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Transcripts
Nicole:
Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the
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Solidarity Apothecary.
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This is your place for all things plants and
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liberation.
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Let's get started.
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Hello. Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.
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Guess where I'm recording this?
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That's right.
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In a car park because of my baby.
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Well, dropping off my baby.
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Anyhow,
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I'm not gonna bore you with those details, but I just.
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Yeah, I just want to replug that the Herbalism PTSD and Traumatic Stress course is open for
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enrollment.
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Yeah, please, if you, yeah, if you've joined the course before, I would love you forever if
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you could share it on your networks.
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My Instagram still gets like zero ******* views because I talk about genocide and Sudan
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and all the things and yeah, just antifascist stuff and it just gets invisibilized, which is
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frustrating.
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But yeah, if you can share it just like DIY amongst your friends, like in signal groups
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and chats on email list, you're on, like, I would really appreciate that.
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As I've said before, it's like completely sliding scale offering.
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No one's turned away Flacco funds.
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And yeah, you can,
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yeah, access it for free if needed.
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It's ******* amazing.
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Offering eight modules from everything from the politics of trauma and how trauma affects
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the body and all the geeky anatomy and physiology around the nervous system as well
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as like different kind of evolutionary nervous system states.
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And then just all about the herbalism, like, you know, which plants are like relaxant to
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the nervous system, which are more sedating.
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How can we work with stimulating nervines when
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appropriate?
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How do we work with nerve tonics to recover from,
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you know, chronic stress or trauma?
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It's all in there.
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And yeah, I, I only open it twice a year, so
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it's not going to be available until next March.
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So please, please, please get stuck in if you can.
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Hello.
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So, like everyone I know,
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I've got a little bit of a sore throat.
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I've been fighting a virus.
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Yeah, most people I know have some kind of upper respiratory infection.
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So me and the bubs stayed away from everyone last week, but I'm feeling a lot better.
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But I'm just a bit nervous of tiring my voice out.
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So I'm only going to record a short,
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a short episode today and then, yeah, we'll hopefully come back and record some things.
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I really want to focus on like nerve tonics and all about support for chronic stress.
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But I just wanted to share something that I wrote back in the spring also when I was
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Promoting the PTSD course, but it's kind of stayed with me and since kind of starting to
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facilitate this Hawthorne program for people experiencing repression.
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I guess it's like, emerged as like,
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important theme that I'm still really seeing in kind of movements and in, you know, my
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social groups, which is really this like,
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you know, kind of relationship to, like, self neglect.
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So I'm just going to read what I wrote and then I will talk a little bit more about it
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and how it, you know, relates to herbalism more.
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Okay. So the piece is called Herbalism, A Rebellion against Self neglect.
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When my parents broke up and my dad moved to the other side of the world, to Australia,
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I was left with my mum's deep depression and the grueling reality of bringing up two kids
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alone with no financial support in a system designed to keep you in poverty.
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From four years old, I was left with the impression that I had to take care of myself.
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I became the hyper responsible, hyper independent child.
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Forced to be an adult,
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I learned that to receive love, I had to give emotional support.
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It was no wonder that prisoner support became the heartbeat of my life for 20 years with its
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comforting familiarity and proximity to suicidality, distress and despair.
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The elders around me in the social movements I found as a child rewarded self neglect and
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self sacrifice.
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The more I threw myself into full time organizing risky actions, arrests, and
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repression, the more validation I gained.
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I had no idea how to take care of myself or see my own needs beyond the codependent blur
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of being useful to others.
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It was in a prison yard that I found herbs, or they found me.
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I realize now that plants taught me how to receive.
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I learned it was okay to eat bowls of their leaves to help ease the hunger.
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In prison,
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I learned it was okay to drink a tea to help me sleep through the screaming on the wing.
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I learned it was okay to sleep with a dandelion root under my pillow to feel safer
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and less alone in my cell.
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Embracing herbalism meant learning about the body, about anatomy and physiology, illness
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and disease, and so much more.
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Over the years, subtly and unconsciously, I learned to take care of myself.
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Not in a hyper independent, trust no one kind of way, but in a way where I could feel my
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body's cues.
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I could understand my different nervous system states.
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I could recognize when I was exhausted, I could notice when a cold was coming on.
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And for all these cues, I knew that the plants would take care of me.
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In that moment,
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I made medicine for myself.
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I eased flashbacks and volatile dysregulation
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through foraging and harvesting herbs from the hedgerows.
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I allowed myself to receive this love, care and company.
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Company and nourishment from plants.
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Herbalism was an act of rebellion against self neglect.
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In the words of Potawatomi author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer.
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In some native languages, the term for plants translates to those who take care of us.
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I hope you will let them take care of you too.
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So,
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yeah, I guess don't know why I feel so emotional today.
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I think I'm pretty mental.
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But I just wanted to talk a little bit more about this and that.
