What is my drive to do this work? I am the grand and great-granddaughter of farmers born post civil war and reconstruction in Southeast Alabama with a rich history of sowing, reaping, plowing, and harvesting the land. I did not spend a lot of time in the farm fields of Alabama with them growing up. Most of them became ancestors before my first day of kindergarten. However, it is as if nature, the land, herbs, plants entered my psyche and physical life through the depths of the cosmos. I am convinced that generations and generations of ancestors have whispered into my matrilineal womb lineage the healing and resilient power of learning the land and nature just as I learned to breathe, walk, and talk.
By the age of 22 I had walked the sacred land of Tuskegee, Alabama for 4 years where I attended college. Just like many other young people, my memory faded and I went through a period of avoiding what was calling me. Over the years George Washington Carver’s legacy of plants and plant medicine was still imprinted in my memory forever. I found my way back to the land through herbs and seeds and launched my business Eight Twenty Tea Co under my Homecoming Harvest brand.
My extensive knowledge of the ways herbs interact with our body to promote a closer to connection to mindfulness and health is very sacred to me. I found myself finding truly who I am from interacting with the plants. I still on my mindfulness journey and I see everyone's journey as a personal rite of passage with the opportunity to meet many guides along the way. Myself and aunTEA Tulsi hope to be just one of the many guides.
Because honey you must remember on this mindfulness journey, it takes so much time to live life, more time to understand what you experienced, and the rest of life to do something about it. Are you ready?
