I looked through my drafts and posts and realize it’s been nearly a year since I last published something here. Life has been been very challenging, with moments of beauty, struggle, chaos and sometimes rare moments of good flow and routine.

It’s very hard for me, as a neurodivergent person to be thrown off my routine. It can take weeks of recovery. Not knowing what to expect, not having that predictability of a solid and well structured routine is so challenging for me.

In the daily flow of keeping up with and being as present as I can be in motherhood, my business, home duties, tending to myself — I have learned that a level of blending, flexing and flowing is required through constantly changing currents. Instead of a rock at the bottom of the river, maybe it’s better to be the bending willow who can flex and flow with the changes — and grow with it.

I digress. In this last year, I’ve come to realize that the childcare I’ve been depending on, simply doesn’t meet my needs to show up for my work the way that I need to. Need is serious. I have been struggling up against this for some time. Childcare is such a massive challenge for any working family in America. It’s expensive, it’s often hard to find, and if you live in a city, even a small city like mine… the waitlists not only cost money to get on. But they are long.

I finally found childcare with consistent regular and full time hours, that will provide my little one with incredible care and education. Having a full Mon-Fri schedule that I can depend on, that doesn’t rely on other inconsistencies in my life will be a massive and welcome change. I feel most mothers deal with the mother guilt of it all Why can’t I do it all? Do I really need more childcare? Why can’t I keep up with everything? Why am I so exhausted all of the time? Am I doing enough for my child? Am I a bad mother for needing full time childcare?

All of this clangs around in my head all day. My logic brain knows none of that is true, but the feeling arise nonetheless. I know that I will be a less stressed, and more present mother when I have the childcare I need. This has been a very welcome new development for me, my work and how I show up to it.

That was a very long way of saying that I will be resuming writing here. I am going to dismantle the ridged writing structure I set for myself here and allow flow.

I’m excited to share more about plants here, observations, recipes, resources, and deep dives into topics that overlap in the realm of herbalism, magic, realistic wellness in late-stage capitalism. Writing is a core part of who I am, and I have missed being able to write freely in the quiet hours that I have (like right now, at 6:21AM while my little one still sleeps).

I will be reactivating the paid subscriptions and regular writing will begin early October. I wanted to give those that follow me here a heads up.

I am looking forward to coming back to this space, back to writing on a platform I enjoy and connecting with others in this space. I have so much I want to say and share.

In rushing river water and bendy willows,

Britton

Sometimes the simplest of plant infusions — the easily accessible stuff, can be the gateway to a lifelong journey in working with plants and their medicine. Infused vinegars are easy. Almost everyone has a bottle of vinegar in the back of their cabinet. It’s also incredibly cheap at most supermarkets. I’m pretty sure you might be able to make this preparation today! If not, gathering the ingredients is cheap and easy.

Today my focus is mostly on cleaning vinegar.

White vinegar vs. apple cider vinegar.

If you have some apple cider vinegar in your cabinet instead of white, you may be tempted to use it for cleaning, and you can! But I would suggest using white cleaning vinegar instead. Why? White vinegar, or cleaning vinegar has a higher acid content than apple cider vinegar. Acetic acid content in white vinegar can be up to 10%, whereas apple cider can cap out at about 6-7%. Acetic acid is our cleaning and extracting agent here! Apple cider vin I lean into for food preparation (also have you noticed how expensive it can be nowadays?)

I have personally infused with both, and have found the white vinegar to be superior and does a little better at extracting. Apple cider vin tends to be syrupy when you infuse it for a long period of time. Really it’s just a matter of preference, but I notice that good apple cider vinegars are best left for cooking and making vinegar based herbal medicine.

Now, I am not about to say that vinegar infusions take the place of disinfecting. I don’t think they do, but they do have mild cleaning power on surfaces.

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Gosh, I had high aspirations of being able to publish once a week here, but an historic ice storm, loss of power for several days, seasonal depression, and a feverish teething baby have kept me feeling like I am treading water in a heaving ocean that is January.

Imbolc inches closer and closer, the Midwinter mark. We’re halfway there to blessed spring, and I cannot wait. Last year, in spring, I entered into my healing crisis postpartum — it was the most awful and frightening time, punctuated by the joy my newborn baby brought me. Lonely nights listening to rain and frog song…

I felt very ambitious at the start of this January. I wanted to tap a few different tree species for sap, I wanted to gather cottonwood buds — but this ice storm we had stopped me in my tracks. So much damage has been done over such a large area, they have closed up and barred entry into most of the areas I planned to go. Along with that, came this deep sadness and grief of a changed and broken landscape (literally trees are shattered everywhere!) that I could not access like before. It brought on a depression I had a very hard time shaking off. I felt like sludge.

Then my poor baby boy got feverish for a few nights along with a growth spurt (aggressive nursing at night!) and teething — it’s pushed me into deeper states of being present, surrendering to the moments of his needs and breathing through every second where I just want to shut down, but can’t.

Still, here I am — it’s January Field Notes, and these are the notes from (what has felt like) the battlefield.

My wave of seasonal depression felt mightily impactful. I was struggling to cook meals, most tasks felt absolutely draining and I wasn’t writing here, and I wasn’t working for my Feb shop update.

I languished a bit in that space, and then I knew I needed to begin digging myself out. While it’s not a depression cure, it has helped me. Doing these things, always helps me.

