Three exciting announcements from Nicole Rose and the Solidarity Apothecary.

Links & resources from this episode

• Practical Medicine Making Intensive
• Solidarity Apothecary Clinic
• Italy Tour

Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/

Support the show

Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and liberation.

Let's get started.

Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.

I have got a bunch of exciting announcements for you today from the Solidarity Apothecary.

I just thought it'd be easier just to do like a standalone episode talking about all the things and yeah.

The first one is I am teaching a practical medicine making course.

It's gonna start on Friday, the 30th of June, and it's for three days and finishes.

, in the afternoon of Sunday, 3rd of July, or kind of early evening time.

I really wanted to get this live sooner, but I had this kind of virus, which I mentioned a little bit before, and I was a little bit like.

Or have I got the energy to do this?

I'm not sure, but really need the money.

But yeah, I've just decided just to do it because I think it's gonna be absolutely amazing.

People are always mithering me to do practical courses and I'm always like a little bit too tapped out.

, back in my old life I used to be part of a workers' co-op and we had this kind of like funding to organize, , popular education around community food growing.

So I used to literally organize courses for a job and I got so burnt out for from it.

Like I just couldn't hack it anymore.

Like all the kind of, , kind of customer service stuff of like everyone's requests and needs and just like I am like quite an introvert.

I know people don't think I am cuz I'm like, well loud and brash, but actually like, I really love my own time and, , anyway, this is a right, right.

rant on the side.

Anyway, I've decided just to do it because I think it is gonna be tons of fun.

And most importantly, I think the people that come will come away with knowing how to do fucking shit loads of things in terms of medicine making.

, so we're gonna be learning how to make tinctures.

, so that's like, , herbs kind of infused in alcohol.

We're gonna be looking at just this like folk method of tincture making and also how to do it like weight to volume where you're measuring everything.

, we're gonna look at glycerites, like there's nowhere really to learn how to make effective glycerites.

If I'm honest.

I've got my online course, which is amazing.

You can check that out.

That's like a little workshop.

, But yeah, in terms of getting stuck in like face to face, we're gonna be trying loads of samples.

We're gonna be making like warm infused glycerites over the weekend, like over the 48 hours with single herbs, dried herbs, fresh herbs, combined herbs like you're gonna get to just experiment and try everything.

And we're also gonna be making like beautiful kind of cold glycerites, like rose petal and lemon barn glycerites.

We're gonna be making infused oils.

So I'm gonna show you how to make, , this amazing infused lavender oil, which is like super simple process.

, and the lavender oil that we make, you're gonna be able to take some home.

And we're also gonna use that for people experiencing repression.

, we're also gonna learn how to make infused oils with the kind of like warm methods, like with boundaries and slow cookers.

, and then we're gonna look at how you make ointments from these infused oils.

So how do you combine oil and wax effectively?

You know, what are the good ratios?

, you know, how do you add the essential oils, stuff like this.

, we're gonna look at vinegars like again, the warm method and the cold, kind of like slow infusion methods.

Some of the nuances between vinegars versus, , you know, glycerites and tins and things.

And then we're also gonna look at how to make cough syrup.

So I make cough syrup with glycerine, but I combine it with like a wonderful, like marshmallow gloop.

, so we're gonna be learning how to make the gloop effectively, how to make it nice and thick and delicious so that it's soothing and amazing for mucous membranes and how to strain that out and combine it with glycerine, you know, how long does it last, like things that can go wrong.

We're also gonna be looking at how to make, , lozenges so combining like glycerine and powders so that you can make things that are especially great for digestive health.

, and yeah, it's all gonna be on the land where I live, which is this like amazing small holding that is my stepdad's, kind of small holding.

And my, me and my mom live here and I moved in a long time ago after prison, even though I was like, I'm never gonna live with my mom again.

Like, I left home at 16.

But, , yeah, I've never left ever since.

And it is absolutely beautiful.

Like, you'll have an amazing time.

Like there's wonderful facilities.

, there's like camping, there's like a beautiful nature reserve behind the house with an amazing hill.

There's hot showers and my mum is offering to do the catering, so she's like an incredible kind of like self-taught, like wholesome food person now.

, so it's not gonna be anything fancy, but it's like really nice, like plant-based meals and yeah.

And obviously it's really nice to be able to like pay her and support her in that work.

, but you know, you're also able to not.

Not pay for food and accommodation.

So accommodation is only 10 pounds a night.

What?

The food is off the top of my head A but it's on the course page.

, so if you wanna make it a little bit cheaper and only pay the 250 for the three days for all the medicine making costs, then that's like totally okay.

I'm also like really open-minded.