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I think lots of people who will listen to this podcast will,
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you know, be kind of like organizer, activisty, anarchist types, right?
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Like you're my kind of people, you know, like you're involved in some kind of social
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struggles or social change work.
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You know, whether that's just like working at a community garden or whether that's, you
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know, like frontline doing like direct actions, going in and out of prison,
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you know, living on a protest camp or you know, running an anarchist bookshop or all the
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things, like all, you know, massive diversity of tactics we have.
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There is just such a culture of self neglect and self sacrifice.
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And you know, I was completely invested in this.
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Like in the second chapter of my overcoming burnout book.
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It's called like, when did I get so Mean? And that's because the judgment of everyone of
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like, oh, that person went on a ******* holiday.
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Like, how the **** did they afford that?
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Or we really needed them at that anti fascist demo.
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Like, and they're on a ******* holiday on the beach.
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Or you know, oh, that person says they're a comrade, but they're going off to do some like
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master's degree.
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Like they've just sold out or you know, like this person can't come and help cater at this
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like prisoner letter writing event.
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Like they got period pains.
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Like, just ******* man up, you know, like everyone gets period pains.
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Like I had such ******* like internal horrible judgment of other people.
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Worst of all myself, you know, not letting myself rest, not letting myself do anything,
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anything for myself, you know, like not buying like new ******* clothes or you know, like
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never going on a trip.
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Like I literally didn't want to go abroad in
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case something happened to my friends in prison for so many years.
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And then eventually I did start going abroad, but only to do like solidarity tours or anti
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repression events.
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Like never just to like have a ******* relax
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or a rest or anything like that.
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So yeah, it was, you know, like, I'm talking like years and years and years of self denial
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and Just kind of like,
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yeah, like all of my self worth being based on what I give to these struggles, how hard I'm
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working.
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And I actually wrote another Instagram post
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recently about self neglect and how my mentors in the animal liberation movement, you know,
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like I got involved in these movements.
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I was literally like 10 years old.
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So I was just like soaking everything up as
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like a sponge.
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And I think compared to my mum, these people
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were like really active, had really good mental health, were like phenomenally
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organized and you know, I was sort of coming from this kind of like chaotic home
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environment,
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I guess.
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So I was really like putting all of these
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people on a pedestal in the movement.
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And one of them, Jilly, who was like my best
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friend in the world who died in 2015,
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God, like ******* timey.
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She like,
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you know, she was like the epitome of self sacrificing, organizer.
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Like she never had any money.
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Like she was on benefits like near enough her
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entire life, not as a child, but as an adult.
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She was like full time in the struggle, like doing the badger cold, not sleeping,
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not eating properly, never buying supplements.
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It was like every.
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Not that she had any spare money, but if she ever did, it was always donated somewhere.
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And this path of neglect just, you know, I hate to say it, but it did lead her to an
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early grade wave, like as well as constant chain smoking.
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But it's like I grew up seeing these people around me,
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their needs were always last.
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And that taught me a lot, right?
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And it taught me to feel included.
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I had to earn it through organizing the way that I had to earn my parents love or my mum's
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love through emotionally supporting her and listening her and being kind of like, I kind
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of learned similar in movements, right?
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And then I had all this time in the prisoner support world, which I'm still in, but really
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intensely codependent of my self worth is based on supporting people in prison and you
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know, like, are they supporting me back?
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I don't know.
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Like, okay, a handful of them are amazing
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friends who have been amazing for me through my pregnancy and through having my baby boy.
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And some of them after, you know, 15 years of like giving them everything,
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haven't, you know, just dropped me out like when I got pregnant.
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So it's like,
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you know, but that was my choice.
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Even though my choices were driven by really
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intense like subconscious drivers of.
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I'm not allowed to rest, I'm not allowed to prioritize myself.
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And I think I had this massive breakdown in 2019 where I had just like really huge like
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PTSD episode, like after a bunch of bereavements.
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And I, I think I've written about it, but I was like, you know, every time a friend was
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calling from prison, I was like violently throwing up.
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Like, I couldn't sleep.
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I had like horrific nightmares,
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you know, like daily panic attacks, like, could barely leave the house.
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It was actually the first time I stopped visiting people in prison for like two months
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because I was in a really bad state.
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And it was then that I was like, right flag in the sand, like, I have to matter here.
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Like I have to start prioritizing myself.
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And I really feel like herbalism was the thing
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that enabled me, you know, like I've written in this self neglect piece that enabled me to
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take care of myself.
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You know, it was like the foraging and the medicine making and the studying.
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Like, the clinical training was like one of the best,
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like times of my life of just learning and learning and learning.
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And okay, I was doing that for the solidarity apothecary and because I wanted to support
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people.
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So, you know, there was an element of it being
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driven.
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But it felt so amazing to me that it was actually doing something that was like, this
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is for me.
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Do you know what I mean?
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And I think that's what I want the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress course to feel like
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for people.
