we are octopi
natural habitats & new online apothecary shop 🌿
I' am back in clinic with open appointments from Saturday August 9th.
I’ve missed you! ❤️ Book a session here.
If you need herbal refills sooner, I’ll be in clinic on Monday, August 4th.
Just Launched: Abalone Apothecary Online Shop!
Introducing our soft-launch of the Abalone Apothecary Online Shop! You can now order your favorite, tried & true handmade herbal remedies through my new web storefront. (shoutout to Zoe Arthur for her gorgeous product photos)
These remedies have supported hundreds of people who bless the doors of Abalone medicine, to find natural resolutions for health problems. Each remedy is formulated to have a powerful, full-spectrum response to acute imbalances. They have all been tested within our community and proven effective time and time again! They are designed to address the most common issues that I see in clinic - like upper respiratory, sinus, sleep, anxiety, skin rashes, joint health, immune strength, and more.
Many of my core VIP remedies are available online now, including Sleep Sweet, Clear Head, Skin Serum and Release the Grip. The rest will be added in the coming season! Soon I’ll add a“pickup in store” option for locals, but in the meantime, just keep using my contact form on my website to place orders.
You’d be amazed at what herbs can reliably heal. And they only have positive, health-giving side effects. I wrote a post about these remedies a while back. And if you want science to back up herbal medicine, it exists in abundance. Type the “latin” name of the herbs into this online catalogue and dizzy yourself with data!
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effortless fall into balance.
It is my last day on the East coast, in northern New York state where I grew up, in Haudenosaunee territory. I come back every summer to see my extended family. My grandmother is 97, my nephews are little, adorable, changing every season; my sisters and parents have been thousands of miles away for almost two decades now. We are scattered. It is common, but not natural, to all be so far away. Human communities have been fractured, time and time again, with serious consequences for our mental and physical health.
It feels so good to be with everyone here… to rest, to share cooking meals, with so many people around to give and receive love. Bickering and all, it is a trace of the kind of community that we are designed for as wild humans.
As I get older, traveling is harder on my body. I’m more aware of my psychic state, so I am more acutely aware of the impact of total changes in landscape, climate, culture, rhythm, the way they shake up my consciousness. But my body bounces back quickly, and traveling wakes me up. It courts presence to break out of routines, not being surrounded by the same everything all the time. Travel, even to a place we know in our bones, shows us new sides of ourselves.
This time I was surprised and uplifted by how fast I return to wellness when the right conditions are in place - when I am more in my natural habitat. Chinese medicine’s feng shui offers a system for understanding ideal climates, conditions and geographies for each of us, based on our constitution. My son jokes that it will be hard to figure out where we should settle… he loves the Bay area with its cool, marine layered nights. For me, a northeastern heatwave is heaven.
There is deep medicine in living within a rich web of family. Lots of people to cook meals, take the kids on adventures, throw your laundry in with theirs. Sisters, parents, nephews, aunties, uncles… hugging my grandmother, spending hours sitting with her on the garden bench watching the sky, until she remembers who I am again… a climate that suits my constitution, hot humid days, warm nights, water, everywhere… waterfalls, swimming holes, green forest, thunderstorms, fireflies, cicada-thick air… love that you don’t have to question.
With my family taking care of eachother, the pressure off, the first thing I did was catch up on sleep. Within days, my energy was back. My patience was back. My creativity started flowing. I went running with my dad and my sister and the warm rain. Suddenly my legs were stronger, my endurance started returning much faster than it does when I get out on the trails in the midst of my fast-paced rest-deficient California life. I had the energy to play rough in the lake with the kids. I didn’t yell at my son. I missed my West coast friends, the sea, all of you… but in a core, rare way, I had what I needed to be effortlessly well. Community, messy, but solid, blood-deep. It breaks my heart not to be closer to them, and I am blessed that everyone is well and we can gather each year.
In the US, there is a rootlessness woven into our paths and pathologies, rooted in occupation of stolen land, rooted in exile and severance from earlier faraway broken histories. Parenting my son for almost 14 years now, 3,000 miles away from my family of origin, I’ve perfected a refined and graceful dance around homesickness and stress. I’ve had therapists guide me through understandings of my ancestral patterns, the tension and wounded children in my body. Learning, practicing, rituals, prayers, modalities, techniques. Podcast after podcast. An incredible lineage of yoga… acupuncture, nature connection, creativity with hands, plant medicine ceremony… so many tools we cultural orphans have to try with all our might to calm our nervous systems and mitigate the stress of keeping it all together.
If the root of our human need (for rich multigenerational close-knit community; warm humid climate; weeks on end of full deep sleep; nutritious food; a physically safe place to sleep; whatever it is for you) is not there - endless special healing tools are just helping us tread water. An ironic thing to say for someone whose profession it is to help people heal themselves. But in my experience it’s the truth.
When a root-level remedy is suddenly available, everything falls into place, so quickly. Everyone out there single parenting, parenting in a nuclear family, parenting in the age of soul-thieving tech, navigating grief, taxes, inflation, housing difficulties, chronic illness, caretaking your elders, working your ass off in some way or another… you know the marathon of stress, the lean diet of stillness and breath, that I speak of. Remember how close your vitality is, just under the surface.
We can blame colonialism, extractive empire - my mom and I just devoured an incredible book that speaks to what else is possible! but this question of why don’t we have true community, what is this experiment in profound disconnection that humans are doing right now… is a deeper question than politics. It is a koan, there is no complete and true answer that we can pin down with words.
Right now I just want to shine on about the magic of recovery. No matter how strung out… no matter how many years you have hustled… we are octopi. Until it is time to depart our bodies, we regrow our tentacles of strength and vitality and sparkle of eye and juiciness of muscles and skin. So. Fast. As soon as we have the conditions where we can regenerate, we do it. We are self healing miracles.
So while we are collaborating beautifully on healing, learning, soothing and calming our shen, we can also let go, and accept what is in our power to do, and love ourselves, and say yes to messiness and tiredness, and not try so hard. and know that at any moment it could suddenly become very, very easy, with more support than we know… while another moment, a storm, a time to get vulnerable and reach out, to hold on tight to the ropes and focus on survival.
We’re all working with our particular abundance and challenge, by the grace of what gives us our life, creation, god, our divine Mother, whatever that is for you. Somehow, not without consequence, but somehow we can survive, and live soulfully, and remember that when given the right conditions, we can fall into thriving with startling swiftness.
We all have octopus power lying in wait just below the surface.
If you are blessed with choice, move towards what makes it effortless to feel good
Love reading you Alison. <3
What a great read! Loved reading about your time in the Northeast — I miss that climate so much too.