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I heard a massive boom followed by bright electrical light into the sky that lit up the interior of my home. As I rushed to the window, a powerline, coated in ice that had been building up for days, landed in a large Douglas fir and was on fire. All nearby residents called 911. No one was dispatched, and the fire dwindled — all emergency services were overloaded due to the high amounts of damage, wrecks, and outages. My lights flickered, then went dim and eventually shut off. I scrounged for candles while holding my baby and shushing my dog — as my neighborhood street erupted in a brief chaos. We were on day 4 of being homebound in a prison of ice.

Feeling foolish for not being prepared for this moment, I frantically looked for a stash of candles and my blessed LuminAid solar lamp — that I had kept in a window to keep a charge. I folded up bits of tin foil and set candles in safe spots around the house in the growing darkness and lit them. The mac and cheese I was cooking on the stove slowly moved from a boil to stillness — thankfully, cooked! Baby and I sat in the candlelight eating the mac and cheese and feeling the coldness creep into the house. I cooed soothing words to my baby — as he was able to feel my distress. Mother duties never end and never stop, even in a power outage. We did our night routine as best we could and climbed into the still-warm loft of the house, snuggled under woolen blankets. My gratitude for working so hard to breastfeed and persist despite all my struggles with it was immense. Knowing I could provide that nourishing milk for my baby when there wasn’t much food in the house was a comfort.

I didn’t sleep well at all. In the dead silence of the blacked-out neighborhood, all I could hear was the cracking of tree limbs, huge swooshing breaks of whole trees falling and soil uprooted, the tinkling of falling ice and the deep hum and boom of electricity and powerlines losing connection and lighting up the sky. While baby was soundly asleep, I poked my head out the window… the sounds were eerie, and strange and made me fearful.

My thoughts turned to Gaza. To every child who could not sleep due to bombs, mothers desperately seeking protection and soothing for their babies, food, wounds, death, and incessant bombing. Never knowing when you may die, or lose your baby, sister, brother, mother. Never knowing if you will reach medical aid. My thoughts spiraled and spun through the night — of my own discomfort and how utterly fragile our grid and systems are and how I might be able to build more security for myself and my little one.

I felt grateful, and guilty.

In the morning, I talked with my neighbor over a camp stove in my kitchen and blessedly hot coffee and oatmeal for my baby. We offered each other support and game plans for food and warmth and relayed information from others in the neighborhood. Thankfully, my best friends several blocks away still had power and a little trailer to keep Orri, my pup and I. Packing up was a scramble and I tossed everything in the car. Thankfully, warm air and rain moved in turning the ice to slush and we were able to leave my cold dead feeling house safely.

The security of home and cost of living felt obsolete and like a massive debt to my conscience as I stood within the cold walls and the grid dead. How is this sustainable? I wondered. In a multitude of layers, I knew and know and have known. I knew how quickly the house would be consumed by moss and brambles and mold and fungi — consumed by the very things that gave it life in the first place. Instead of a square home container, I wished for curved breathable walls, a stack of firewood, a clean and free source of water, and food, food grown and stashed away by me, and my community.

Preparedness has always been on my mind, yet always there’s a delay and excuse and reason why I haven’t prepared. But now, it sits at the fore of my mind. Climate chaos continues to spin and build and increasing uncertainty of weather events, grid security, food security. Now, more than ever I feel the need to work towards making a safety net, to put things by and plan for events such as this.

A bounty of seed packets sit on my kitchen counter, and the mounds of building good soil for garden beds is being worked on. Seeds lie in waiting to grow and build.

I have no real answers, just a knowing that I must do the best I can do, with what I have.

Hello friends, I have not be able to write like I normally do lately due to being house-trapped these last 4 days — my normal childcare routine has been disrupted and so I am behind on my writing for this month. The entire PNW (and nation it seems) has been hit by hard winter weather. We have been under a state of emergency due to the ice storm here. Outside my door is literally an icerink! Too dangerous to walk on. Couldn’t even open my car door these past few days.

I hope to get a post up here next weekend. Till then, me, baby and pup are hunkered down, staying warm and reading lots of books.

Before I begin what I think is going to be a pretty long post: I have debt. I worked to save to take maternity leave (I am self-employed), then my life turned upside down in a way that I ended up needing to hire a lawyer, as well as relocate my life and business to another city. This effort took credit cards. My only debt before this was my car, which I financed because in 2021 my truck’s rear axle broke and it was insanely expensive to fix. I bought my first, slightly new very nice car, a little Rav4 — which came with that wonderful Toyota longevity, but also that price tag. Now, I am digging myself out of a hole.

Nothing like setting big goals on a public platform to really keep you accountable! I have to admit, that the approach to a year of No-Buy (or I guess, very conscious spending) has felt intimidating and a bit daunting. Mostly in the sense of, what will I do if I fail? What if suddenly, I need something? I have to remind myself, I set parameters for this very reason, in this post. Which I have edited, and on a few extra weeks of reflection, I realized there were a few necessities that needed to be added to my list of approved items.

The preparation and sources of inspiration

Really, the primary prep I did for my No-Buy Year was made a list of do’s-and-don’ts for myself. When I shared about going on this adventure so many of you recommended a book by Cait Flanders, The Year of Less. is on Substack, which is super cool to see! I do recommend her book if you’re considering a no-buy year, just like so many recommended it to me. There were some parts of the book that I didn’t quite agree with1 — still a good read.

