Wisdom

WISE WOMAN WAY

WISE WOMAN WAY

"We are all healers in the Wise Woman tradition. Self-healing and self-loving, we co-create healing with our allies. Our allies are our problems; they bring us gifts of wholeness. Our allies are wise women; they support us in our transformation. Our allies are green allies, wild plants; they supply us with optimum nourishment."

 

-  Susun Weed, Grandmother of the Wise Woman Way  

The Wise Woman Way 

The Wise Woman Way is an ancient tradition of healing that considers the uniqueness of every individual. Honouring the wholeness and holiness of each person, it sees our pains and our problems as part of our story. A story to be embraced rather than a set of symptoms to be fixed. In the Wise Woman tradition we do not punish or purify, we nourish and re-wild, understanding that unconditional love is a healing remedy unto itself. 

When we think of this ancient tradition, we may think of our grandmothers. The wise elders who knew how to gather weeds, plant seeds and heal their families with simple remedies. Whilst modernisation and medicalisation may have suppressed and overridden these ways, it lives on in our bones.

Many of us feel it as a yearning to reconnect, to reconnect to nature and our own intuitive nature.

Be Your Own Healer 

Another key aspect of the Wise Woman Way is that it empowers us to become the healers we seek. It places the power of our health back into our own hands, asking us to trust our intuition and pay attention to the patterns playing out in our everyday lives. How we eat, how we move, how we sleep, how we love, all play a role in our overall well-being. It reminds us that we are only as healthy as our connection to nature and to ourselves. Looking beneath the surface of many of our issues and inviting us to return home ~ home to our bodies, home to the land, and home to the wild plants that surround us. 

Wild Weeds for Our Current Times

It may come as a surprise to learn that weeds are not just those pesky imposters in your garden, but are actually the foundation for many of the Wise Woman’s favourite remedies. Prized for their rich micronutrient make-up, they carry codes of resilience for they have learned to survive even in the harshest of conditions.

Weeds refuse to be contained. They do not cooperate and are therefore not harmed by mono-cropping and other industrial agricultural practices. Whilst they may be overlooked by the mainstream, they are well known on the outskirts to be a superior form of medicine. They are the rebels, unshakable in their roots, undefeated by attempts to poison them. They show up, imperfectly perfect, able to withstand droughts, destruction and desecration.

Who better to turn to in our current times? 

“When the call came it said, 
Go to the moor. 
Live wild there. 
Eat only nettles for one year. 
And this is what I did…”


-
Nettle- Eater by Tom Hirons 

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