Re-Membering Liberation: A Journey Backwards, Forwards, and Into Now

Mar 7, 2024

By Alysia Mann Carey

March 7, 2024

Collage Art by Lorena Estrella

Re-Membering Liberation: A Journey Backwards, Forwards, and Into Now. 

Our Remedios section this month is about re-membering medicine – from the Earth, from our ancestors, and from our bodies – that has held and continues to hold and support us in taking root and coming home.  First and foremost, I want to thank my teachers: Heidi M. Lopez, Empress Karen Rose, Ofelia Rentiera Carabali, my grandparents Kathlyn and Bernard Mann; as well as my plant teachers: Pokeweed, Gingko Bilboa, Nettles and others named in this section.

As we re-member and celebrate Black History and Black Liberation throughout the month of February and beyond, we feel it important to highlight and re-member the wisdom of Enslaved Ancestors. We honor their knowledge of plants, navigation of stars, and creative power to wield language despite colonization, enslavement, separation, displacement and violence. Enslaved Africans tapped into several different modalities to heal themselves, their families, and their communities. Drawing on Indigenous wisdom, practices, remedies and spiritual traditions, they also created their own systems of health and community care to address both physical and spiritual ailments.

To begin this practice of honoring their truths, I offer a gratitude meditation journey (in English and Spanish) that invites us to open to and be with our Ancestors. What follows the meditation are reflections about some of the plants that AfricanIndigenous Ancestors used to support themselves toward healing and liberation. To close, I offer some supportive and reparative medicinal recipes that have supported me in my journey of re-membering. 

Meditation: Re-Membering Liberation: A Journey backwards, forwards, and now. 

Reflections

In particular, AfricanIndigenous enslaved folx across Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean fused local Indigenous knowledge of plants with the Indigenous wisdom and spiritual practices they brought with them when they were forced to embark on a journey to a different world than they had previously known. For example, AfricanIndigenous folx brought the seeds they wove into their braids and they depended on local Indigenous land-based knowledge to sow and grow them. This included rice, okra, and black-eyed peas, to name a few well-known staple plants. Some lesser-known seeds that were brought across the Atlantic that are common in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean include castor, hibiscus, anchote, and tamarind. These AfricanIndigenousplants were used traditionally and continue to be used present-day in many food dishes, and as “Grandma remedies” in curative concoctions.

Recipes

Part of the practice of making medicine is also to clear your space and set your intentions. You may want to go back to the mediation we did or you may want to sit at your altar, spend time in nature, listen to the sounds of water, whatever you feel called to do to re-member and call in your ancestors’ protection, healing and wisdom. As you make your medicine, focus on your purpose: why are you making this? For whom? Yourself? Someone you love? Someone you remember? Take with you the medicine that was offered during your gratitude meditation journey. What do you want to offer back through this medicine?

“Re-Membering Liberation” Body Butter (Nettle-Hibiscus-Sage-Calendula Body Butter)

My intention with this recipe is to open a portal between our present selves and our ancestral past. Nettles has offered me patience and protection. It has been a stingy yet gentle reminder of the importance of consent, forgiveness, and coming back to. Hibiscus offers me sweetness; it reinvigorates my love and joy for life. When I smell it, especially when it is infused in coconut oil, it reminds me that it is okay to be sweet, and my sweetness is deserving of protection and expression. Sage brings me deep peace, calm, clarity, and groundedness. Its earthy flavor reminds me of the land and supports me with moving in more trust. Its calming properties support me in silencing some of the chatter inherited from systems that seek to kill me every day. Calendula a firey reminder that joy is central to liberation. It has created more spaciousness for me to hold complexities of difficult feelings, conversations and situations, while remaining open and light.

Counterindications: Malaria drugs, seizures, not to be used within two weeks of surgery.

Materials needed

  • Intentions, music, anything you need to set up your space and be present with the practice
  • 3 Tbsp dried nettle leaf
  • 1 Tbsp dried hibiscus flower
  • 1 tsp dried sage
  • 1 tsp dried calendula flower
  • 1 8 oz mason jar (or any recycled glass jar that is thoroughly cleaned)
  • 4oz Coconut Oil or another kind of carrier oil (e.g. almond, grapeseed, avocado oils)
  • 2oz Castor Oil
  • Cheesecloth or something similar to strain the oil
  • 2 pots (one should be able to fit inside the other) for a baño maría/double boiler
  • A playful spirit

Instructions for Preparing the Oil Infusion 

After setting your intentions and clearing your energy, take 1oz of dried hibiscus flower and 2oz of dried sage and put in the mason jar. Rubbed sage can work, but make sure you strain the infusion really well or an itchy feeling may result. Plant material should fill roughly 1/3 of the mason jar. If needed, add more of each herb to your liking.

Once you place the plant material in the mason jar, fill the jar with 2oz of castor oil and the rest with liquid coconut oil until the jar is filled to the top with the oil and plant material. Since coconut oil becomes a solid below 55 degrees Fahrenheit, you may need to do a baño maria/double boiler to liquify it. In colder seasons, it may be easier to use another kind of carrier oil, like almond, avocado, or grapeseed oil.

Now you have an oil infusion. Leave the infusion in a sunny area for 4-6 weeks, visiting your medicine daily, sending it love and care, singing songs, telling stories, or whatever comes to your heart.

After 4-6 weeks, you can strain the infusion.