I did a bit of digital housekeeping to keep sales content under control:

1. I got a browser app that bulk unsubscribed me from the billions of promotional emails I get each day. I have left subscriptions that are a routine purchase, or part of my planned purchases for 2024. I also left local grocery store sales ads, showing specials for the week (this helps save on grocery money)

2. I deleted all shopping apps from my phone! No window shopping on Amazon2. I now have a rule that Amazon can only be used on my laptop, and I am only allowed to make one order per month. This can include multiple items — and pretty much all of these items are replacement items for things I already use (supplements, toiletries, household consumables, etc)

Facing the addiction and the strange need to buy to prepare for a no-buy

In December, I did see myself rushing to close up legitimate needs I had before I began my no-buy. Updating my Kindle to Paperwhite (the intro Kindle has no dark mode or warm light settings and it was killing my eyes at night). I also upgraded my underwear, because this was something I’d been working on. Due to childbearing body changes, I bought cheap as hell underwear from Walmart, and now I regret it. They’re incredibly uncomfortable and give me sensory issues with the feel of the fabric. So, I went on a long and arduous search for the perfect underwear. I now own only 7 pairs of high-quality undies. Higher quality means slightly higher price tags and an absolute desire to handwash and air dry to prolong their life.

With the no-buy looming, buying all these things felt weird, and I definitely paused before buying.

One of the things I enjoyed about Cait’s book, was that she shared her struggle with alcoholism. As a recovering alcoholic myself — I know that my disease lies in waiting and very often attaches itself somewhere else so that it can feed. The beast of addiction moves from one area to the next, like a horde of locusts looking for something to feast on. I know this about myself. Also, buying something gives me the dopamine satisfaction that my ADHD brain craves. In our consumeristic culture, no one bats an eye at the treat-yoself mentality. This no-buy is going to cause me to confront the layers of my addiction-prone behaviors.

I also noticed that while running to my little grocery store for a coffee restock, I found myself mindlessly wandering feeling like I needed something else. I caught myself wanting to comfort buy. As I walked home — I had to look to the deeper source and origin of this desire.

Tightening the belt will be an ongoing process, it’s a journey

My brain likes to have perfect settings before I can begin a project. In this case, that just isn’t going to happen. I had lofty ideas of purging my house (even though it’s pretty damn lean in here after I left my past relationship). Over the next few months, I will be widdling down my belongings. Each month I am going to focus on an area of stuff, and purge. First up: clothes.

Libraries are a place of magic and so many free resources

Between access to my Library, Libby and Hoopla, I do not need any streaming services (I have no time to watch TV anyway), Audible or Kindle Unlimited. Money saved right there. Yes, I do have to wait for some books, and that’s fine. There’s something to be said for waiting these days in a culture of instant gratification. It feels, archaic in a way.

Last bits & making a garden budget

I edited my original No-Buy post that contain some rules for me. There were a few missing items that I simply didn’t think of and wanted to make space for.

I have always wanted to garden, and have failed or been too daunted and challenged by past living situations to start. Somehow, living where I do now, there’s an incredible ease to getting a garden started. I have made a list of needs I know will come up, and some projected needs for the future of the garden. I am doing it as cheaply as I possibly can. I ran a budget and set limitations for myself. Gardening is an expense I am absolutely willing to take on because of the following:

• It contributes to my well-being

• It’s a life skill and an area that will provide learning opportunities

• It’s something to share with my baby boy, my neighbors and my community

• Has the potential3 to offset my grocery costs (probably unlikely this first year)

• It’s just a good thing to do!

Ok y’all, I am sure there will be many more updates. There are so many areas to explore in this frugal No-Buy adventure. I think my next post will be exploring how I am bringing awareness to my energy consumption, and how I am managing costs and savings there.

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The New Year has always felt special, and now, it’s even more special to me. It is the day I became a mother. It’s my little boy’s birthday. Like me, he is a night baby, he was born 8 minutes before my own birth time.

Every mother has their birth story, and still, mine is hard to process. It was a hard, dark time. But here I am, a year ahead and that year behind me. It’s time to start fresh.

Resolution — that word never felt right to me. I love to harness this time because of the collective motivation and momentum to change and shift the way we do things, to start fresh. It’s like you can hop on a jet stream and let it carry you. As an Aries, this is the energy we live for.

My intentions this year feel good and simple and my goal is not to add more (ok I do have a few new additions to my life!), but to decrease and maximize what I already have. Quality over quantity. This is a mix of personal and work related intentions and goals. I don’t really separate the two, because so much of my work life is deeply intertwined with my personal life. Like two vines twisting up and growing together.

It’s a less is more year.

So here’s what I am setting my sights on this year:

1. Begin and finish one pleasure book a month

2. Committing to staying accountable with my no-buy year for 2024.

3. A 25 minute walk 6 times a week (I already do this, and I want to maintain it).

4. Committing to An Herbalist’s Notebook and providing quality writing, so that I may grow my readership

5. Prioritizing joy and doing what makes me feel good. If I ignore that dread feeling in my gut that something is not right for me, forcing it to work only makes things worse. It’s ok to quit.

6. Getting back to my soap making art, sharing one soap each season of the year that is very slowly and intentionally made with local ingredients

7. Continued prioritization of tending to my health in holistic ways

8. Starting my prerequisites for Nursing school, fall term

9. Starting my first in the ground home garden — herbs and vegetables

10. Incorporating more movement in my life, as inspired by Katy Bowman of Nutritious Movement (Grow Wild is a great book if you’ve got kiddos!)

And that’s it. The newest things for me are gardening and starting school. Everything else is either already on my radar, accessible or challenging my status quo in ways that require less of me (isn’t it wild how that can be hard for us?).

