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Hearing Melanie: Roots Revival and the Practice of Plant Medicine
Hancock, MI
This year I've gotten to know Melanie, my favorite herbalist, but also fellow mother, healer and friend. Someone that I feel lucky to have in my corner for health questions, life lessons, and everything in between.
Through Roots Revival Herbals, Melanie makes herbal blends that are grounded (and rooted!) in old plant knowledge and in equally deep respect for the ever-changing seasons of the body.
Melanie has a comprehensive understanding of the ways plants can support us, and her work refreshingly steers away from the latest wellness trends.
Sure, saffron might be having a social media moment, but is it the miracle cure Instagram says it is?
Mel doesn't see bacteria as an enemy to be eliminated, but as an essential part of a healthy body.
She'll remind you that getting outside in winter is good for you - that cold air, sunlight, and contact with the living world aren't things to be avoided simply because it's February.
That health has seasons, cycles, rhythms, and requires a certain amount of attunement and listening.
That all that glitters isn't gold.
Melanie forages her plant medicine locally, working with herbs like yarrow, calendula, mugwort, and many others, understanding their different properties and relationship to one another, from yarrow's long history of use for wounds and skin to calendula's soothing relationship with skin. She distills each plant in small batches, preserving their medicinal qualities into thoughtful blends.
One of the things she tells me often is: support your body, but don't force it.
As someone who tends to approach health with a fairly Type A mindset—find the problem, take care of it, move on—I need the reminder. Oh, this helps my mood? I'm gonna mainline it in my drinks all day every day. Oh, this herbal salt bath makes me feel calm? I'm dumping in the whole bag. I have no chill! Sometimes I feel like life is a nail and I'm the hammer.
The Roots Revival approach is different. It considers what the body might actually be asking for rather than trying to steamroll it into submission with a pile of supplements. Where someone sees permanent solutions, Melanie sees seasonal plant allies. Where someone sees black and white, Melanie knows nuance. Melanie asks questions. Melanie pays attention.
I sometimes see her the same way I teach meditation to my Kindergarteners: I am the Mindful Mountain. Thoughts pass like clouds. There's noise and chaos in the towns below me, but it doesn't touch me. I am rooted in calm.
In her work is this groundedness (literally - ground and groundedness). The tinctures and salves are amazing, but the one-on-one aspect is truly a blessing. Incredibly knowledgeable about plants and their uses, Melanie is also intuitive about the people she is talking to. I have never seen her shy away from a health conversation. She offers perspective both accurate and nuanced to every market goer, taking them into her apothecary with love and without expectation.
Just like the Earth gifts us all that we need, having someone with that depth of knowledge in our community is a gift.
Melanie is building a resource around something that can be easy to lose sight of. The magic of the human body and its relationship to earth isn't a trend. It doesn't come neatly tied with a bow, and it certainly isn't one-size-fits-all. The earth gives us plants, and as Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, "Plants speak in a language that we can learn to hear."
Lucky us that we have Melanie to help us listen.
Find Roots Revival Herbals on Instagram
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