"Taking in everything plants contain"
Well-being at the edge of "self-care," illness, and capitalism with herbalist Meg Madden
Herbalism as a practice and a medium allows plants to speak in ways similar to tarot cards, for example, and therefore can "come through" rather than "be used". —Meg Madden
CS: I wish I had time to give a full, poetic treatment of all the synchronicities that led to you appearing in my life, Meg, but that would be an entire lyric essay all unto itself. The more straightforward version is that you work as a clinical herbalist at the local apothecary in Charlottesville, which was the first place I contacted upon discovering that my breast cancer had recurred in the skin.
I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make it through chemotherapy without some sort of health care that witnessed my body and its disease not as something to conquer so much as a process that needed to be held. I worked with Jan, the shop’s owner, who is magnificent—the kind of Cancer-stellium mother that I required in that moment—but I fell into friendship with you through our mutual friend Amanda and because we both really jived with each other’s intellectual and creative efforts. You were the first person I felt well enough to read tarot and astrology for as the poison evacuated my body early last spring, and we soon decided we’d apprentice to each other: little one-on-one salons at each other’s homes where I’d trade teachings on the esoteric correspondences of the tarot and astrology for your insights into the world of plant medicine.
These sessions were magic in the sense that they opened up our ability to tap into curiosity, wonder, nourishment, and delight in weekly routines that, before then, had felt pretty gritty. Last week, for the March tarot reading, I wrote about how the best of clinical therapy is “a mercurial undertaking where both people participate in bringing truth to the surface in playful, direct, and symbolic ways.” Today, I’m realizing, I was really writing about my relationship with you!! So thank you!!
One of my favorite things about you is your insistence that it’s possible to experience care and nurturance—a feeling of well-being—in spite of (actually because of) one’s daily routines. Why is this important to you?
MM: Thank you for recognizing this, it feels good to be reflected in this way. One of the common threads I see in a great many of my clients and students, and in myself as well, is this feeling of not being able to muster the energy to care for oneself over the course of an average work day, week, etc., for myriad recognizable and very real reasons. This can lead to anxiety, stress, a thinness of self that's prone to tearing or splintering or folding in.
For those who feel stymied in these ways, shifting the concepts of care and nurturance so that they're not only accessible but so they're elevated, simplified, joyful, can connect a person back to their inherent humanity and wisdom and help pull them from the morass of extractive scheduling and obligations so it can be navigated. As I see it, the importance of this is manifold. Not only does it allow a person to regain a sense of freedom and dignity, but it also connects them to the magic that's always waiting for us in what we've been told are mundane, trite, or selfish activities. On its face, it's a matter of understanding that our capitalistic model isn't supportive to human wellbeing, but at its depth it's recognizing that we've been disconnected from being able to give ourselves what we need to live a healthy life wherein we can express our free will and truly play at the edges of our own spirits, despite limitations.
In short, it's important to me that folks are able to access the healing alchemy that leads to and maintains an adequately responsive, tended, nurtured nervous system and spirit so that they can be resilient to whatever they're going through and still experience joy, pleasure, and fulfillment.
CS: I love how what you’ve said here takes “capitalism is bad for us” as a starting point—as an imperative for figuring out how to live joyfully, ethically, spaciously, rather than as something that entrenches us in nihilism and/or despair. Thinking about this, what got you interested in herbalism and what was your path to becoming a clinical herbalist?
MM: Honestly, the initial inroad that led me to plants was beauty. From infancy until I was 17, I had the privilege of growing up on 40 acres of quite diverse land which was inundated with flowers of every stripe, from the precious delicate fleeting spring ephemerals by the spring box to the robust, saturated summer flowers in the back field to the odd ones that could only survive in relationship with certain trees and fungi.
The beauty of flowers and their surroundings was the first plant medicine I experienced, and then mom brought in some household herbalism as we grew up: echinacea and goldenseal, Throat Coat Tea, and I didn't think much of it at the time; it was normal. It wasn't until much, much later that I came full circle again. After leaving home and some adventures and misadventures in my late teens and twenties, I began to crave the beauty and wisdom and magic of plants again.
On a path to clinical social work, I knew that I wanted to work with people to help them in healing, but after my mind-expanding journey through undergrad, I was left quite disappointed in the social work program I was attending. Spurred by this moment of intense cognitive dissonance, a heart-wrenching toxic relationship, and a bit of a mental health crisis, I quit everything I was doing and came home to do what I had to to get well, which involved therapy, smoking too many cigarettes, fighting with my mom, working on a farm and enrolling in a three-year clinical herbalism program.
