The Wise Women Tradition of Herbal Medicine is so important in these tough economic times that we are in. It is a medicine that helps us stay healthy, its preventative medicine. It is cost-effective medicine and it's self-reliant medicine. Some times people say to me aren't you thrilled that doctors are now using herbs? And I say well it's not that I am not thrilled but doctors tend to use herbs is though they were drugs. What really thrills me is when I see a three-year-old pick up a Plantain leaf, chew up that plantain leaf and put it on their alley, how is that for self-reliance. When we become friends with the plants that grow around us, when we are drinking, nourishing herbal infusions on a daily basis and then we know how easy it is to make our own remedies, then we feel more self-reliance.
There is something about shaky economics that makes me feel a little shaky inside when I opened my door and I see all of my friends' dandelion and Plantain, Comfrey and Yellow Dock, Stinging nettle and chickweed. When I see their smiling faces growing in the cracks between my sideward, growing between my planted rose in the garden, then I know deep down inside that no economic crises can take away my health or my ability to stay healthy or to counter any problem that I might have. That sense of self-reliance itself makes me feel a lot healthier. I was teaching at class once and I was talking about drinking nourishing herbal infusions and learning just a couple of plants, wild plants that can be put in our salads. And there was a woman in the class who was an M.D. and she said you know Susun, I think you're living in a fantasy. I don't think that the people that I see who are mostly welfare moms and people who are working really low pay job, I don't think that they are going to be at all interested in this. They just want to come and get their antibiotics and get their remedies. They don't really have the time or the interest in this.
Another woman on the other side of the room, raised her hand when I acknowledged her, she stood up and she looked right at the M.D. and she said, I am a welfare mother, and I have four children under the age of 10. She says we go out everyday to pick plants for our salad. I can't tell you, how self-reliant my children feel that they know that the earth offers them food and nourishment that they can identify plants that grow all over North America that they can use for their food and their wellbeing. She said since we started drinking nourishing herbal infusions, I haven't been to an M.D. once. Maybe she said to this woman, she said maybe the people you see aren't interested but that doesn't mean that no welfare mother is interested.
So there is a room in the world for everyone, and lots of different decisions. But if you are feeling a little shaky in these economic times here is one way to be more self-reliant. To take the power of your own health back in to your hands. And many mothers have said to me, I have such a fight with my children trying to get them to eat anything green or any vegetables at all. And what I uniformly say to these mothers is plant a garden even if it's a tiny, tiny garden and let the weeds take over. Then go with your children to your garden and start harvesting the edible weeds. Most of these mothers call back and say you know, I can't keep my child out of the garden, they go out there all the time. They are munching on the Dandelion leaves, they are eating the Chickweed. They are plucking the Red Clover blossoms and eating them. They even help to me some pine needle vinegar.
Yes indeed we can take some pine needles from any pine tree at anytime although white pine tastes the best, stuff a jar full of those pine needles, before they pasteurize them, apple cider vinegar over it. Put a non metal lid on it, wait six weeks and you have what I call domestic balsamic vinegar. It's loaded with lots of antioxidants to help prevent colds and flu's. As a matter of fact white pine is one of the world's leading remedies against colds and flu. There are so many ways to be self-reliant when the herbs that give us health and the herbs that return our health to us, become our friends.
How do you start? Well I mention three-year-old using Plantain. It's a very easy herb to identify and it's not a banana. It's a big broad leaf plant and as a matter of fact you can't see it, but I am sitting in a big patch of Plantain here, just about anywhere that you sit in a lawn or in a drive way you will in fact probably be sitting among some Plantain.
I was visiting my aunt and she said you know it's interesting to me that you have this interest in herbal medicine, because my grandmother had that same interest. She said when I was a little girl, I was running by the lake shore and I came down on down on a broken coke bottle and that broken coke bottle pierced right through my foot. You know what my grandmother did she went and she got some pig's ear and she put it on there. Well I was little taken aback, I couldn't quite imagine that she put a raw pig's ear on my aunt's foot, and I said to her, a real pig's ear. And she laughed at me and said no, no not a real pig's ear, the plant pig's ear. Well I was scratching my head because I don't know of any plant called pig's ear and I said to her, could you show me this plant? She said well I don't know that was in Ohio and here we are in California, but let's look.
We went out to her lawn in Southern California and there was pig's ear, Plantain. One of the best herbs for healing any kind of wound. I was at a party the other night and one of the men there was standing by the grill and he was grilling things but in between grills, he reached around and he scratch the back of his legs and he grilled and he'd scratched, and I said to him, did you get bitten by something, he said, yes I don't know what it was but oh! Does it ever itch and I just walk down from the deck out into the lawn and sure enough I found a nice big plantain leaf, I brought it back up and gave it to him and said chew this up and put it on the insect bite that itches. Well, it wasn't two minutes later that he came looking for me and said, show me that plant, I need to know about that plant. He said it's not itching; it's not itching at all. I can't believe it. I said, it stops itching heels wounds, stops bleeding and stops the pain of wounds too. Isn't it wonderful to feel self-reliant? You don't have to go to a drug store and buy something.
I said it works on dogs too. If you've got a dog and I knew that he did, if you've got a dog gets a flee bite and starts to, ooh! that flee bite as the dog will. Dogs can even gnaw a hole in themselves from flee bite and said, you chew up the Plantain, put it on your dogs flee bite or even on that hot spot where the dog is, and you'll see the dog will feel much better. Just one example of the many, many green blessing that surrounds all; Wise Woman Herbal Medicine, its self-reliant medicine even a three-year-old can recognize and use Plantain.
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