For people if you need like a payment plan or something like that, like just literally drop me a message and once I've got enough people on it, like kind of 10 paying punters, then I will kind of make some announcements about , people being access it for kind of free or just donation of what they can afford.

, cuz I've kind of designed it to have like a third of the people that are there being there, like in solidarity places.

, So, yeah, I know, I know the price is like a, a lot for a lot of people, if that makes sense.

Like I'm really, really aware of it.

, but I'm also aware after, yeah, five years of teaching courses that people do pay for things like this.

They pay for retreats, they pay for events, they pay for conferences, and yeah, like I think, you know, it's.

Important to pay people, , including me, like I'm a working class femme.

Like I grew up on state support and benefits.

, didn't go to university, anything like that, you know, accessed herb school in my late twenties.

, so.

And yeah, have kind of been wrecked by PTSD most of my adult life.

So that's really affected my kind of income earning potential.

But again, this is another rant.

I'm just saying like, , yeah, like I'm aware that it's not accessible for everyone, but I've like, Crunched the numbers really accurately in terms of how much it's gonna cost for all the ingredients and supplies, which are really expensive these days.

And also like what feels like a good amount for me to be able to like take home, if that makes sense.

And that money will be invested in obviously like paying myself, but also covering a lot of my medicine, making costs.

This year because I'm about to announce some amazing herbal solidarity packages, , which isn't one of the exciting announcements today, but, , it will be soon.

So, yeah.

So just back to the course.

I know it's really short notice, , but it is gonna be amazing.

I do not teach things face-to-face very often.

It's gonna be a small group, like maximum 15 people is gonna be super practical.

Like if you wanna have that like tactile experience of.

Yeah.

What is a glycerite meant to taste like?

Or what's the difference between like a kind of strong, effective tincture and one that doesn't taste so good or, you know, what happens if there's mold here or you know, how do you dry this herb out?

Or how does it work with roots?

Like, I've literally been learning medicine making for like, Over 15 years, you know, like I obviously started this journey in prison.

And then ever since I've been experimenting and to be honest, like I've sort of learned the hard way.

Like I've learned through practice and practice and practice and making this and making that and that not working and that not working.

And like with the glycerites, it's took taken me like five years to really get on top of like the nuances of like, this really works with berries.

This really works with fresh plants.

This really works with dried roots.

, and I really hope that I can share some of those skills cuz I'm aware that there's like 1,000,001, uh, potential community projects out there that could support people to access herbal medicine.

, and people, you know, just don't have the skills.

And I think a lot of the university and training courses around herbalism, like they don't have enough room in the curriculum to really dive into the practical stuff as much as the learners would like.

So I know it'll be a really amazing asset for people studying herbal medicine, , and just anyone involved in community projects like that, you know, wanna make medicine for, for their community, for refugees, for, you know, anyone they're supporting.

Like it's such an amazing way of building kind of, , community self-defense, right?

Like making these medicines that can support our immune systems, can support our digestion, can support our nervous systems.

, and we're gonna really be looking as well at like sustainable harvesting.

You know, like how much should you take from a plant or a tree.

And also like potent medicine making, like what we're gonna really be concentrating on over the three days is like, How effective will this medicine be?

Right?

Like is the, is there like, you know, okay.

I talk about constituents a lot in course, like it is part of my herbal medicine framework is to really think about the chemicals that I'm kind of wanting to work with from that plant, but also holding space for their complexity that.

Plants are really complex, and when you take out one of the constituents and isolate it, you'll often have different side effects.

So it is about the plant as a whole, but we are really gonna be talking about like what's more effective for what, right?

Like if you harvest this herb, what is the best way to get the most potent medicine from that plant?

And I think that, again, is something that's hard to learn on your own, if that makes sense.

, and we're also gonna look at kind of medicine making systems.

So, you know, like what labels do you need to write, what records do you need to keep?

, you know, it's not gonna be like thorough like GMP style stuff, but it's gonna be like, what is good for like a home or d i y medicine maker?

how can you store medicines, for example?

And throughout the course we're gonna be looking at like, how can you make this medicine like en mass?

, You know, like, because it's one thing like making like a little kind of tincture in a jar for yourself, which is a hundred percent where I started.

And it's another thing being like, okay, how do we make 8,000 medicines to get to Ukraine?

Or how do I make like 600 ointments at once, for example?

Or you know, like, 500 cough syrups for one trip to Cali in the winter, for example.

So I'm gonna be sharing all my tricks with that.

And uh, yeah, cheeky tip buckets.

You're gonna learn a lot about buckets.

I love using like high quality food grade buckets and medicine making.

It's like my kink or something.

Okay.

So yeah, so the full cost is three twenty seven, three hundred and twenty seven pounds, but the actual cost is 250 and you're welcome to come and just pay that and not.