With this series of decisions, and after I wasn't sure it could, beauty came flooding back to me, as prismatic and vibrant as I could remember. It deepened with my newly remembered knowledge that plants (and flowers! my heart!) contain this expansive pharmacopoeia, and, in true spiraling fashion, only made the beauty more heartbreakingly magical all over again. Now I get to combine my lifelong relationship to the plants of the region with my understanding of their medicinal powers with clinical therapeutic services, and this is where I find myself currently!
CS: I love thinking about both plants and the human heart as expansive pharmacopeias, and I’ve really come around to this view of the natural world over the past year. What a change for me, honestly, because when you first gave me your copy of Matthew Wood’s The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism, I was a little skeptical that I’d read it. I think I was expecting either this really dry and self-righteous tone or this slippery plant evangelism that happens with herbalists or with anyone who's really into any kind of so-called alternative health modality.
But the book was absolutely beautiful to read—I especially loved Wood’s point that what we turn to when we’re very sick or dying reveals to us what we call “god” in our lives. This spoke a lot to my own struggle with the inadequacies of scientific materialism to address the totality of my experience as a cancer patient. Turning over tarot cards somehow felt more important to coping with acute and chronic illness than anything else. How does herbalism come through for you when you yourself are sick? Or when you’re working with clients who face mortal illness or disability?
MM: This is such a beautiful question, and a very important one. Firstly, I love the language "how herbalism comes through" because I know, and have experienced first hand, that Herbalism as a practice and a medium allows plants to speak in ways similar to tarot cards, for example, and therefore can "come through" rather than "be used".
Secondly, Herbalism as a practice, IMHO, is a bifurcated one, with two threads that are distinct but inextricable. One thread is rote information, an ancient and evolving body of knowledge aggregated so that it can be taught, learned, and called upon for healing or palliative support. This somewhat reflects the scientific materialism that you spoke of in your question, though it's shot through with magical practices and non-empirical data collection and retention.
The second thread, however, is the one that Wood alludes to, and is very, very hard to put into words, but I'll do my best; it's a deeply intuitive thread, and one that's hard to see until it catches the light just right. What is often overtly sought after when one is brought up against the edge of their mortality (and, arguably, subtly1 sought after the rest of the time), is a need or desire to know that god/spirit/divinity/meaning is near.
Because plants are at once so earthly and ethereal, we can see god/spirit/divinity/meaning shimmering through their spirits and alchemy in a way that's often hard to access in our own lives in bodies, especially when we're experiencing extreme pain or terror or the brink of death. Therefore, when we take plants into and onto our bodies, we are taking in everything plants contain, from chemical compounds to beauty to god/spirit/divinity/meaning. I think that this can help contextualize mortality and offer something deeply resonant and supportive to turn to when we're faced with it.
Now, in the crucible of healer, heal thyself I often struggle, and answering this question honestly is quite vulnerable. When I am sick or up against something big, I am more often quite unable to access my own help. When I am low functioning, I don't do much for myself at all except the bare minimum, which might be a spattering of tea and a bath or twenty or none, and probably a lot of terrible TV. When I have my wits about me, though, I do call on other herbalists to help me so that I can relax into their care and simply take in what they offer me. This speaks to a very important detail that reminds us that we can do very little in a vacuum, and community/mutual aid is a major facet to the answers of all of these questions.
However, what I know is that "well-being" is a concept and state that can and does exist outside of the parameters of capitalism, socio-economic status, even illness, etc., and is something everyone has a divine right to.
Admittedly, this doesn't really address a huge personal challenge; being a "professional" in this space brings up its own myriad quandaries.
CS: Just before we taught our class “Well-Being Is Free,” you were feeling nervous about making such a statement, because, of course, “free” is so relative and never really true. Every life has its limits, and the time and space it takes to even access the most basic of “kitchen nutrition” or self-care practices is always limiting in some way. And yet my sense is that you (like me) are so deeply committed to helping people understand the depth and breadth of the wellness resources that are available to them if they know where to look and how to use them. Why is this a passion of yours? Could you speak a little to the tension you feel about working in the realms of wellness and self-care?
MM: Thank you for asking this question. I am deeply dedicated to maintaining that well-being can be free while simultaneously doing the excavation to support the argument, because the more I learn and read and listen, the more I understand that the current model that thrives on collateral and quid pro quo transaction isn't the only option. While you're right that "free" isn't fully accurate, I think that using the word provides an inroad for considering other ways of doing exchange and finding resources that don't rely on currency, and/or has the potential to change the concept of what currency can be.
