A love letter to Hypericum perforatum.

Saint John’s Wort. My accomplice. My back bone. My silver lining in the clouds. My warmth in the winter. The blood in my veins coursing through me. I have no idea what I would have done without you.

Freshly postpartum can feel like surviving. A time when the veil is still thin. When your own skin feels new to you. The threshold of becoming new so fresh in taste and touch. The world is different. You are different. And yet you must endure and care for the most precious and tender tiny being you’ve ever laid eyes on.

Postpartum is also a time in many traditions when we keep bad news from the new mother or birthing person. A time of nesting quietly and healing deep wounds. My first postpartum incorporated the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. My second home birth started with a beautiful bath tub birth to a beautiful baby which then transferred to a NICU nearly 200 miles from home for the first two days postpartum. Humans are a tough and durable species. Birthing people have endured horrors through pregnancy, birth and postpartum. But even still, newly postpartum time is not the best time to be detangling a web of complex trauma of the past or dealing with traumatic experiences in the present moment. But we endure. People who birth are fragile from being ripped open metaphorically, spiritually and literally. And yet I have never met anyone stronger, more brutally intent on protecting than someone giving birth.

This last year has been strewn with emergencies and traumatic experiences. I will spare you the details, but four ER visits, two deaths and a lung transplant in my family later, I wonder how I made it through. A part of my survival story includes leaning on this plant known to ward off evil, be the light in the darkness, and heal deep wounds. St. John’s Wort walks with us through dreamscape to find answers to the traumas that haunt us. Saint Joan’s Wort is a powerful plant I offered to others for a decade dealing with seasonal and postpartum depression and anxiety, complex trauma, nerve pain, digestive depletion, and menopause. And not until I hit a point where pleasure felt out of reach completely did I reach for Saint Joan. Not until it felt almost too late did I hear the whispers of my plantcestor offering help.

Being of many names.

A name to cast away evil spirits. Devil’s Scourge.

A name to prevent death. Lord God’s Wonder Herb.

A name to renew life in Ireland. Beathnua.

A name to honor a Jewish profit of Palestine. John.

A name to honor a gender bending witch martyr of France. Joan.

And so many others from all over the world.

St. John’s Wort can be found all over the world in temperate regions with their roots in the vast lands Eurasia. Just as different cultures hold unique but intersecting practices around pregnancy, birth and postpartum, many herbal traditions offer this herb as medicine with threads of similar uses woven through these cultural practices.

I have spend time every summer for the last seven years finding wild stands of Saint John’s Wort to harvest in the Champlain Valley and Central Vermont. And this year, Saint Joan showed up for me in my garden and took up nearly half the space. When herbs show up in bounty, be sure to see the signs. Hypericum perforatum. Hypericum, meaning to hang above icons referring to the practice of hanging the flowers in altar spaces. Perforatum, meaning perforated referring to the look of their leaves when placed between the eye and the light. The sun shines through the leaf, a doctrine of signature so clearly about allowing light to shine through, so that we can see the light in ourselves through the darkness.

As love letters go, Saint Joan, you were my light through the tunnel. You were the whispers of encouragement in my sparse dreams. You were the rope that pulled me out of the deep water. Thank you. I pray that I honor you when I share you with others. When my finger tips are covered with your red resins. When I make oils and tinctures and glycerins the color of blood. Always enough to share your medicine, I know you will always share your secret to joy and to pleasure to all who seek your counsel in reverence.

In honor of the Palestinian Jewish martyr who was the first to baptize Jesus, we call you Saint John’s. In honor of the gender fluid maiden and martyr of France, I call you Saint Joan’s. Your medicine is a faithful friend. In Gratitude, your humble lover, Kenzie.

*St John’s Wort does have pharmaceutical contraindications. Reach out to an herbalist for support with this herb. Topically, drop dose or flower essence are safe alternatives for folks on certain medication.

TODAY IS A SOLAR ECLIPSE! The solar eclipse lands on the new moon in gemini just after sunrise on the east coast. Most traditions say to avoid the sun while in an eclipse, for this is a time of darkness and going in. New moons are all about sowing seeds, starting new patterns and casting spells of beginning. As Chani Nicholas, our fav famous astrologer, writes, "For most of us, listening to our intuition is like trying to hear a swallow’s song over a jackhammer. The world is loud." So if you feel inspired, turn down the global volume and turn inward, asking your spirit guides and ancestors for answers to your most precious questions for this eclipse.

Also in the stars and planets in this moment, the universe is asking of us to assess our boundaries. Can we imagine fine tuning DISCERNMENT... I imagine the beautifully gnarled Hawthorn trees with their poisonous thorns and incredibly bountiful now flowers and later berries. "Take what you need, my dear child" Hawthorn ushers, "But take from me with tenderness or I will literally stab you." May your search for the tender Truth come as the pointed paradox that it is.