Your Home Herbalism Journey: Why Ancestral Remedies?

She made onion syrup and everybody had to drink it because she knew not to wait for the cough to spread through the pack.

How important is it to explore your family remedies and do you ever feel like you know enough?

Do you have herbs or herbal remedies that have been passed down in your family that you use? You might think, “Oh, yeah, I wish, that would be nice,” but, I’m finding more and more that it’s really a valuable piece of revitalizing home herbalism.   

Let me back up for just a minute 

I recently sent out an email to everyone that subscribes to my newsletter. I I asked these questions: How can I serve you better? What do you want to learn more about from me? What would you like next from me?  I am getting ready to create a new course and just wanted to hear from everyone. People came back with all kinds of things. Lots of people said kind things like, “Just keep doing what you’re doing.” It was really nice.   

The trend though, that I heard from reading hundreds of answers to the survey I sent out was people feeling like they never know enough. “When do you know enough herbal remedies? When do you know enough about herbal medicine? How do I learn all there is to know? I feel so overwhelmed, when does it all start to gel?” 

Let’s talk about this. 

I was reminded of an experience I had a while back, I was at an event and had a conversation with an amazing, inspirational elder herbalist who has been teaching for decades. We were chatting about our teaching and all the new trends in herbal medicine and she started talking about how she feels like she needs to learn more about herbs and then she talked about a lineage of herbalism that she is not trained in.

I mean come on, she’s been teaching for 40 years; impacted thousands of people’s lives. She’s an amazing herbal teacher, and here she is telling me, “I feel like I don’t know enough”.

I was just like, “Oh, my gosh. You too? Even you, oh, great herbal elder? You’re feeling like you need to know more?”

“I’m done with that, over it, right now.”  

When is it enough?

If we’re always feeling unsatisfied with our herbal knowing, our healing knowledge; if we’re never quite satisfied, what does that mean in how we heal and how we help people? 

We love our medicine, we bring our medicine to people but in the back of our minds, there is a nag that says, oh you should know more!

This isn’t the first time I have noticed this. I have been watching this, “I need to know it all” thing for years.

Some people just like to know it all. They’re going to study forever. I’m a perpetual student. But what does it take to feel satisfied and just kind of at peace with what you do know?

One of the things that I’ve seen help people feel a level of deeper satisfaction is when they can connect with a family or an ancestral remedy.  

If you can say, “My grandmother used herbs. We used herbs in my family. I know what that is,” that is awesome, you are lucky.

But so many of my students, have no memory of anyone talking about or using herbs in their home.

Wherever you’re at, what I want you to do is just realize that whether you remember it or not, you have family remedies. You are here because your ancestors figured out how to use herbs and food to stay well and heal themselves. You might have to go back a bit, but somewhere in your family line is somebody that was interested in herbs and food.

This didn’t just start with you.   

What we want to do is see if you can connect with that; if you can find a remedy that’s in your family. 

You might think there are none, but if there’s anybody alive in your family, even somebody your age or anybody older, start telling them that you are interested in finding out about any herbal remedies used in your ancestry.

At first you might think that you don’t have access to any family remedies, you never heard of anything herbal in your family conversations…

Start asking and keep the conversation alive

What I discovered from watching more than a thousand students respond to the homework I gave them to find out about their ancestral remedies is that you have to ask the question, you have to tell people you are looking for this thread. Then keep asking and keep asking and be patient.

Is your mom or any of your aunts still alive? Maybe they’re not still alive, but maybe somebody that knew them is still around.

Is anyone alive that knew your mom or grandma or aunts? Maybe there’s a cookbook somewhere. I’ve had many students find hidden recipes in their grandmothers’ old cookbook. Tell your family members and your community that you have this homework to find out about any herbal remedy that was used by your ancestors.   

If there’s nobody for you to ask, okay, I understand that. Maybe ask an elder neighbor, but we’re going to focus today on family. If you have any siblings, if you have any aunties, uncles, grandmothers or anybody older than you, I want you to ask them, “Do you remember anybody using any kind of herb for anything?”  

I asked this question of my family when I was in my early twenties, and everybody looked at me like, “What are you talking about, Kami?” I let them all know I was interested and continued to ask that question over the years.

One day, out of the blue, my grandfather said, “Oh, yeah! My mom made onion syrup for coughs.

“Wow! I would like to have known that a little earlier, but thank you.” Sometimes you have to wait for them to spill the beans, right?  

He talked about his mom making onion syrup when the kids coughed. She had 6 children. She took care of all kinds of nieces and nephews. There were lots of kids. He said that the first time anybody would let out any cough, she put onions and water on top of the stove. She made onion syrup and everybody had to drink it because she knew not to wait for the cough to spread through the pack. Smart woman.

Onions, my paternal great grandmothers medicine

I was really lucky to get that story because if nobody would’ve been asking, it would be gone.  

The other thing you can do is just start to think about foods that your family prepares.

