By Heidi Maria Lopez [Herbalist and LREP Managing Director]

AUDIO VERSION HERE:

Remedios para Liberacion y Justicia – Medicine for Wellness, Justice and Liberation

This section is about sharing medicine and wellness practices that can support us in our racial equity and decolonization journey so that we can arrive at liberation, nourished and well.

And for us, that means that wellness outside of a context of colonization and a history of resistance is often fueling more of the oppression that we’re trying to get free from, within a context of our lived histories, our full lived histories, not just colonization, or oppression as our only history, but our full whole dignity past and realities taking into account that our healing happens within that context is able to really free us and free others along with us. The Remedios that we have, and that get passed down the ones that we develop and remix over time. All of that becomes really important and being able to identify, connect with, resurface if necessary, and make new, what’s available to us. And not just fight oppression, but really dig out its root within us. And also connect back and stay connected to our resistance and our lineages of resistance and long standing peace and joy and community and love and love and love. A revolutionary love, as my friend, Pastor Wes, would have a sing about. So that’s what this section is about.

And this is a continuation of our conversation about dandelion, which presented itself as the medicine for the Spring, Diente de Leon, as it’s known in some places, and you can go back to our website, and relisten or reread the voicenote shared there about that medicine.

What really what I wanted to continue to offer about dandelion. What dandelion wanted to continue to offer, in its own time is more about this root.

You know, the dandelion itself looks very different at different stages of its growth. So sometimes we’ll see it and it’s all green hasn’t flowered yet, sometimes we’ll see that beautiful yellow pop and flower that we so many of us recognize about it. Sometimes we’ll see it as that beautiful puff and plume, have memories of substance picking them and blowing them away in the wind and scattering its ability to recreate because those are the seeds, right? That’s in seed formation. And throughout all of that the root is also looking very different. It’s not like the root stays the same.

But there are some plants where what we work with is the root of the medicine because when all of what’s going on the surface changes and morphs and mutates and looks different. That energy at some point sucks itself back into the root brings all its potency into the root because all of what’s going on at the surface is manifesting depending on what is happening with that root – What is its health? How deep did it go or not? Did it get the things that it needed in order to produce what we see at the surface. And so I do want to offer that for this stage of the spring in for people who may have chosen to also work with dandelion, you know, really preparing that root medicine that it offers many different medicines dandelion/diente de leon offers, but I’ve been introduced to work with it. To work with the root of it and to either sit it in something like very high and volume and that volume high potency alcohol – to create a tincture and then also to detox or boil for a while that root to really be able to give it the time that it needs in both cases, to get gather that medicine from that root in a way that our bodies can ingest it. And more fit into that powerful truth telling medicine, that liberatory liver cleansing, get-out toxins medicine, that we know down the line is for so many of us.

So that’s the that’s the prepper, those are the preparations that I offer. And I would be happy if you all got in touch or wanted to gather together to create that medicine with each other. And then also you can look up all sorts of things that will support you in creating either a dandelion tincture or a dandelion decoction which is really taking the root and boiling it for some time and then being able to drink that tea that comes from it – take that in directly.

And in both of those cases. You know, I do want to focus on the fact that it takes time you know there’s something about the Spring and this this season, where I know that I used to kind of treat the Spring and the Fall as like why! I almost ignored them. I almost didn’t actually give them their due respect because I was thinking about the more severe. For me, the more severe seasons, right. Winter, growing up in New York being born and raised there. With a severe winter and cold weather. And then that summer with that stinking heat, hot garbage smell humidity, it’s like extremes, right. And so the spring and the fall, for me just kind of felt like the seasons where I would torture myself about what was coming up and not really stay present to the fact that there’s something to be said about each of those having their own medicine, that would support me and being able to be grounded. And yes, in some ways prepared, but also just really in a place different from where I was, right, like the winter was what it was, which for me was very harsh, and a form of terrorism. And I’ll talk about that more in our next Remedios offering. And, and you know, if I was really present in a different way, and when I became president a different way, this spring offered a transition. So let me thaw out from the winter and not just go jumping into an intensely hot summer.

And so, now giving each of those seasons, their due respect, I do think that there’s something about being able to prepare this dandelion medicine in a way where I can I can prepare it, put my intentions into it, and then let it take its time that feels really, really good about making it in the Spring. I also really enjoy that. Because the dandelion for some people can be an intense medicine, that I actually utilize this intermediary season to prepare it, and perhaps use it for the intensity, you know, to match the intensity of a time like the Summer, where I may want to really be for instance, keeping that tincture on me to ensure that I am clearing of toxins that I might, you know, take a part in and invite into my body in different ways because I feel a lot freer and more sexually connected. And I mean that to my sexual energy, not just necessarily sex that I have before and there’s just a vibe right for the summer that I may loosen my boundaries and borders, whatever that looks like that I might also then want to make sure that I’m doing all those things really grounded in my truth and that the dandelion can help me with that. And it can also just help me process out the things that I may be partaking in that could be a little bit heavy for my body to process like alcohol or may take a little bit of time from abandon your process like more alcohol or drugs or certain kinds of foods, and that the dandelion can help me process all of those things as well and make sure that my liver is safe and healthy and well in that process.

So, I say all that to say that this is a really great time to sit some dandelion under the sun if you’d like but certainly to boil it, simmer it under for a little you know for some time, and make yourself either a very strong tea decoction or let that sit and some alcohol to make yourself a tincture. To really bring that that dandelion medicine and right when you need it. Maybe and maybe, it’ll be during season that symbolizes a little bit more intensity for you to match and be able to work with the intensity for some what will be the intensity of dandelions so, buena suerte and let us know how it goes!