Herbalism, to me, isn’t just about remedies. It’s about relationship. It’s about walking barefoot down the dirt road near our home, or wandering through my parents’ timber, or pausing in a meadow—and staying open. My eyes are always scanning the ground, not just for plants, but for the lessons they carry. It’s a quiet kind of learning, guided by curiosity, reverence, and faith.

No matter what Grandma was doing when we arrived, she’d stop everything just to give us the warmest, tightest hug. I spent countless nights in the upstairs bedroom, where mornings always greeted me with the smell of breakfast cooking and the sound of a meadowlark singing just outside the window.