Health is all too political. Many bodyminds are disenfranchised, violated, or extinguished for simply existing — though existence is rarely that simple. Under neoliberal capitalism, health is framed as a personal achievement —aspirational, moralistic, and often unattainable. We're repeatedly sold self-optimisation through flawed logics of scarcity and eugenics. This worldview ignores how health is shaped by systemic barriers/possibilities like power dynamics and access to resources.
“Perfect health,” as defined by dominant discourses, often comes at great cost —not just financially, but through the harm inflicted on the majority for the gain of a few. But health doesn’t have to mean chasing a chimera of perfection. Rather, it can be fluid and relational, defined by our connections to ourselves, community, and the land.
When I speak of kinship, I mean human, animal, plant, mineral, and fungal kin.
In relation to herbalism, kinship is about fostering attentive, co-regulating relationships with plants that open the door to healing — even when healing is not the aim. It’s also about transmitting and stewarding ancestral/interspecies healing knowledge, ensuring that this knowledge is not exploited by domineering systems and cultures.
Plants have all kinds of creative ways to reveal and deepen their kinship with us. Whether it’s through walking among them, planting and harvesting, composting, watering a pot by the window, or enjoying meals with gratitude for how they arrived on our plates, they remind us of our interdependence. And of course, there’s the way they show up in our lives as medicines.
For me, last year, medicinal plants kept presenting themselves in my dreams.
Even when the rest of a dream slipped away, when herbs appeared, they did so as technicolor messengers, insisting, “Work with me!” How or why they are so generous, I still don’t understand. That’s precisely how elder tree medicine came back into my life last fall: when I squished their wine-colored berries in my dream-hands and twirled a stem of their delicate, spindly flowers.
The dream braided itself with memories of harvesting nearly overripe elderflowers during UK springs to make cordial, a taste that has lingered on my tongue for its aromatic individuality. I didn’t plan to work with elderberry syrup this winter until I received their invitation and knew they were looking out for me. My winter has been sweeter because of them, with spiced elderberry syrup in hot toddies and sipped straight from the bottle.
Pulling plant oracle cards, burning their dried leaves, working with flower essences before bed, or remembering to call them into your dreams are all ways to make contact, to start a conversation.
Have plants spoken to you lately? Have you spoken to plants? (Get weird; it’s okay!) What are some ways you can learn to receive and speak their languages more clearly? Email me at hi@halehart.com if you'd like to share your thoughts/experiences :).