, drawing us back to a home we didn’t know we had wandered away from. What happens when we have an intimate connection to our medicine, food, and environment? How do our stories about ourselves change?
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Author and biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote that she challenges her students to consider the possibility that Earth is invested in human well-being, that the Earth loves us. This statement blew my mind. How could humans, having inflicted so much cruelty onto nature, be loved and embraced by it? Yet here we are. We’re worthy even though we’ve been stupid and selfish and don’t read as much as we should and have dirty dishes in the sink and on and on and on. We were brought into a world that loves us.
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When I feel drained of affection or patience, knowing that I wake up every morning in a community of beautiful living beings restores me just enough that I’m able to pass that love onto someone else. That gives me some agency. And that gives me some place to belong.