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Because yeah, I'm not the only ******* one
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with this pattern, right?
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I'm calling you out if you're listening to this.
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But like,
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I wanted to create a course that had no pressure, that had no deadlines, no
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assignments, no ******* relationality of you have to be in a forum and you have to be on
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group calls and you have to navigate this person and that person and their needs and do
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they like me?
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And what was this conflict about? Like, you can just study in solitude and
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nourish yourself.
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You can go for a walk and listen to a plant
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profile in your headphones.
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You can go and harvest medicine and, you know, actually get into a more parasympathetic
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nervous system state because you're doing something so primal and delicious that's
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engaging all your senses.
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You know, if obviously if you're able to move like that, not everyone I know can, you know,
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walk and forage.
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But I mean, doing anything like herbally
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related can be so nourishing.
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And I wanted the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress course to feel like that for people
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because I know obviously studying trauma is a bit gnarly, but like, it's only the first
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module where I really talk about how trauma affects the body and, like, different patterns
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of distress.
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But I haven't found anyone that said to me, like, you know, what?
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I couldn't cope with this material.
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In fact, the opposite, I feel like people have said, like, you know, has given me a language
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to describe how I'm feeling.
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Like,
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it's like super non pathologizing.
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I'm being, like, really kind to myself now.
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I've got this, like, framework.
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But yeah, I just wanted the course to feel like a comfort blanket for people who struggle
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to prioritize themselves.
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Because, you know, even if you have dreams and ambitions of doing herbal projects and herbal
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solidarity work for other people, which is awesome, I'm all about that,
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it is also important for you to invest time and energy in yourself, you know, Like, I
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don't know who needs to hear it as a permission slip, but, like, it is okay to have
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a ******* holiday or to have a ******* rest or to eat a healthy meal or to have a lion with
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your partner,
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you know, Like, I had this partner, Anna, who got killed in Rojava, and I never *******
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spent a day with her, you know, and in her Valentine's Day card to me,
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you know, which she gave me, like,
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not long before she left to go to Syria, she said to me, like, we'll get that whole day
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together one day.
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And that ******* hurts now because I wouldn't give her a whole day, you know, I wouldn't
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give this person that I loved my time and energy and that, you know, and I'm
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compassionate to myself about that now because I know that that was like a trauma response
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of, like,
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not being able to, like, sit still for two seconds, to sit with my feelings.
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Does that make sense?
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But, like, yeah, if you're listening to this, like, I know there's all this up stuff going
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on in the world and that.
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Like,
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you know, you,
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you know, like people in survival,
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you know, in Sudan or Gaza or even Calais, you know, like, they don't get a day off or they
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don't get to go swimming or go to a spa or whatever.
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But, like,
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we have to do this work for the long haul, you know, like, nothing is going to get easier
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anytime soon.
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Like, we're not going to have some magic
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revolution and then that gives you the opportunity to rest and live the life that you
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want to live, you know, or learn the skills you want to learn or paint or do whatever.
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Like, this is our lives now.
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Like, this is what we got.
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So, like, you have to be able to take some time to, like, nourish your spirit and nourish
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your body.
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And you know, and I feel like herbalism is like such a gift because if you struggle to do
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that stuff, I'm not saying, okay, put yourself first in an individualist, like, horrible way.
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Like, I'm saying it in a way that like, you ******* matter.
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And our politics of care and solidarity and love also ******* mean that you matter and
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your needs matter and that it is okay to ******* rest and take a break.
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And it is okay to,
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you know, invest in something that will improve your life, that will give you a
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language to name your nervous system, that will give you this amazing herbal toolkit of
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ways to take care of yourself and your loved ones.
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Like, it's ******* okay.
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So anyway, yeah, I don't, I didn't want to like end this with like, oh, a shameless plug
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for the course, but I did just want to say, like, I do think this course is very
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compatible for people who are self sacrificing, Marty kind of organizer types.
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Because you can do it whenever, you know, there's no pressure.
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It's not like going to university and then you have to prioritize this institution.
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It's like you can study when you're on a train for a prison visit or you know, like waiting
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for someone at the police station and you just, you know, you're sat there for six hours
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and you want to just listen to something in your headphones.
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Like it is really flexible and you know, you can pick it up and put it down or start doing
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one module every six months.
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Like it's, you know, lifetime access.
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So yeah, I just wanted to say that.
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And I don't know why I'm so emotional, but I'm not gonna apologize for it.
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And I will be back soon with a podcasts with like more specific herbal related content.
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We're going to look at some of my favorite nerve tonics and some of the nerve tonics
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explored in the course.
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I'm also going to do a specific episode about sleep and I'm going to share an episode all
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about my favorite like anti repression resources as we're still in this like herbal
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Support through repression series.
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But yeah, I better stop there because everyone's looking at me because I'm in a car
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park.
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Anyway, thanks so much for listening.
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Okay, take care.
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Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.
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You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the