I’m really looking forward to exploring some of these things. School sounds intimidating, my no-buy is increasingly feeling intimidating! And my ADHD brain is always afraid of burnout when I push it too hard.

Let’s add: 11. Practice pacing myself.

Tell me one of your goals or intentions for this year! When we share, we put it out into the energetic webs of the world — and from my experience, things really move and happen when we do that.

Of course, there will be a check-in at the end of the year to see how these things went. I’m so curious about what my future self will do!

This will be my last post for 2023. I’m starting fresh in 2024, and will be sharing my first post for the year a few days into the new year. I’m very much looking forward to tending this space, as I have completely revamped it and have been on a good writing and sharing routine that feels really good and sustainable.

This was one of the hardest years of my life. I thought my Saturn return years were hard, but no. So, in a numerical based list, here’s a breakdown of my year — what I gained, what I lost, and what I learned.

1. I gave birth to my baby boy. Right on January 1st, in the wee hours of the morning. As soon as I saw him, it was like I knew him already from forever ago. “It’s you,” my first words to him and he looked right into my eyes. In 2023 I became a mother, and never knew love and care of this depth and intensity (they say you never do till you have a child, and it’s true, true for me).

2. Experienced a health crisis. I’ve never had a health crisis in my life. I’ve never had to be hospitalized. After I gave birth, I developed a rare condition called severe postpartum preeclampsia. This is when your blood pressure goes through the roof shortly after birth. It can result in seizures, stroke, heart attack, eye and organ damage and death. It was a horrifying experience. It left me with PTSD, and a new found fear of getting my blood pressure checked. There’s little to no known cause for postpartum preecalmpsia, and lifestyle/health is not a risk factor. You could be the healthiest Olympic athlete and still get it. This experience connected me to my cardiovascular and heart health in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t developed this condition. I have such a greater understanding of the heart and cardiovascular system, how to care and tend to this aspect of my body.

3. When your biggest fears come true, you have nothing to do but move through it. It turns out, sometimes it’s actually not that bad. Sometimes, it is really bad. Sometimes when that worst thing happens, turns out to be a really good thing in the end. Turns out, we can transmute and alchemize that experience.

4. I’ve had to surrender to motherhood in ways I didn’t actually know I had to. Gone are the days of my morning pages practice and quiet morning reflection, gone are the days of predictable predictability, lost sleep, wired but tired, house never clean, neglected areas — always a touch of chaos. I thought I would be able to control more in my day to day, turns out… I had to let a lot of shit go. They say it gets easier, and it doesn’t, but it does in some ways. Almost a year in, still not getting the best sleep. It is what it is, and I have had to learn levels of acceptance I didn’t know exisited for me. I find that the more I let go, the better I feel.

5. I had to address extreme stress, PTSD and enter into a healing crisis. After my postpartum condition, I was still unwell for many months after that. I was on a big list of medications. Some nights I was on the national maternal mental health hotline — so afraid I would die in my sleep. Die of a heart attack, stroke, have a seizure while driving. I had to develop a protocol to regulate my nervous system, calm my heart, lower my stress and my blood pressure. Obviously, I had to find a way to address my general anxiety that was exacerbated by postpartum anxiety and depression. This healing period I focused on will be its own post down the road. Eventually, I needed to get on an SSRI, especially as my relationship began to dissolve.

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6. I quit my relationship, which was abusive. I tried really hard for a long time. After I gave birth, it became more and more apparent to me, that this person I had a child with, did not actually care about me. I’m not going to go into detail here. I tried and tried. I stopped believing in anything that brought me joy, I stopped having faith in the things I devoted my life to, I lost interest in all my long held passions. You know how they tell you things like that are a red flag? Well, they are. But you don’t realize it in the moment. I stopped trying in my relationship, and it was the best thing I could have done for myself.

7. I had believe in myself and find strength in ways I didn’t think were possible. Leaving an abusive relationship is the most dangerous time for a woman. I had 6 hours to pack up my business, my personal belongings and leave — I did not look back. I fucking left as fast as I could. I will never regret that decision.

8. I had to ask for help. I had to ask for so, so much help. At every turn, I got the help I asked for. The only thing standing in the way of getting the help I needed, was me.

9. I let go of what I could not change but worked hard at what I could change. Ol’ serenity pray baby!

10. I found a great little house in a great little neighborhood. I came back to the city I had the most community in, and felt the most supported in — and I am so grateful I had a place to land. Through friends and connections, I found a landlord who is not only ethical about rent pricing but was flexible and willing to work with my situation. That’s almost unheard of in college towns in the Pacific Northwest — especially during our housing crisis. From the big grandmother rosemary bush by the front door, to the shaggy unkempt garden beds, big yard and apple trees, it felt so homey and perfect for us. Everything is walkable, and my neighbor and I (also a single mom) have taken to periodically leaving each other gifts at our doors. Words cannot express how settling into a house that feels good, and feels like me feels. Living here feels like a balm on a wound.

