Peak summer usually goes in one of two ways for us: either a frenetic, jam-packed, last-gasp-how-is-it-August-already plan vortex OR a gentle leaning in to the long, drowsy swelters of golden lit days, where the only thing (hopefully) on the agenda is tomatoes, a cup of tea, and a swim, if at all humanly possible. As with everything, choosing the latter usually comes when we really tune our ear and listen to what our bodies are telling us *feels* good and just do *that*. This sort of reckoning isn't, at its heart, radical. But in the widening whirlwind of fevered "shoulds" and "musts", reconnecting to the simple medicine of listening to the day's mood and requirements and answering—with something slow, something grown, something green—can feel like a revelation.
Clinical herbalist, Appalachian woodsmaiden, and chief plant mystic behind beloved small-batch herbal apothecary Wooden Spoon Herbs, Lauren Haynes, has built her life and business around connecting and nourishing just these sorts of epiphanies. We sat down with Lauren, writing from her herbalist's tinkerers research kitchen (in a dreamy old converted greenhouse the velvety hills of Tennessee, of course), to talk about the traditions of herbal remedy, how the sacred feminine connects to Earth wisdoms (we were beyond delighted to discover that she and fellow OZMA friend/celebrated plant-whisperer Erin Lovell Verinder took a witchy ladies roadtrip together earlier this year), and the patience and tonic of time as taught by plants.
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