Thirty years ago, I made a commitment to honor the earth by resurrecting the herbal kitchen in our homes to help people practice kitchen medicine every day. I have dedicated my life to speaking, writing, and teaching people how to use plant medicines to take care of themselves and to help raise the next generation of children to do the same.
My healing journey began at nineteen years old, when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. My surgeon had some news for me. He said, “No-one’s going to tell you this, but stop the medication you’re taking,
it causes tumors and it’s the reason why you needed this surgery.” Suddenly I realized that I was a statistic – I was one of the number of people who develop a serious condition from taking prescription medication.
This shocking news stopped me in my tracks, to say the least. I started to read the information sheet that comes with medications. You know, that little white paper with microscopic writing that’s been folded fifty times?
“If you are going to take a pill, you actually want to read that paper, so you can decide if the gamble is worth it.”
If you are going to take a pill, you actually want to read that paper, so you can decide if the gamble is worth it. I also noticed that every elder in my life was taking multiple medications.
I asked myself, “Isn’t there another way? A better way we can take care of ourselves?” I have since learned that our lives are very much guided by the questions we ask, and these questions set the course for me.
Soon after, I heard the phrase, holistic health for the very first time. “What is that, I thought?” And so, it began, one thing after another lead me down the path to the amazing world of healing with herbs.
I felt a desire to teach what I had been learning about herbs to help people realize that there are other choices for taking care of themselves. I had a vision to gather the women to make herbal foods and medicines together as a way to honor the earth and revive the art of home herbal care. I acted on that vision and have been doing this work ever since.
I wrote The Herbal Kitchen to help people, to show them that using herbal medicine didn’t have to be complicated.
When the book was first published, there was an ‘Herbal Renaissance’ afoot.
People were getting fed up with the sea of advertisements for over the counter drugs and they were hungry for other ways to support their health and treat common ailments.
The Herbal Renaissance is now a full-on cultural movement. People are seeking out information about medicinal plants and learning how to use them to prevent and heal illness, to ease stress and help them sleep, and more.
Today, there are hundreds of books and thousands of herbal how-to blogs — it can be overwhelming and difficult to organize or incorporate all the information.
In one week, we are exposed to more information than our great grandmothers were in years but it’s impossible to download generations of herbal knowledge with just the press of a button.
No matter how information and online savvy we are, information doesn’t digest without experience. The experience that makes your herbal journey real starts in the kitchen.
Most of us have an amazing apothecary just waiting to be discovered in our homes.
The medicine is right there in our kitchens, we just forgot about the depth of its value.
I like to think of this remembering as a warming of the hearth. The kitchen hearth is where we transform the gifts of the earth’s harvest into food and medicine that keeps our family well.
Somewhere along the line this art and craft became drudgery. We subscribed to the cult of busy and we no longer had time to devote to feeding ourselves and our families.
We lost the joy to be had in transforming the sunlight captured by plants into nourishment for our own cells..
Modern life has led to multiple layers of cultural disruption. The ancestral food, medicines, and stories are gone. Many of our celebrations are guided by the media and screens, defining when and what they should be.
The hearth calls us back to the kitchen, where authentic experience and connection are rooted in the harvest of the earth and the turning of the seasons.
We gather people around to notice nature’s gifts, to celebrate and share delicious, healing food inspired by the abundance of the harvest and made with love.
I have the good fortune of seeing the children and grandchildren of many of my students who were raised with herbs and how that has impacted their lives. It is amazing to witness their confidence as they take care of their families’ health in a proactive way.
Many of them have created herbal programs in their schools and camps and have planted neighborhood herb gardens. They are evidence that the tide has turned: home herbalism is alive and well and it is the healing balm we need for the times we’re living in.
When we bring our hearts and hands back into how we build our lives, our food, and our meals become our medicines.
By bringing the earth into our home, we thank and honor her by creating remedies that are a source of vitality in our lives.
This is the knowledge that lives deep in our bones. If you weren’t raised with this teaching, you may not know it is there. But once you get a taste of it, there is no going back.
You have been activated. The impulse to live closer to the earth is now moving through you.
You are part of the intelligence that has awakened to move from a culture that desecrates the earth to one that is recreating a sacred covenant with all that sustains life. Welcome home to your herbal kitchen.
You can get your copy of The Herbal Kitchen here
You can get the online companion course for The Herbal Kitchen here
Thank you, it is such a joy to be on this journey.
Kami McBride
I think it’s great what Kami McBride is doing with the herbal oils