11. I unknowingly committed to a slow technological weaning process. After I left my relationship, I was living with my friends for a short period before I moved into my new home. During this time, I deleted Tiktok. It felt like a lot of the messaging I saw on that platform, was very much seeping into my subconscious. I didn’t like it. Also, this ADHD brain will latch onto a catchy jingle like none other and my head felt like it was chaotically flipping from one radio station to the next. My Instagram use was already pretty low, because frankly reels drive me nuts. About three days ago, I decided I was done with the amount of notifications I get on my apple watch, and a few days before that, my therapist advised me to take a good long news cycle break. Right now, I am day 3 into a pretty big cut off from being constantly connected. I never actually wanted to be that sucked into my phone and constant reminders to use apps. The thing was, is that it was a slow creep into my life. One day, I woke up to realize that I don’t need to track every single metric of my life (and for some tech billionaire to capitalize on my data). So, I stopped. And yeah, there’s definitely a withdrawal period… but that will ease up in time. I feel a lot more spaciousness in my body now.

12. I decided to radically pivot my life, go back to school, and become a Registered Nurse. That’s right! I’m going to dip my toes back into school starting next summer. I’m extremely excited, I’m ready to exercise my brain. My postpartum experience made me so very impressed and in awe of labor and delivery nurses, as well as the lactation consultants I worked with. Something in me is stirring to connect Western medicine and herbalism together — I really don’t know what this looks like down the road, but it feels very right for me. I also really liked the idea of more financial stability. I’ve been self-employed for the last 15 years. I have no retirement, and after having to make a major emergency life move, no more savings. The other side to this choice is a bit existential for me: during the early pandemic, my business suffered from major supply chain issues. I really just don’t trust the fragility of our global manufacturing, production, farming, etc. etc. — I will keep making things, as long as I can but I also want more stability.

13. Learning to live life, on life’s terms. That’s a 12 Step saying, and lord have mercy has this year taught me all the lessons in power, control, strength, trusting the process and more. It’s wild, how this year started and is now closing up. I regret nothing, I am so happy about the decisions I made, even though they were so incredibly scary, and I felt I was nearly about to crumble under it all. But I kept going. And I’ll keep on going.

I don’t think the years will get easier for us collectively, but I will continue to lean into love, care and compassion.

Love to you all, I’ll see y’all next year.

Britton

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Observations

I moved into my new home about a month ago. I’m readjusting to living in a city proper again (it’s been 6 years!). Honestly, it’s been overwhelming how many shopping and coffee options I have now. And, I can get Thai food, Indian food… so many foods again. I’m getting my bearings in my new surroundings.

Today, after dumping and layering a bunch of soggy slimy cardboard down to prep an herbal garden bed followed by mulch, I heard a familiar croak in the sky: Raven, two of them, flying westbound. How did I know they were ravens and not city crows? Tail feathers and their voices of course!

It surprised me, seeing them fly over the city, and it made me glad to see them. Usually, in my experience, ravens are city shy. I went back to brushing aside piles of apple tree trimmings and wondering how I could put them to task in my eventual garden, trellis? A wooden star for our little Christmas tree? Make them into artful wall hangings?

Ground damp and soggy from a recent atmospheric river dumping many inches of rain on the region — I could see little herbs and lettuces popping up in a derelict garden space from the previous tenants’ gardening project. Many more seedlings sprouting, as they do in the fall season here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon — but struggling to grow due to the cold.

I’ve been making mental maps of plants, herbs, and edibles here in my neighborhood. More fig trees than I can count, apples and plums in my yard, arugula, milk thistle, teasel. The usuals: plantain, chickweed and dandelion. Grape vines here and there, hawthorns and a particularly nice patch of mustard greens on a dirt hill in an ally. So many different kind of oak trees, I need to get an oak ID book. My mind does these mental plant resource mappings, maybe like we do in a town or city when we have grocery shopping options. I am building a map of my plant options and resources. I also make note of the cozy homes that flag for kind nice neighbors who do not kill their weeds with glyphosate sprays.

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In 2023, I used shopping as an escape mechanism from my miserable life — instead of having the courage to change the things I could, I sank back into retail therapy believing and thinking I might be able to fill the vast chasm and void within me with something, a new hobby, a way out, a distraction.

Of course, that didn’t work.

By all accounts, I have been a fairly frugal person for most of my adult life and I feel I am more frugal than your standard American person.

This past year, my changing postpartum body — desperately needed new clothes that fit, and a whole new wardrobe.1 Then, there’s baby things. Everyone tells you you need this, and that for baby, and like most things, you actually don’t need it. You do need some stuff, but most of it you don’t.

Then, I left so many of my belongings behind when I left my baby’s father. I had to start over again. Oddly for me, the decrease in stuff felt relieving — and I don’t even have that much stuff.

Now that I have stepped into single motherhood, currently have no child support or child care to help me work more and going back to school on the horizon — the best way I can offset and protect my finances is to be better with money. I’ve been aware of no-buy periods, but I’ve never actually intentionally committed to trying it.

I googled “no-buy month” to see how other folks do this, and instead, I found a blog post called “The Ultimate Guide to a No-Buy Year” and I loved it.

Because I am a recovering alcoholic, ADHD and an Aries, I do not dabble. I am not a halfway kind of person. I am all in, throw myself into the deep end — sink or swim. So, a month? Heck no, I am going in for a full year and writing about this, is how I will keep myself accountable.

As Becker writes, a no-buy doesn’t mean you buy nothing for a whole ass year, it means you take serious stock of how you’re buying and place boundaries and limitations on yourself. I am very interested in doing this.

Making a plan is key here, and I want to outline my plan and commit to checking in here every quarter to update my progress and experience.

Progress, not perfection as they say.

Here is my why and these are my goals

• I want to understand my spending habits

• I want to redirect myself when I am looking to comfort myself with a purchase

• I want to make more conscious decisions about purchases

• And of course, I want to save money as a result

These are my rules

What is allowed:

• Groceries (obvi, lol).

