Meet the herbalist
About Laurel
Laurel Birch (they/she) is a bioregional herbalist, gardener, medicine maker, designer & art director residing on unceded Coast Miwok land. Her practice supports people of all genders and levels of access to care. They operate within an anti-oppression, liberationist framework and invest in structurally competent, trans-affirming, trauma-experienced and harm reductionist language and principles.
Why work with an herbalist?
Plants can offer a sense of wholeness, and help us find agency in systems of power that try to deny us autonomy.
I have supported people from all walks of life seeking to build relationships with plants and work with herbs for physical and emotional support. My practice supports those experiencing chronic and acute illness, loss, grief, PTSD, gender affirming care, active substance users seeking harm reduction, survivors of violence, neurodivergent bodyminds, mystery illness that has evaded treatment, digestive disorders and irregular sleep.
As someone who holds many of these identities and experiences, I offer respectful, non-judgmental space free of shame and hierarchies of health and illness. I work through an anti-oppression lens because that’s where I have found the most healing for myself in the care I’ve been able to access. Having more culturally competent practitioners who recognize the health impacts of systemic violence, is necessary and life-affirming.
I bring an understanding of complex familial, psychiatric, religious, sexual, generational and carceral trauma to this work. I choose to work with plants because they offer an alternative to webs of oppressive, life-destroying systems of power. Nurturing relationships to plants can foster a sense of wholeness and connection, and help us stay with our brilliant bodies through even greatest challenges.
Other ways I work with plants to support folks include: shifting physical & energetic patterns of sleep, stress & energy, finding daily rhythms with food, chronic body pain, supporting liver & lymph, respiratory care, mental focus, skin care, autoimmune support, ancestral grief & joy.
I love supporting trans and gender expansive folks seeking pre- and post-surgery herbal care, finding new ways to affirm their gender with plants, balancing the effects of medical transition, offering herbs and essences to support emotional transition.
I always remind folks that herbs are not a replacement for Western medicine and do not act in the same way. Herbs can take time and continued use to build up and notice their effects. Herbs work well in conjunction with medications and can balance their side effects. My training includes extensive herb-drug safety, and I always research interactions and contraindications before recommending herbs.
I have an apothecary of handcrafted and ethically sourced herbs from local farms & herb growers. I also have a medicinal herb garden and steward native plants. I have a wide array of 100+ environmental flower essences I’ve crafted over many years. I listen and tend to plants to foster regenerative and reciprocal relationships with the deep magic of human and more than human worlds.
The question I hear from my teachers that drives my work is: Who do I serve? To whom am I responsible?
I like to say, I work for the plants. But as ever, the reality is more complex.
Collective care is a cornerstone of my practice, not as a buzzword, some vague idea, or even charity, but as a way to cultivate more resilient communities (plants too!) I’m always asking myself how my own experiences of trauma shape my work, who I’m serving, and how to create more responsible relationship and resilience in my communities.
I offer all consultations and client formulas on a sliding scale because I believe plants should be accessible to everyone. I’m invested in creating financial access to care for BIPOC, queer and trans folks, disabled and low income folks, frontlines activists and community organizers. I’m all too aware of the ways trauma, violence and systemic injustice have far-reaching impacts on health and financial access.
Charging everyone the market rate would simply create too many barriers and prevent me from serving the communities of which I’m a part. It’s just not something I’m interested in. I also set 1:1 pricing for BIPOC folks at the lowest end of the scale by default, as a way to redistribute my own white settler wealth. Practicing Western herbalism, a system built on stolen knowledge, on stolen land, is fraught with its own systemic injustice.
My goal is to create access to care so folks can offer more care to their communities. Personally, I would not be able to access most care without sliding scale practitioners. This model has allowed me and many others to show up more for our lives, work and to care for our communities. Sliding scale is a life-sustaining tool of collective liberation. Learn more about ways to pay it forward and support this work.
I’ve worked with herbalists in my local community as part of Bay Area Herbal Response Team (@bay.hrt) to help connect low income folks with free herbal consults and education. I try to tap into ongoing herbal mutual aid projects around the country. If you’re organizing herbal mutual aid, please do reach out!
Committed to responsible repair
I am also responsible to the land. I tend native plant stands, rather than taking wild plants for commerce. I have little patience for unscrupulous wild-taking. As a white herbalist, part of my lifelong work includes dismantling power dynamics of white supremacy and extractive racial capitalism, which “wildcrafting” perpetuates.
Other aspects of my work entail: redistributing herbs & funds to indigenous land defenders, uplifting BIPOC herbal education and land sovereignty, paying my land tax. Sending large amounts of regular herb donations through each new climate crisis: floods, fires, earthquakes, all arriving faster than ever. All with real folks at the center showing up for each other and needing life-sustaining care through the added layers of climate grief.
This work is in solidarity with the Coast Miwok and Graton Rancheria, original inhabitants of the stolen land I occupy and those displaced by my white settler ancestors: Indigenous land defenders, water protectors, Black people, migrant farmers, sick, disabled and unhoused folks. Being a white abled queer shields me from experiencing the highest levels of injustice and criminalization. I’m engaged in a lifelong process of owning ways I benefit from white abled supremacy.