This is meaningful to me because I know from experience that true abundance and wellness exist independently of financial status. While I know this treads the lip of annoying and potentially harmful manifestation talk, there is a fertile space that can be explored without spiritual bypassing, and I am passionate about expanding access to well-being as much as I can. Herein lies the tension, because finding true access demands we acknowledge that access isn't the same for everyone. I have to consistently shoot holes in my own assumptions about what someone might have in their pantry, running through their taps, or access to in their neighborhoods.
Admittedly, I think a little of this tension is the fear of being canceled for not being sensitive enough, or inclusive enough, or transparent enough. I think a little is also feeling a knee-jerk reaction to capitalism-adopted trends like "self-care" and "wellness" because, again, my profession is right on the edge of that. However, what I know is that "well-being" is a concept and state that can and does exist outside of the parameters of capitalism, socio-economic status, even illness, etc., and is something everyone has a divine right to.
Admittedly, this doesn't really address a huge personal challenge; being a "professional" in this space brings up its own myriad quandaries. What is my time worth? Is it ethical to charge at all? How much do I value the monetary investment I made in my education, for which I'm still in massive debt? How do I frame my fees to my clients, without betraying my own belief? There's a lot of room for hypocrisy here, and I’m in the process of attempting to unearth some authentic answers here.
CS: I love how you consistently stay with these questions, letting their challenges guide both your practical and philosophical contact with your herbalist clients, and with the plants themselves, too. What’s a favorite plant you’re being with these days?
MM: I have been really enjoying ginger! I've been adding it to my tea and foods over the last week, and there's such a rich warmth that comes from it, like a fire in the hearth when the power's out. Because I'm trying to take a long break from refined sugar, a cup of ginger tea with honey is a satisfying stand-in for the cocoa I'd be reaching for on this snowy day, and has many health benefits as a bonus.
CS: You had fresh ginger ready for Kiernan, me, and Theo when we came over to your house for dinner last night; I think to pair with those delicious dessert pears to end the evening! For people wanting to learn more about herbalism or bring plant and animal patterns and identifications more fully into their lives, where and how do you suggest they start?
MM: Well, a lovely way to begin any new endeavor is to ask yourself what is attractive to you about it, and why. Which aspect of herbalism speaks to you? Is it medicine making? Seeing clients? Learning to identify native medicinal plants?
Once you begin to find a few answers to these questions, then you can seek resources for learning, and take it as far as you’d like! I think it’s important to start there because there’s so much available to us, sometimes we have to begin with specifics. What I do recommend, whether you’re learning about Doctrine of Signatures, the chemical constituents of a plant, or what it means for a bird to fly east instead of west, is that you learn by the books as well as formally honing your intuition so you can have trustworthy, reliable information to serve as a fulcrum, dowsing rod, or framework for your intuitive practice.
CS: What are you reading or listening to that’s bringing you joy and pleasure these days?
MM: I'm reading A Midwife's Tale: The LIfe of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. It's lovely to read the words of Martha Ballard herself, which are sparse and matter of fact, and then to have them teased out and contextualized by Ulrich. It's remarkable to hear about medical practice through the very words of an incredibly dedicated and hardworking midwife. Through my ears and heart I've been listening to a lot of Bella White's music when I'm puttering around the house or driving or working. Soul-aching country sad songs with a two-step tempo, perfect for tossing myself around on my various moods.
To book a consultation with or find out more about Meg, visit her website!
Even in my clients who are seeking general support or are in some sort of transition that isn't life-threatening, this desire is apparent to me if not to them, and links us back to the first question. I think we can often feel duped because we know that there's more but we can't connect with it because we're exhausted or simply convinced it's not for us.
Check out the other interviews in this series:
“It might be all you ever need” with writer and life coach Max Daniels
“Unwrap the metaphor like a gift” with poet-astrologer, filmmaker Oscar Moises Diaz
Magic as survival mechanism with occultist Travis Black
Full Circle: On eclipses, motherhood and art with artist Emily LaCour
“The act of conversation feels like a rebellion” with Art of the Zodiac’s C.V. Henriette
“Unhealthy introspection” withThe Lit Listwriter Steph Halchin
Fool’s World: tarot, academia, and “free time” with scholar-artist Dillon Rockrohr
On the Ten of Wands and the Four of Cups with tarot reader Jenny Forbes
Thank you for sharing this interview. It was so full and nurturing and thoughtful. Thank you to you both! I’ll share it widely. <3
This was such a good interview! I'm a big fan of Matthew Wood and I so appreciated the insight that when we ingest a plant, we are taking in its whole essence, not simply the physical components. That is such a powerful and empowering thought to hold.