• Consumable goods, like replacing cosmetics, soap, toilet paper, dish soap, etc.

• Replacement items, if something breaks or is lost. Like the vent cap to my Instant Pot, a new lid for my travel coffee mug that leaks like crazy, etc.

• Necessity items for home, dog, baby, myself — chew toys for Uusi, toys for baby, bins to organize, items to cool the house in summer, bedding, etc.

• Clothing for baby and I, specifically sourcing used, on sale, or with discount code purchases.

• A planned list of big and necessary purchases (detailed below).

• A limit of pleasure purchases (detailed below).

• Christmas gifts and cards (which will largely be handmade).

• Experiences and travel

• Limited garden and plant purchases

• Supplies for school

What is not allowed:

• Retail therapy and comfort buying

• Eating out

• Coffee out (allowed under working conditions, like currently I am sitting in a coffee shop which is extremely rare for me)

• Brand new, just because clothing purchases

• Random, “this is a good deal and I think it’s cute” purchases while necessity shopping

• No new cosmetics

• No new electronics or gadgets

• Books — However I am allowed to educational book purchases, and to follow along in my goal of reading one fiction book a month

Here is how I am preparing

I am making a list of necessary items I know I will need to buy in the future.

Because we do deserve pleasure in life, I will be allowing myself to make only 6 pleasure purchases, specifically from handmade makers and crafters. I love to collect hand-thrown ceramic mugs, and purchasing art or a one-of-a-kind piece of clothing I feel is fine. It’s supporting small makers, like myself! However, there will be an imposed limit.

This is my list of future major purchases and needs

1. A dresser for clothing storage (will buy used)

2. Upgraded car seat for baby

3. Air conditioner and heat reduction supplies for summer (this house gets particularly hot due to sun exposure)

4. Clothing bins for seasonal storage

5. An upgrade on my Kindle e-reader (protip my friends, do not get the cheapest version. It’s a trap to get you to upgrade eventually because the basic $99 Kindle has zero light adjusting features. No dark mode, no warm light mode — making reading in the dark, which is basically the only time a mother gets to read — a huge eye strain. So you eventually upgrade to the Paperwhite. Just buy the Paperwhite. Also, I would like to add I would love to read paper books, but, being a mom it’s very hard. Page turning at night wakes the baby.)

6. Garden items and planter items — I just know that something will eventually come up and I’ll need to buy something.

OK my friends, 2024 I start this journey and I will update you all on my quarterly progress. I’ll be tracking myself and my spending in a spreadsheet.

Here’s to buying and spending less! I’ll be checking back in, in March.

I’d like to share, that I know many folks who live in colder places won’t probably see this little plant this time of year. But it will be here for you into the damp months of spring, reminding you to eat and make medicine of your wild greens!

I know y’all, it’s not a fashionable time to be writing about our beloved chickweed, we’re only a few weeks into December. But you know, I think this speaks to this little plant’s tenacity — as it’s growing everywhere here at my new house. Chickweed was the first plant to greet me here. Actually, I’m wrong about that. The first plant was the massive grandmother rosemary out my front door, but she’ll get a post of her own at some point…

Chickweed is, Stellaria media — stella, meaning star, and -aria meaning "pertaining to," referring to the shape of the flowers.1

Chickweed was the first plant of remembering for me. You see I’d been living in Northeastern Oregon for four years, then I moved to the prairie terraces of the west valley coast range slopes (aka Willamette Valley) and lived there for a year — no chickweed. None that I ever saw, none that ever crossed my path. So, when a plant does this in my life and I have the opportunity to say, “hey, I remember you” it means something.

It’s an invitation to explore and remember our relationship.

And all I felt from chickweed was a cool, soothing, quenching balm to my rather inflamed, hot, dry and irritated state. Things that felt stuck, felt like they might be able to move again. I am speaking in metaphor, and also literally.

The stress of living in and leaving my abusive relationship (with my dear dog and sweet young baby in tow) took a huge toll on my health. My body felt like it was on fire, my nerves, my skin. Physically I felt hot all of the time. The skin on my hands peeling and cracking, my immune system was shot. I felt vulnerable to illness and stuck.

Chickweed, being under the rulership of the moon, comes in with soft tender leaves, cool to the touch and tongue and has that delicious mineral spring greens taste. And when I went outside to marvel at the many patches of growth around my house, I snacked on small bunches of it and felt an internal cooling and calming relief. I felt like I could get unstuck.

Chickweed is a mellow little plant. They’re tender, yet so very hardy. They can stand up to a decent frost, but in the high heat of summer they shrink back. They love the cool moist and shaded spots.

What’s this little plant do?

Chickweed is a refrigerant. Herbal actions like this make me laugh a bit. She’ll cool you off if you’re feeling hot, or dealing with wounds that have some heat to them, or burning itching rashes, eczema and the like. It will help cool and soothe. You can easily do this by making a fresh poultice — this is also beneficial if infection is starting to set in (combine with plantain, amazing!).

One thing that comes to mind, is a poultice for wounded nipples from breastfeeding. Breasts carry so much heat, especially when feeding a little one and when they’re hurting, even more heat. The cooling touch of chickweed feels like a good idea, and safe for babe.

Chickweed, like many spring greens, is just all around amazing nutrition and great to add to your food as a fresh green. Honestly, that’s the most common way this plant is used!