Stay at the site or not have food.

You're also super welcome to email me and tell me what is possible for you and we can organize some sort of payment plan.

, And then, yeah, I am gonna have like five places available for people on either really low incomes or from projects that are doing lots of medicine making, who would really benefit from it.

, so yeah, definitely just basically reach out.

Like I'm pretty flexible.

, I've had to like three, four people book now, which is really exciting, but it's not quite enough to know that it's definitely gonna happen.

, so hopefully a few more people will book.

I haven't really promoted it very hard yet, but, , yeah, and you know, in terms of doing it again, I think maybe next year I'll do it if it goes well.

, I, the rest of the summer is like super booked up where we live, so I think it's unlikely that I'm gonna do it over the summer.

Maybe it's something we could do in the winter, like in a village hall or something, but really we need the plants growing right.

To make all these different things and to harvest the medicine and stuff.

So, so yeah, that is, The first exciting announcement.

, the other exciting announcement is I am open to supporting one-to-one people, , with my Solidarity Apothecary clinic.

So I have been supporting people like, you know, like one or two people a week, , kind of one-to-one with medicine, so having a consultation and then giving them herbal recommendations and getting it in the post.

But, , I'm trying to kind of scale that up now and see more people, , and also starting to see people, , who want to like invest in a package.

So everything like, you know, in everything that I do is sliding scale.

And you can see on the website, which is clinic.solidarityapothecary.org.

, you can read all about the sliding scale and where you might fit.

There's different packages available basically.

From people, , who I'm gifting my medicine and my time to, like in solidarity.

So for example, former prisoners, , or refugees, uh, without kind of access to funds.

, and then there's kind of other packages of people with financial resources, and that means that you actually pay for all of my time, right?

So like, you know, like.

The, , time it takes to do the consultation, the time it takes to type up your notes, to do research, to plan your formulas, to get back to you with your recommendations, to decant everything in the herb shed, to go to the post office and get it in the post.

Like, you know, herbalism is like very poorly paid, underfunded invisibilized, like femme labor, like through and through.

, but I'm trying to get a little bit better of like showing how much some of this stuff costs, right?

In terms of energy and finances.

But yeah, the kind of like, Focus of the people I'm working with are often people who are kind of like frontline organizers in different ways who are kind of experiencing burnout, and I wanna support them so that they can like keep engaging in struggles for liberation for the long haul.

I burn out really badly, which people will know.

I wrote a book about it literally.

But I kind of love supporting people who are, I mean, I'm not happy that they're in the same place that I was, but I really like focusing on people who.

Are kind of at that place of like they've experienced like chronic enduring stress, whether that's emotionally, financially, physically, energetically, politically.

You know, and they're just in the depths, right?

Like they're, maybe they have chronic fatigue, they have some sort of chronic illness.

Their like psycho-emotional mental health is deteriorating.

, and yeah, like, and it's hard to find your way out, right?

And you need support.

And I think what's nice.

About one-to-one support is like, it's actually very effective.

Like I think for organizer types, like we're so obsessed with collectivity and everything is in our groups and our collective, so sometimes we can be kind of lost.

Do you know what I mean?

Sometimes we can kind of drown in everyone's else, everyone else's needs and expectations, and there's less attention on us and our body and our needs.

So I love to hold space for people of just hearing them, hearing their stories, hearing where they're at.

Recognizing their symptoms, observing their bodies, and then, you know, finding plant medicines that can support them.

, so coming up with herbal recommendations.

One thing I'm really passionate about is I always wanna explain which herbs I've chosen and why.

So I do like a kind of herbal recommendations document.

Obviously it's complete nonsense in terms of self-employment and making money, but for me, when I was really sick and I'd be seeing health practitioners and they were recommending stuff left, right, and center, like it made me feel very disorientated and disempowered because I didn't understand why I was taking something.

Or you know, why that particular herb had been chosen.

And I think it's really amazing to share with people one, so that we're not like gate keeping knowledge.

Two, so that you have some actual consent about what herb you are gonna have in your body, and three so that you can really build a relationship with that plant, you know, because that's really what is healing and amazing about herbal medicine is like actually having relationships with the land, right?

Like that is healing.

So yes, so I support organizers.

I also support people experiencing state violence.

So that's like defendants and ex prisoners and prisoner families so they can get support with some of the effects of like chronic stress and trauma.

You know, things like headaches, poor sleep, muscle pain, regular infections, nausea, et cetera.

, obviously I've taught this massive 60 lesson course on herbalism and PTs d so I do think that my sort of specialism in this field is supporting people with kind of like complex, , PTSD whose nervous systems are generally, you know, Overwhelmed and been in a state of kind of constant activation or fight or flight and working with them with herbs to help them access more parasympathetic kind of rest and digest time.

