The Fumbling Forager

I’ve recently started selling some herbal products in a local store under my brand, Brigid & Bri Botanicals and Bee-Wares. While I’m excited about that and genuinely love making things for people to use (especially when it introduces them to herbalism), I’ve also found myself thinking more deeply about the role of the herbalist. And maybe it’s because I’m now 50, but the idea of The Wise Woman, the one who carries knowledge with care and humility, feels less like a romantic notion and more like something worth aspiring to.

In many traditional herbal lineages, the highest role is not healer, but teacher of healing knowledge. The idea is simple and powerful: true service is not treating every person yourself, but passing on knowledge so the whole community becomes more resilient.

Historically, plant knowledge lived in households, not storefronts. People knew how to make a simple tea for a cold, how to recognize common medicinal plants, how to tend minor wounds, and how to work with the rhythms of the seasons. The village herbalist or plant-wise woman did not exist to replace that everyday knowledge, but to support it. Her role was to guide, teach, and safeguard.

Somewhere along the way, modern culture began to treat herbalism more like a product than a practice. We now see more emphasis on selling remedies than on teaching skills, more focus on branding than on relationship with plants, more attention to “miracle cures” than to careful, responsible education. That shift has consequences. It creates dependency rather than empowerment. It encourages overharvesting rather than stewardship. It prioritizes profit over accuracy.

Teaching, by contrast, builds capacity. When someone learns how to identify plantain in their own yard, how to make a simple infusion, or how to recognize the difference between a safe plant and a dangerous look-alike, they gain confidence and autonomy. They become less vulnerable to misinformation. They become better stewards of the land around them. That kind of knowledge strengthens families and communities in quiet but lasting ways.

A teacher-centered approach to herbalism also carries responsibility. It requires humility. It means being honest about what you do not know. It means refusing to share information that could put people at risk. It means valuing accuracy over popularity and ethics over aesthetics. Teaching well is slower than selling products, but it creates something far more durable: informed people.

This is the spirit I try to bring to my work. I’m less interested in offering endless lists of plants and more interested in helping people truly know a smaller number of them well. I care more about people learning to recognize the plants growing at their feet than about convincing them to buy something from me. My goal is not to be the expert people depend on forever, but to be a guide who helps them build their own relationship with the land.

Herbalism, at its best, is not a marketplace. It is a lineage of knowledge passed carefully from one person to another. When we choose teaching over selling, we honor that lineage. We protect both people and plants. And we help ensure that this knowledge remains rooted in respect, responsibility, and care.

I do plan to continue offering products and even expanding my offerings, mostly because I love to do it and because I know some people would simply rather buy the products than have to go through all the steps and costs of making it themselves. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But, I’ll balance it by always being open with my recipes and teaching anyone who asks how to make things for themselves. Because herbalism, like life, is all about balance.