The saponins in chickweed dissolve cysts and fatty deposits and increase cellular membrane permeability, allowing the body to recieve nourishment and rid itself of wastes more easily. — Scott Kloos, Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants2

I have no experience with chickweed dissolving cysts, but if and when I have the opportunity to find that out for myself, I will update this spot.

I’ve only ever eaten chickweed, but I am excited to try some experiments with the abundance here. Here are some of my plans with chickweed:

1. Salve! I will be doing a salve of wilted chickweed and plantain — just waiting for the stars to align to get out into the yard to do some gathering.

2. Grazing and eating. I am not a cold salads kind of person during the cold months, but I will nibble on this fresh and green right outside. Though, I imagine that one could make a small side salad with bitter greens for some digestive stimulation as a part of a rich winter dinner.

3. Soothing oatmeal pack, filled with herbs. I saw this in the Herbal Medicine Makers Handbook by James Green. He mentions adding chickweed to a cloth bag filled with other soothing herbs and ground oatmeal to use on irritated skin in the tub. I imagine this could be good for kiddos with rashes and such like.

4. Blended up and frozen in ice cubes and stored away in the freezer for later use. Perfect for burns, or irritations that carry heat that need to be soothed right away.

5. Used in cold process soap making. I am really thinking about adding some chickweed to a spring greens themed soap coming up pretty soon. I might chat about that in my Notes from the Botanica series (where I chat about my small business, Blood Moon Botanica — no posts yet, they’re coming!) — I like the idea of infusing it with an oil used in the soap making process (I love olive) and adding it in fresh and green.

6. Chicken snacks. I don’t have chickens, but according to Richo Cech3, increases egg size and nutrition. I’m sure chickens wouldn’t have a hard time finding it on their own, and may even it all of it before you do.

A little unconventional to be writing about this usually spring focused plant, but why the heck not. Keep her on your radar and memory for when spring rolls around. Poke around in the woods, hedges and borders of cool moist spots. Bring your plant ID book, a gathering bag or basket and eat or make medicine of your fresh gathered greens.

Busy, busy, busy are these shortening days and long nights as we descend further into the darkness and towards the depths of winter. If only we could enjoy the beneficial aspects of modernity and yet, be as our ancestors were: inside, a lot less busy, tending fires, mending, weaving, creating, storytelling and being with those we love and are close to.

Alas, modernity in all its conveniences has still made us busier than ever. The holiday season can be exhausting, mentally, emotionally and taxing for the body as we push through days when we should probably be getting more rest. Colds, flu and gunky illnesses become more common, and if you’re not getting enough sleep (hello insomniacs, hello motherhood) — our precious immune system can become compromised, making us prone to picking up colds and such like.

After back-to-back illnesses, Covid and then a random gunky head cold — I knew it was time to bust out the seasonal herbal sipping broth.

I know, broth, right? Not a tea, not a decoction. I put these herbs, roots and mushrooms in my instapot and make a dense rich herbal broth. I use it to sip hot, I’ll dilute it to drink cold, or add it to soups, stews, or as added broth when cooking up greens on the stove.

The cool thing about making an herbal broth? You can make it to suit your needs, tastes, and desires!

I’ll give you my current recipe, and then some ideas for different brews and broths — highlighting some great adaptogenic herbs, warming spices and herbs and nutritive plants for this winter season.

My current blend I am putting into the instapot:

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Hey y’all. As I dipped my toes back into writing here on Substack and exploring some new features I decided to do a name change. I am doing this to well, focus my rambling ADHD brain who always wants to hop from here to there, and gets a little confused even by my own internet spaces (what am I doing here?) I decided to turn this into a notebook of sorts.

Archaic Honey, has been my internet handle since, I think 2012. It just doesn’t fit here in this specific space. It’s not descriptive, it’s vague and non-directive in my opinion.

An Herbalist’s Notebook felt good, clear, direction oriented.

For my own journey through herbalism (just clocked 10 years in active practice! I realized that this morning) I have always wanted a dedicated space to the plants, plant medicine, deep ecology and adjacent writings and I know this is an area a lot of folks have asked me to write about. So, here it is.

My About page can tell you even more about this notebook, and what to expect here, if you decide to be a free subscriber, or pay to get more of my writings.

Anyway, I am really glad to be here. I am really glad and grateful there are a lot of you out there interested in what I have to share.

Looking forward to tending this space, like a beloved notebook.

Time to myself is few and far between. And time to write, even more so. I feel so rusty and creaky at weaving words together these days, and the only way to remember how, is to just do it.

After a year and a half of living in fear and my circumstances reaching a fevered pitch, I bailed on my old house and ran to the safety of my friends house, with Uusi and my (then) 9 month old baby. I was so stressed, so tired and so out of sorts my milk supply had dropped and the skin on my hands were peeling and burning due to stress-related eczema. Each day I would wake up at my friends house, running on pure adrenaline, cooking, cleaning, and helping them in some way — as I felt it was owed and I felt a burden to them. I wouldn’t let myself rest, I couldn’t relax. The nervous system on a constant high alert.

I’d been running at this pace for almost half a year into my first year as a mother, I was ready to collapse.

A few days after landing at my friends house, through friends of friends, I was able to find housing. The house was strange, a little crooked (literally) — but it was perfect. It held such a calm and safe energy to it, a soft healing glow.

The landlord was more than accommodating, rent was affordable (for the area) and I got assistance through social services for a domestic violence housing grant. We moved in early November.