Do you have any traditional foods? Are there any traditional dishes that you cook or prepare? Often, you’ll find these lineage foods prepared around holidays. Is there a dish that your mother or your grandmother or your grandfather or somebody in your family line prepared for special occasions? 

In so many of our family lines, we forgot the cold and flu remedies. We forgot the healing herbal remedies, but sometimes you’ll find they’re hidden in a dish. My grandmother and my great grandmother were Irish. They definitely made corned beef and cabbage. My mom didn’t really cook that much with herbs, but when she made that corned beef and cabbage, she had a recipe. It always had mustard seed. That is a tiny bit of herbal lineage.

Look for those threads…

Also, keep asking. Pretty far into my herbal life, my aunt came to me with the story about my great grandmother on my mom’s side. She said that my great grandmother used horehound for coughs.

Ok! Now I know that my great grandmothers on both sides had herbal knowledge. Pretty much prior to 1930, you didn’t just go to the doctor. Families had to have their herbal knowledge. The knowledge from your parents and your grandparents was important.  You needed it to survive. 

Horehound, my maternal great grandmothers medicine

One of the reasons so many people feel looped in this overwhelm thing is because we’re trying to do a massive catch up. We are trying to learn a body of knowledge that takes generations to learn.  

Our ancestors’ herbal knowledge was generational. It didn’t just happen in one lifetime. We used to inherit a body of knowledge that was generated over several generations. 

With so much cultural disruption, we lost it. We gave it up, and now we’re trying to catch up.  

We’re trying to do several generations of work as in NOW. 

“What relationships did my ancestors have with the plants?”

Over the years I’ve developed a lot of techniques to help people feel more satisfied in their herbal studies, but the one we’re talking about today is to take some time and see if you can access a family remedy or a family herb, and know that those herbs sometimes are hidden in your food. Let’s say you have a special recipe that was handed down. I want you to look in that recipe and see what herbs are in that recipe. That herb might be from your family lineage of what your ancestors used.  

Start asking, look in those old cookbooks, look in the old recipes and let people know that you’re interested. Sometimes it takes a couple of years to get the story, but the thing is, once you have even just one family herb or one memory of an herbal medicine that your ancestors use, something precious is put back into place. 

To know which herb was used in your family. You can now really focus on that herb for a while and know that your body remembers.

And again, sometimes you just have to be patient.

Here’s another thing that happened that I didn’t realize this was a family herbal lineage until my son was born. One day, my mom took my son out for a walk around the block during the spring time. I think he was 2 or 3 years old. 

He came home chewing on sour grass and I thought, “Wow!” My mom taught him to chew on sour grass. Just like her mom taught her. My grandmother taught me that and here was my mom — teaching my son! it was a little thing, but it was a big thing.  

Here was an herbal tradition looking at me right in the face and I may have not even noticed if I didn’t hold the question, “What relationships did my ancestors have with the plants?

Sour grass, a family herbal tradition

The sour flavor is amazing. Sour foods help to liquefy toxins and help you digest your food, so it’s just a great thing for kids to chew on a little bit. They’re not going to overdo it because it’s too sour. Now, when I see that sour grass, I remember my grandmother. I remember my grandfather teaching me to chew on it. So, maybe there’s a simple herbal tradition like that, that you may not have notices.   

Again, I want to go to bat with this feeling that I’ve heard from hundreds of people that I’ve talked to, herbalists and students, where they get to the point where it just feels like too much. There’s too many herbal recipes. At some point, we have to find a few herbs that go really deep where we feel really satisfied and a connection with.  

 I would love to hear who you’re going to ask and what you come up with when you start asking people, “What herbs were used in your family? What recipes? What herbs were used in recipes? What flowers were special?” 

 Just get that conversation rolling. Also, try to get it rolling even when there are younger people around so that they can hear the conversation too; so that whomever in the next generation is supposed to pick this up will start picking it up sooner than later.  

For me, I had to start from scratch. I never even heard the word “herbal medicine” or “natural remedies” until I was in my early twenties. I had to just pick it up and start from the very beginning. Again, that’s part of the reason why we’re feeling so much overwhelm because we’re trying to pick up generations of knowledge in a crazy short amount of time.  

We are meant to be deeply connected with the plants. It’s a recent thing that everything comes from the store. Our DNA, everything in us, is wired to be deeply connected to the plants and what we do with the plants. If we can remember that and get 1 or 2 of our ancestral remedies put back in place, that’s good.

The last thing I want to say is, if you’ve got an elder that’s alive that’s got that knowledge, a lot of times that knowledge is—again, like I’ve been talking about—it’s generational. You want to get it. You want to know what they know.

Ok, so there are many ways that I work with people to dispel the overwhelm and feel satisfied with their home herbalism. What we focused on today is steps you can take to access herbs that are in your family heritage and how to stir that pot. Get that conversation activated in your family, your community so that that even if you get a few threads of that generational wisdom, it is going to feel so good.

Ok, scroll down leave me a comment I want to hear about your ancestral remedy journey and remember to stop and take time to smell the flowers today.