, and addressing some of those, , kind of cascading inflammatory effects in the body due to chronic stress.

Yeah, I think for me, like one of the things I really wanna offer is like a supportive space.

Like obviously, , yeah, like I have more like class awareness than a lot of people, if that makes sense, because of my childhood and stuff.

And I also, , have been through a lot of these experiences like prison for example, and, and also sorts of things.

So like, I like to kind of try and create a space without judgment.

Cuz I know from my own experiences of visiting herbalists that has often been very disempowering and triggered a lot of class stuff in me, whether it's judgment about my dietary choices or my lifestyle choices.

, for me, like I often, I've been supporting people like recovering me, like in recovery from using heroin for example.

And it's just like zero judgment space, like harm reduction focused and yeah, just constantly trying to humanize people when they've experienced like relentless, dehumanizing forces in society, if that makes sense.

So anyway, and even if you're not one of those two people and you just need some support with your health, please contact me.

I've got the energy and the interest, and.

Yeah, I really, yeah, I know I do a lot of like big political organizing and events and all this stuff, but like there is something really sacred about one-to-one support and I think so many people could have such radically different lives if certain parts of their health shifted, if that makes sense.

And yeah, it's a real tragedy when we're kind of stuck with like chronic health issues and things.

Because of like a lack of support basically.

So again, like the packages are on there, like, if that's not something you can afford and you need to talk about it, let's just talk about it.

You know, like it's, it's totally okay.

Like I wanna be supportive.

, generally I focus on supporting people in England and Wales, but yeah, I am open to seeing people further afield if they can kind of chip into the postage cross.

All right, so that was the second announcement.

I'll put the link in the show notes.

And then the third announcement is that I am going to bloody Italy this weekend.

I'm really excited.

Some comrades have translated the prison's herbal book into Italian.

Printed copies aren't quite available yet, but the tour is gonna be like promoting the book and generating interests and excitement about it and connecting with people doing prisoner support and, and like organizing in different ways around kind of political resistance, whether that's against, , like high speed railways that are destroying land bases or whether that's like, yeah, just kind of queer trans feminist organizing or prisoner support like, , yeah, the tour is gonna be awesome and I'll put a link in the show notes.

To kind of where I'll be.

, it starts off in a mi with an amazing, , d i y herbalism festival, , in Bologna.

And then, , we go to Rome and that's at a queer feminist, trans feminist squat in the city.

Gonna be talking about the prisoner's herbal and kind of like broader struggles.

And then gonna go to Milan.

And be at the Villa Occupata, which used to be Villa vegano.

Maybe people know it as that.

And look again at the Prisoner's Herbal and this, you know, the kind of connections between political struggle and herbalism and prison.

And then we're gonna go to the Susa Valley, which has been like a real hot hotbed of struggle against the Tav, like the high speed railway for decades.

And we're gonna look more at herbalism as like a kind of tool of resilience.

Look at things like burnout.

And we're also gonna be looking at struggles against borders, cuz it's kind of like a border hotspot there.

A bit like K Yeah.

And then on the Friday, , we're gonna go to do an event in Turin in the evening and yeah, that's gonna be more focused on kind of, , anti prison work and pri anti prison struggles.

, yeah, and I'm just.

So excited.

I'm gonna go there with my sweetheart, Rob, maybe you saw the Instagram post and that's looking very cute.

But yeah, we're gonna go together and , it's gonna be amazing.

Hopefully try and have a bit of a romantic time in Italy as well.

But yeah, I'm just really stoked that comrades have invited me.

It just reminds me like what a fucking honor it is.

To be able to be supported in this work and to know that people.

Getting it right.

Like they're passionate about it.

They understand like the, you know, the connections between plants and creating a different world and how can we support revolutionary struggles with plant medicines.

And when I was designing the Italy tour graphic, I found this amazing picture of this like abandoned prison.

And of course it's just like covered in plants, right?

And it just was so beautiful to me.

And, , I use the text along the edge, which is like freedom or blossom in the ashes of prisons.

And that's, yeah, that's kind of my work in the world.

So, yeah.

So the, those are the three announcements.

Please get in touch.

If you're interested in the course.

Please get in touch if you're interested in like one-to-one herbal support.

And if you are in Italy, then please share the events and please come along.

I would love to meet you.

I'm really sorry I don't speak any Italian.

, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be great.

And , I'm probably gonna die of heat exhaustion and mosquito bites.

But I'll do my best anyway.

And yeah, the next podcasts are gonna come out with like the final, the final chapters of the prisoners herbal book, and are gonna be looking at wound care in prison in like a prison environment.

And also like connecting with plant allies.

So yeah.

Thanks for listening so much.

For listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.