Moving all of my things into the house, felt so strange. Suddenly, all my stuff, all the important things I was able to grab in rushed leaving, felt so heavy — felt suffocating. So I have begun to slowly widdle my things down to only things I truly cherish (and lean into dopamine decor).

I truly did not think I had the strength to leave, it only ever felt like a pipe dream, a fantasy that I could live without the constant struggle, the constant hope of understanding, the constant work to hope my pain could be seen, that the hurt could stop. So much felt impossible, and sometimes I wondered, am I just lazy? Am I not scared enough? What will it take?

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Yesterday, while taking my morning walk in the blessed spring sunshine, baby strapped to my chest, I reflected on my past writing practice: I would wake before dawn, light candles and incense, say prayers, sip coffee and bang out at least 1200 words stream of consciousness style.

Those days feel like a lifetime ago.

Lately, my health has been better. I’ve taken some serious steps toward healing my nervous system, my stress response, orienting my diet towards heart health and getting back into regular exercise. With more and more sunny days filling my weather app, and waking to sunshine pouring through my bedroom window while migrating birds sing their songs, a deep sense of calm and joy returns to my body.

Each day, I wake with Orri, go downstairs, and make a quick breakfast while he plays independently on his rug. I drink my coffee, do some foot stretching, change a diaper, put the carrier on and head out the door for a brisk walk. The walk isn’t just for exercise. It’s where I breathe deep, observe what’s growing around me and soak up the sun, to help balance my circadian rhythm and get beneficial hormones moving. The effect, in turn, lowering my stress, teaching me how to regulate my stress response and lowering my blood pressure (after having severe postpartum preeclampsia — I developed severe hypertension, of which I had never had before).

So, while on my walk — which also acts as a nap-inducing routine for Orri — I realized: I can write when I get home while he’s napping! And I will write for as long as he sleeps and is calm, or until I am done saying what I’d like to say. Weave what I would like to weave. Stitch together precious, quiet moments at my standing work desk.

With spring/summer here: I feel like a mother bear, who’s emerged from her den, happy to show the world what I grew, excited to share this with my baby, feeling the restoration of the sun, the scent of conifers on the morning air. I was so deeply depressed/anxious/angry/resentful this past winter. The sun, my breath, the moment is what I am leaning into to heal and let go.

The boy wakes, and that’s a wrap.

While routine and predictability aren’t readily available to me as a mother of a young babe, maybe we can establish just a little bit of consistency here. Just a little. We shall see!

Social media had drilled it into my head how sacred this time was, how precious and how much I needed to protect it and get as much support as possible. If i didn’t do those things and have the ideal perfect 40 days — I would be a failure.

What you don’t plan for, is having your blood pressure spike to 190/112 — and being told by the advice nurse that you waited and hour to get a hold of, that you need to be admitted immediately or you could suffer a stroke or heart attack.

You don’t plan to have to pack a hospital go bag, again.

You don’t plan to be laid up in a hospital for 5 days watching the peaks and valleys of your blood pressure on a monitor, while you weep over the beauty of your newborn child.

You don’t plan for the lead feeling in your veins while you get a magnesium drip for 24 hours.

You don’t plan for severe postpartum preeclampsia.

You don’t plan for the intrusive thoughts of what will happen to my baby if I die?

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“Then the youth understood that the Moon, like God and Fortune, does the most for those who do the most for themselves.”

— Aradia, Gospel of the Witches - Charles G. Leland

I have this habit of minimizing or downplaying what I have gone through, or what I am currently going through.

“It’s no big deal”

“It could be worse”

“I’ve been through worse”

It usually takes talking to another person, to realize that, hey, actually maybe things have been a bit challenging.

Isolation makes echo chambers. Communicating and coming out of our familiar inner landscapes can provide fresh perspective.

The beginning of the year started off pretty normal, in my high desert home of North East Oregon. I experienced deep loneliness in my 3.5 years out there, but it was so good to me. Quiet, vast, warm, cold, dry. I’d taken every opportunity given to me to learn all the secrets of the little corner of Oregon I lived in. Because of my military upbringing, a sense of “home” and place was very foreign to me. Oregon felt like home, but I’d only known western rain forests. Then, then I would eventually come to experience the sagebrush steppe, and high alpine peaks and it was there that a sense of “home” settled into me and it felt so, so good. And I’d ended up there mostly by accident.

Early this year of 2022, I met someone and we really liked each other. It wasn’t crazy infactuation or anything, we just had a really nice time together doing activities we both love. We were also both serious about our recovery from addictions of our past — and we both have a mutual understanding about how important sobriety is to us. About two months into dating, and on my birthday we were at our beloved weekend hangout spot, a local hotspring. The pools were a toasty 105 degrees and thick billows of steam were rolling off the thermal lake and pools around us… I remember not being able to handle the heat that day, which is very unusual for me. I’d been having low back pain, and all I wanted to do was soak it away. My period was also a mere two days late, nothing to really worry about. The heat overwhelmed my body and I had to take frequent breaks. I noticed a shortness in my breath and suddenly a sense that, something in my body was very different — but what?

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I have no idea what will become of this space, but I would like to utilize it as a placeholder and liminal space in the ether that connects us all — while I figure out where and how I would like to be on the internet! It’s a wild thing.

Plants, herbalism, folk magic, animism, navigating the world as a neurodivergent person in late-stage capitalism and forging connections to the land amid such turbulent times are my focus. Oh, and eventually parenting through all that as well!

We’ll see what becomes of this space as I negotiate my relationship to social media.