Magic, Medicine & Unkempt Thinking

Tell me something true! Here's mine: There's a tightrope I've been walking for years. I'm ready to climb down from the wire, and grow some roots... or wings.

Back when I opened Herbiary we didn’t carry tarot or oracle cards (says the creator of four oracle books/decks). Looking back the irony is obvious, but when we were a new store, I was careful—militant even—about not mixing magic with medicine. To my mind, medicine for the body (herbs) and medicine for the spirit (tarot and oracle cards) were two sides of the same coin. But, in 2006, mind-body-spirit medicine was still a newish concept. The idea of healing and transforming your spirit was something that made many people squeamish. I wanted Herbiary to be a safe space for anyone who needed natural remedies, so no tarot cards.

When I started blogging in 2008, I was still running the shops (Andrew, my partner, now has that role). Because herbal products are managed by the Food and Drug Administration, I always had to watch my words—I couldn’t make “unsubstantiated” claims. Instead of accidentally putting my foot in it (and jeopardizing the whole business), I wrote about holistic lifestyle choices: how to safely do a detox, clean your home with essential oils, or eat seasonally. When I wrote about herbal medicine, I focused more on the mystical while being equally careful not to be too “woo” since many of my customers and clients would be wary of a heavy dose of magical thinking.

Some days, I’d sit down to write a blog post and I’d just go blank. Keeping this balance between the clinical and the spiritual—trying to be in the right lane for both the FDA and my readers—was draining. After a decade, I just couldn’t do it anymore. It brought me zero joy and a whole lotta angst. I closed down the blog at about the time The Illustrated Herbiary was published. It was quickly followed by The Illustrated Bestiary, The Illustrated Crystallary, and The Wild Wisdom Companion. Those books became what I was known for, not my dozen years of working in wellness circles, teaching botanical medicine at universities, and consulting with medical doctors. My public persona was all magical. It felt incredibly lopsided and supremely uncomfortable, but I didn’t know how to right the boat so I just kept blowing on the sail, hoping forward momentum would someday bring clarity.

Fast forward to last year when a friend suggested a Substack. Ugh, not another blog. While I was interested in writing regularly again and having a place to chat about ideas that weren’t book length, I dreaded the thought of once again being oppressed by my own words. On the sly, I started working on a concept and a logo. Sometimes I need to see things to know if they should be made real. But even as I fell in love with my new {Unkempt} logo, I was worried: who would I show up as? The magical author of the Wild Wisdom series? The clinical herbalist I really wasn’t any more? The memoirist I was becoming? Or maybe just the woman sticking her head out the door in wonderment as the coyotes yowled in the growing twilight. The one who sometimes stood in front of the mirror, fingering her jawline, considering a face lift. Was she interesting to anyone?

I didn’t know.

So I began focusing, not on what I wanted, but what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to define what this newsletter was or when it was or who might want to read it. I didn’t want to make any promises. Maybe I didn’t even want to tell people about it. The don’t wants gained momentum, moving like a steam engine through my mind, the force of decades of frustration driving them forward.

I don’t want... I don’t want… I don’t want!

It was from that place that I created Unkempt. I chose a name that said don’t expect anything from me! I might be messy. I might not follow a schedule! But most of all I might not be who you want me to be.

Last month it occurred to me that creating from an energy of I don’t want instead of an exuberant I want! is not a positive proposition.

So I began to wonder: What do I want from this space?

The answer that floated into my consciousness was actually quite simple: I want to be myself. I want to devote my energy to serving this community by sharing things I’ve learned or am reflecting upon. I want to stretch into my writing craft.

Could I actually start to show up here as me? What would people say if they knew I both chatted up trees and loved architecture magazines? Would they let me both make an elderberry syrup and carry a Gucci purse? (I do, by the way, carry a Gucci purse. I discovered that back in 2015 Gucci did a redux of their floral line. The artist they hired decided to base his flowers on “witch’s weeds.” He chose belladonna, datura, and henbane, amongst others. I got it recently, call it my “poison purse,” and I’m a bit smitten.)

I also started thinking about expectations: Are any of us who others want us to be?

There’s been a cultural shift in recent years: now when our expectations of folks we know on the internet are jilted, we take it quite personally. Our outrage at people—people who are, in reality, strangers—for not matching our ideas or ideals about them borders on the absurd. A friend actually said to me I don’t *think* you’ll get cancelled for your Gucci bag because there’s such a good story behind it.