Instructions for Preparing the Body Butter

Prepare a baño maria/double boiler, bringing one large pot of water to a boil; then place the second, smaller pot inside the larger pot, adding the butter of your choosing (shea, mango, cocoa, etc). Once the butter has melted, turn off the stove and add the melted butter to a mixing bowl, then add your oil infusion. For harder butters, like cocoa and some shea butters, you may want to add a little more oil from your infusion to soften it. For more bland butters, like mango, you may want to add a little less oil. Invoke your playful spirit here and play with it.

You can add a teaspoon of honey or aloe vera gel to the butter, if you’d like. Once finished, you can add essential oils of your choosing or use the butter as is. Again, whatever is calling to you. Place the butter mix in the fridge, mixing it every 10-15 min with a mixer or a spoon, until it has solidified. Once solid, massage over your body, sending yourself love and care.

“Re-Membering Truth” Body Oil (Calendula-Burdock-Comfrey-Mullein Body Oil)

My intention with this oil is to support letting go of what does not serve us in our life’s practice of liberation. Shedding skin – old habits, thoughts, beliefs – has left me with open and barely closed wounds from my root to my heart, and this has be painful. This body oil is intended to support us in healing those wounds so that we can move forward, backward and across different dimensions with a little more ease, protection and groundedness. It is meant to sooth those parts of ourselves that feel shame, that are so wrapped up in who we think we are that they keep us from moving deeper and more expansively into our purpose and who we are. Calendula’s gentle essence conditions my body to move more into the vulneragousness (vulnerability and courageousness, h/t Reclaiming Our Own Transcendence) and holding the complexity of peace, love and letting go, allowing me to remove what is not serving me and hold on to what is. Burdock reminds me of the importance of cleansing and being in my truth, as painful as it may be. Castor Oil and Comfrey have been supportive to/around expelling and closure. Cleansing these open wounds by letting go and being in my truth prepares my space (body, spirit, being) for comfrey to come in and close them. And through it all, mullein invites me to re-member my breath – a powerful technology that connects us across time and space, as well as to our plant relatives through the inhalation and exhalation of the atmospheric gases we both need to live.

Counterindications: Not to be used with deep skin wounds. Burdock is known to lower blood pressure and can lower blood sugar for folx taking insulin.

Materials needed

  • Intentions, music, anything you need to set up your space and be present with the practice
  • 3 Tbsp dried comfrey leaf
  • 4 tsp of dried calendula leaf
  • 2 tsp of burdock root
  • 1 tsp of mullein leaf
  • 1 8 oz mason jar (or any recycled glass jar that is thoroughly cleaned)
  • 4oz Coconut Oil or another kind of carrier oil (e.g. almond, grapeseed, avocado oils)
  • 2oz Castor Oil
  • Cheesecloth or something similar to strain the oil
  • A playful spirit

After setting your intentions and clearing your energy, take the plant material and place in a mason jar. Whisper sweet and loving messages to your herbs. Plant material should fill roughly 1/3 of the mason jar. If needed, add more of each herb to your liking. Then, fill the jar with 2oz of castor oil and the rest with liquid coconut oil until the jar is filled to the top with the oil and plant material. Since coconut oil becomes a solid below 55 degrees Fahrenheit, you may need to do a baño maria/double boiler to liquify it. In colder seasons, it may be easier to use another kind of carrier oil, like almond, avocado, or grapeseed oil.

Leave the oil infusion in a sunny area for 4-6 weeks, visiting your medicine daily, sending it love and care, singing songs, telling stories, or whatever comes to your heart.

After 4-6 weeks, you can strain the infusion and use it as a body oil. As you rub the oil on your hands, feet, and body, offer yourself a gentle massage and some affirmations, perhaps some of the affirmations that came through the meditation journey.

“Re-Membering My Power” Herbal Infusion & Bath (Skullcap-Damiana-Hibiscus Herbal Infusion and Bath)

The first time I tasted skullcap, I dreamt three times with my mom. She came to me in the living room of my childhood home, the house that my grandmother and grandfather built in the 1950s in Madison, WI during a time when Black folx could not buy a home. She said to me while holding me as she sat in my grandpa’s rocking chair, “Your people need you.” It was during a time of deep grief for me, as I was holding tender feelings of her transition, slowly isolating myself from community, my creativity, and Earth’s medicine. She called out to and into me, guiding me back to Spirit, back to the Earth, and back to creativity. The next day I played, I wrote, and I created this herbal tea infusion and bath. My intention with this blend is to come back home – to spirit, to play, to creativity, and to be with myself. Damiana sooths me and reminds me that it is okay to be soft and when I embrace my softness, so much creative fire emerges. It invites me to connect again to my (fire) breath and to the unique purpose that I have and have been given this lifetime.

Counterindications: If pregnant or if you have any inflammatory conditions do not use this infusion and bath. Do not use consecutively for more than three weeks at a time. If taking pharmaceutical medications for mental health support (skullcap works on the same system as these drugs), wait six weeks after discontinuing them to use this infusion and bath.

Materials needed

  • 1 Tbsp Skullcap
  • 1 tsp dried Damiana leaf
  • 2 tsp dried Hibiscus flower
  • 1 Mug for drinking your tea
  • 2 cups hot water
  • Strainer
  • Intentions

After setting your intentions and clearing your energy, bring water to a boil. Turn off heat source and add herbal material (skullcap, damiana, hibiscus). Let sit for 15-20 minutes. If you want to experience the recipe as a tea, strain and pour into your favorite mug. If you want to enjoy it as a bath, pour the infusion into your bath. As you sip your tea or lay in your bath, listen with all of your senses to what spirit and your truth have to offer.

References

DISCLAIMER: THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR HEALTHCARE PRACTITIONER BEFORE ADOPTING ANY NEW HERBS IN YOUR ROUTINE.