Wisdom of Healing

When my daughter, Kaia, was three years old, she and I were severely burned in a scalding water accident from a defective heating system in our home. We lived in the Boston area and so she was rushed to the Shriners Burn Institute. I was taken to Mass. General and treated [...]

The aromatic leaves and soft purple flowers of the common Thyme plant offer us nourishing health benefits as we use them to flavor soups, stews, salads, chicken, lasagna, roasted vegetables, and whatever we add them to.
Garden Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) and Wild Thyme (Thymus serpyllum) both make excellent garden herbs, patio garden [...]

Red clover, a common perennial herb that grows wild in meadows through much of the world, is in the legume family, just as beans, peas and peanuts are. Its Latin name, Trifolium pretense, means “three leaves, found in the meadow”. Red clover is well-known by organic farmers as a cover crop, ideal for fixing [...]

I have to say, I was very impressed and proud of American parents this morning when I heard on the radio that as many as 2/3 of parents were vowing to NOT allow their children to receive the H1N1 flu vaccine. I hope that pregnant women will join this boycott.
Vaccines are potentially dangerous in numerous [...]

With all the interest about the H1 N1 (swine) flu this year, it is more important than ever to do all we can to naturally strengthen our immune systems before this flu season hits. An ideal herb for the job, Elderberry has been revered throughout much of the world for more than a thousand years [...]

I have raised my children, now young women, with herbs and nutritious organic foods. We have grown, prepared and used herbal preparations for most of our health and wellness needs with terrific results. Few herbs have served our needs more frequently than the golden orange calendula flower.
Calendula Officianalis, or simply calendula (pronounced kə’-lend’-ju-lə), is a [...]

Commonly referred to as the ‘village pharmacy’, various parts of the neem tree have provided a wide range of valuable remedies for more than 5,000 years, supporting the health of people, pets, livestock, gardens, the environment and our planet. The majestic neem tree, a deciduous evergreen native to the Indian subcontinent, is one of the [...]

More than twenty years ago, I got a call from a coworker. Anita had two daughters, ages six and ten. Shayna, the ten year old, had broken her arm in a roller skating accident five weeks before and it had not begun to heal. It was a clean break just above the wrist. The doctor [...]

Nearly everyone who has reached or passed puberty has experienced acne. For some, however, acne on the face or body clutches its agonizing grip on us for months and sometimes several years. Medical treatments can be dangerous, causing side effects and leaving us with auto-immune disorders for the rest of our lives. Luckily, there are [...]

Many parents these days have been snookered into thinking that giving their kids plenty of fruit juice is good for their health. Advertisements everywhere tell us it’s so. Sure, it’s better than soda pop and the chemically colored and flavored sugar water they used to call juice that many of us grew up on. But [...]

At a pot luck gathering for an organization promoting environmental activism, I found myself setting my plateful of colorful foods at the table where I didn’t know anybody, just to get to meet someone new. Nearly everyone was chatting with one another. I found an empty spot beside a young lady of about fifteen years. [...]

I have been making a green, high protein energy drink for breakfast most mornings for more than thirty years. A powerful detoxifier, the green drink that I enjoy is loaded with hundreds, maybe even millions, of important nutrients to support every organ, every system and every cell in my body.
Dozens of people have told me [...]

I’m often asked about how I ‘discovered’ herbalism and got interested in learning more. There are many layers of answers to this question. I had many wonderful elders in my early life to teach me of the wonders of nature. It wasn’t until these last few years that I realized that they were also giving [...]

Years ago, mosquitoes were just annoying little creatures that left itchy red bumps all over our exposed skin after we played outside. Now they’re more like scary, disease carrying little monsters. In recent years, our fear driven society has become obsessed with spraying numerous chemicals around our homes, parks, neighborhoods and on our bodies in [...]

When my younger daughter, Mollie, was small, we fondly referred to her as the rash queen. Gratefully, she never seemed to mind these endearing names that came to her. She got a total of 14 different kinds of rashes, some of them two or three times. Her strep throat turned to scarlet fever twice.
She [...]

When my daughter, Mollie, was a child she got strep throat a total of thirty-seven times in seven and a half years! Well, honestly, she probably only got it once and it just didn’t go away for the first thirty-six times. Twice, it turned to scarlet fever and once it developed into pneumonia. If only [...]