When did we become so judgey of each other? How do we shift that energy? And how do we stop pre-censoring ourselves in the hopes of not being condemned by some anonymous reader or Instagram follower?

I need to make it stop. I need a reset. Because I’m losing my sense of self.

No. That’s not quite right. It’s more like this:

For years, I’ve known I wasn’t who people thought I was. But I’ve been so busy thinking about who I’m not that I stopped focusing on who I am. I mean, I know how I live my daily life and what’s important to me, but I haven’t known how to express that in public. Maybe a better way of saying it is, I understand my self but not my persona.

So when I started Unkempt, I purposely made no promises and offered little structure. My center and my persona’s center didn’t quite line up. I didn’t know if I could find a way to make regular writing sustainable while in that off-kilter place. Let’s just see how this goes.

And, thanks to you, it’s gone brilliantly. It’s been about a year now and this little newsletter is thriving.

Which has given me the space to drop my defensiveness and sink into what’s true for me. To take an inventory of what I care about:

I care whether I remember to pause in the morning and watch the sun gild the western ridge line as it rises in the east. I care to take a moment to greet the sage and lavender, getting their scent on my fingers so I can smell it throughout the day. I care that when a friend calls me with a hurt, I stop what I’m doing and listen deeply. I care that when I go into Herbiary (rarely these days, I admit), I let the staff know they're appreciated. I care about craft— working to become truly skilled at something—and supporting in turn others who are showing up with the same devotion to their chosen work.

And, it turns out, I really don’t like being unkempt! I make the bed everyday. I get dressed and tidy my hair just to sit and type on the computer. I’m a Capricorn rising; I thrive on structure. (Okay, I then play with the structure… like I’ve never followed a recipe exactly, ‘cause where’s the fun in that?). I’m a person who needs purpose (perhaps we all do) and there’s no true purpose in being unkempt. By giving myself the space to be messy, I have come to know with one-hundred-percent certainty that messy is not my best M.O.

I want to bring my best here. I miss Sunday Tea (remember those emails?) and the lovely community that formed around it. I miss the conversations about truth and magic and devotion that we used to have in Witch Camp. I miss knowing what I’m writing about!

And I don’t want to be casual with you. Writing Unkempt has been like being inside a chrysalis: a soup of in-betweeness. I’ve been neither a caterpillar nor a winged thing.

I’m ready to commit to flying.

So it’s time for a little alchemy. It’s time to let this newsletter transform and grow. It’s gonna look a little different and (of course!) get a new name to go with it’s new form. (Read Letting Magic In to learn more about my fascination with traditions around naming, amongst other things!)

So, let’s end the year of being unkempt. Introducing Something True.

I started this journey many years ago because I realized the cultural truths I was raised with didn’t align with my own truth. Over the years I’ve come to know that I need to air my thoughts to assess their veracity. I often joke that thoughts are like blood: they change color when they hit the air.

Many of the things I know to be true come from seeing my life through reflected in the mirror of the natural world. Nature is a cyclical landscape. Truth is not absolute, it’s evolving. Our truths are something alive within us and we learn—we grow our spirits—when we let them breathe. In a world that’s gotten increasingly polarized and judgey, I know I need space to feel into my truths… and I suspect you do to. Truths don’t have to be grand or world changing. Many are not. Many are as simple as I’m in pain today or it’s my daughter’s birthday and I have feelings. Acknowledging these truths helps us to live from our centers instead of our personas. From there, we can practice holding space instead of swinging a gavel. Maybe we can even build an online community unencumbered by algorithms and based on seeing and being seen by each other.

I’ll be returning to the topics that have driven my personal growth and spiritual quests for decades:

• The place where mind, body, and spirit meet because we become fully human when we pay attention to all aspects of our being. Plus, they’re interconnected so you need to work all the angles.

• The spirituality of the seasons.
  

• Connection… which I often call magic. Connection with our own inner-worlds and the collective unconscious. Connection with nature. Connection through the invisible filaments that tie us to each other.

My greatest hope is that we can come together in community, and converse and hold space together because that, truly, is magic.

Thanks for riding along with me-
xx Maia