11/09/2025
Last spring I placed one Siberian Motherwort seed in my garden, the only one I had, gifted to me by a dear medicine friend who has since moved across oceans. She sprouted, her leaves grew fast and healthy, and she had a great desire to live. One day, I went out to check on her, and all of her lush leaves had been chewed up. She was a sad sight of spindly, leafless stems. I tried to care for her, keep the bugs off of her, clear her some space to breathe, but still, each time she’d put out new baby leaves, they’d be eaten. This went on for months.
When I felt I had tried everything, my attention went other places. I pulled back my care, and left her to her struggle for survival.
Months later, I heard the whispers that I needed to work with her medicine, so I made a tincture from a friend’s plant, combining it with rose glycerite and damiana that I had made from plants from my garden. I was ready to begin this healing journey.
But how could I ask to receive her medicine if I wasn’t being a good friend, ally, host, and mother to her? I listened, maybe for the first time, and understood that I needed to dig her up and move her into a different place. I placed her next to a noni tree and ti tree who had offered to give her their protection. She was in a dire state, and I worried that she was finished.
Last night I sat with her. After telling her, with guilt and grief on my heart, “Don’t worry, I will take care of you,” I noticed little baby leaves sprouting from her bare trunk.
“No dear,” she said.
I’m going to take care of you.”