My only goal in life is to maintain my inner child — to stay curious and keep my imagination intact. Vision is sacred. I truly believe that our imagination is what shapes reality. This is the essential pursuit.
What else does this mean:
“Inner Child?”
Curious, open-minded, honest, brave, creative, adaptable, wild, freedom of expression.
Pure potential.
The secret to immortality of the heart is in the discipline of mind …
Do not abandon nature — do not abandon your SPIRIT.
The quest of the spiritual warrior is to stay true to yourself, your vessel, & to hone your gifts for service. This requires great sensitivity. Mindfulness. Tenacity.
It took me a while to figure out how to translate my passions, my gifts, & aptitudes into a purposeful career that fits into our weird, modern world. There was some trial and error in the entrepreneurship department, but I never stopped doing my calling. I never stop listening to hear my callings.
I am deeply enchanted by the green kingdom, & I have always delighted in hosting parties. Bringing all kinds of people together for time out of ordinary mind. Connecting people to plants. Building pollinator habitat. Growing wild, messy, & fertile gardens … and forever getting intentionally lost in the woods.
“My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil to grow, the widest field of action. There is no other goal.”
—Hermann Hesse
I actually made the connection across several industries quite naturally—I had already been working as an organic gardener/farmer for several seasons & self-studying herbs when I decided to go to a three-year intensive clinical training program. Here, I was trained to see clients for herbal health consultations (which I still do sometimes). One of the places I could make the most amount of money to pay for school was in the service industry, so I found a new role as a bartender. Honestly, I was in love—I was already a potion maker & really into making flavorful culinary creations from my garden. I reveled in the quick pace & perpetually engaging with interesting, mysterious people at the other end of the bar (who may also want to geek out about wild flora). I like the performance/dress aspect of the character and the command.
Bartender is hostess and responsible for holding space and guiding the energy. To me, a good hostess is creating a beautiful, pleasurable place where people can relax to enjoy their humanness. The hostess with the most is gracious, captivating, attentive, & knowledgeable. This is a tall order, and it is incredibly fun to try to be all of those things well. Bar people are naturally adventurous because you never know who you might sit next to or engage with.
A bartender is the engineer for this adventure: setting the energy, inviting free play while facilitating new ideas and connections. It’s all sensory-
based. As a highly sensitive person, I needed to find my own way—I was inspired to actualize my own world to live and work in. Naturally rebellious, I have a propensity to make my own rules. The infrastructure (my business model) allows me to be a forever learner, to be collaborative, creative, to share knowledge, & be in service to the earth.
“Work is love made visible.”
—Kahlil Gibran
I thoroughly enjoy the big-picture perspective one needs to inhabit to manage a successful enterprise. Learning about herbal medicine is a practice and a discipline, just like any other skill. The root word of discipline is “disciple,” meaning student. To be an eager student of existence, hungry for experiential knowledge, one has to be tuned into energy and patterns. It is a sensual understanding, based on your listening and observation abilities first and foremost.
When I say “energy,” I am referring to the sometimes intangible, yes, but also to systems of herbal & constitutional energetics that have been measured by various ancient modalities all over the world—principles and systems (such as Ayurveda, TCM, Galenic) that acknowledge that nature without is also nature within. Elemental: degrees of hot/cold, wet/ dry, tension/ laxity … how fire, earth, air, water are reflected and embodied within us. To be a good herbalist, one must have a good foundation of perceptivity. Beyond this, as with any field of knowledge, there is familiarity and remembering, studying.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
—Goethe/Murray
I happen to have an excellent memory. I have never forgotten a plant’s name after we’ve met once. Plants speak to me, even in my dreams … where my subconscious is woven with green consciousness, and I’m alerted to the exact precise moment of when & where I should be harvesting a particular green friend (or some other, more nebulous & symbolic message).
My cultivated intimacy with the green world offers me a rooted understanding of their uses—while some botanicals can be used for emergent care or to “treat” a problem, many are food-like and readily available as daily tonics to help prevent many of the inflammatory & stress-caused diseases that we succumb to. I have tuned in to and reveled in this innate wisdom that belongs to all of us.
I formulate each drink recipe based on seasonality, taste, energetics, chemistry, dreams, & my client’s wishes. Every moment in time is unique, & my inspiration is informed by each of these original experiences. The cocktail is my muse & the vessel for creation. A cocktail is a story, sometimes a metaphor. A cocktail carries a message, medicine, and a spark. This translates into a very special offering for my clientele for the cocktail catering business that I run: The Remedy Cocktail Co.
Recipe
Guardians of the Garden
A zero proof tonic named after the hardworking honeybees and the sunflowers who both guard the Summer Garden. This drink is the embodiment of summer & gently cooling/uplifting.
1 whole peach, cut up
3 oz peach leaf, calendula, and spearmint tea honey syrup
1 oz lemon juice
1 ml sunflower flower essence
Sunflower petals
Calendula square ice cubes
Soda water
Garnish: mint, vanilla spritz
Freeze calendula blossoms in square ice cube mold ahead of time as well as the tea & the flower essence.
Muddle peaches in bottom of shaker; add remaining ingredients. Shake and pour into a Collins glass or mason jar. Top with soda water & garnish with fresh garden mint, sunflower petals, & a vanilla spritz (vanilla extract in an atomizer or spritz bottle).
To Make the Flower Essence: On a bright summer day, take a glass bowl of fresh spring water out in the garden and meditate with your favorite sunflower for 10 minutes. Cut the sunflower head into the bowl, careful not to touch It. Leave the bowl somewhere to absorb the energies of the garden for the remainder of the day. After retrieving the bowl, add equal parts brandy to the infused water & bottle into a tincture dropper bottle.
To Make the Tea Honey Syrup: Pour 1 pint of boiling water over 2 TB of each herb & cover, steep for 20 min. Strain & add 1-2 cups of local, raw honey, depending on your desired level of sweetness.
In addition to catering garden parties, birthdays, weddings, wellness retreats, & farmers’ markets, I am also launching “The Remedy Cocktail Club,” a monthly & yearly subscription service for garden-to-glass cocktail kits. The product line promises to be just as inspired as the service.
The third branch of my project is education—I create educational recipes, & I teach classes in my own commercial space, at local distilleries, at retreats, & in the town woods.
I believe in a world where each person can live their passion. Every person is able to aspire & grow their aptitudes into skills & offer their LOVE to society.
Salt of the Earth
your high forest cheekbones
(lifted by)
blushing and
somehow the sun slips
through
and crowns us
the wild whole
mess of green
plantain, aurelia,
touch me nots (teasing)
a faerie queen
once told me
the elixir of youth
is plain and free
a secret belonging to dirt
salt of the earth the
heart
and those with bare feet
— CASSANDRA