My personal and ancestral healing work includes dismantling colonial frameworks in my own body and communities. I view my education and lineage of practice through a critical lens, and don’t shy away from naming their inherent harms: ableism, bio-essentialism, trans-exclusion, and cis-white gatekeeping all running rampant in both mainstream and radical wellness worlds.
I’m always learning from folks already working within lineages of health & disability justice and abolitionist mental health. In doing this work, I recognize the contributions of teachers, organizers and crip care workers: Audre Lorde, Imani Barbarin, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Alice Wong, Mia Mingus, Dean Spade, Cindy Milsteain, Mariame Kaba, Sins Invalid, Zena Sharman and many others.
Lineage of Practice
My plant path started with my first teacher — the land.
My craft is informed by my roots as a rural trans queer femme navigating complex historical trauma in the upland south bible belt. I spent my childhood very much sheltered and alone, climbing trees in the Wabash River watershed in southern so-called Indiana. I witnessed medical abandonment and unnecessary death of those close to me, and experienced the effects of collapsing healthcare and psychiatric systems that overprescribed and pathologized all forms of illness. I spent my adolescence in and out of drug rehabs that piled on blame and shame, insisting my choices had landed me there.
I moved to the Bay Area in the early 2000s to study art. In 2012, after years of fruitless design freelancing, my botanist partner brought me to the Mojave and Sonoran deserts where I experienced my first spring bloom. It was the first time I felt a sense of belonging to a place. I began listening to the plants and the land, and connecting with them through field botany, camping along desert washes, alpine ridges and riparian waterways.
In 2013, after 10 years of a vegetarian diet, I was struggling with intense deficiency, oral health imbalances, extreme gum and bone loss, chronic ulcers. I nearly lost my teeth. I started learning the magic of water infusions, blending mouth healing rinses of willow bark, calendula, plantain, yarrow. Mineral infusions of red clover, oatstraw, and nettles to correct deficiencies. I still have all my teeth.
I began self-guided study in 2015 as a vitalist herbal practitioner with course work in astro herbalism with the School of Evolutionary Herbalism.* I continued self study courses and eventually decided to pursue herbalism full time in 2017 after getting laid off from my design job in silicon valley. I developed practitioner skills with courses from Blue Otter School. In 2020, I entered an advanced clinical skills program with Wild Current Herbalism and deepened my knowledge of holistic protocols, formulation, herbal safety & ethics, and included several hours of roundtable mentorship.
Teachers & herbalists whose work I recommend include: Stascha Stahl, Ember Peters, Vilde Chaya Fenster-Ehrlich, Ayelet Hashachar, Janet Kent, Larken Bunce, Erika Larsen, Violet Moon, Kelly McCarthy, Karyn Sanders, Sarah Holmes, Brunem Warshaw, Bonnie Rose Weaver. Head here for more detailed resources.
*In studying with Evolutionary Herbalism, I encountered gaps in cultural competency, trauma awareness and gender affirming language. Many lessons were rooted in cultural theft that went unnamed and bio-essentialism that reduced gender to anatomy. The herbalists referenced included widely published cis white herb teachers who have benefit from legacies of unnamed stolen BIPOC herbal knowledge, perpetuated community harm, and been shielded from accountability by the white Western herb community.
Sourcing + Ethics
Seed to Bottle Herbalism
I am committed to using sustainably and locally grown ingredients and keeping supply chains as short as possible. I grow many plants for the apothecary in my home medicine garden. What I can’t grow myself, I source from sweet queer farmers at Steadfast Herbs, our local herb exchange, and small organic farms across the so-called US.
All herbs are harvested at peak potency to ensure the most fresh and effective medicine. I use high proof organic spirits and other high quality organic solvents to extract the most appropriate constituents with the most efficacy. Most medicines are made using the scientific method, while a few are made using the folk method.
My botanist partner and I also tend a lush pollinator garden full of native plants as a way to support the local ecology of our extremely diverse bioregion, replenish seed banks of some rare or threatened plants, and as an offering to the critters and original inhabitants of this land.
Rethink Wildcrafting
I offer education around the harms of wildcrafting and removing native plants from their local ecologies. I’m not interested in foraging for commerce or taking from wild stands. I’m responsible for tending land as a white settler to ensure my local ecologies flourish.
I do not support the use or sale of threatened white sage by white herbalists and reject all cultural appropriation that pervades Western herbalism (this includes cacao, chaga, oshala, tobacco, and many other plants misused by white settlers).
I work within many lineages and invite an open awareness of my ability to perpetuate harm as a white settler practicing in a tradition built on stolen Black & Indigenous knowledge, land and life. I’m committed to repairing abuses of colonial herbalism and systemic harms of white ‘wellness’ worlds.
Trainings, courses & studies
2015-18: Vitalist Herbal Practitioner and Energetic Plant Medicine self study
2019: Trauma Triage and Embodied Tools for Healers with Deborah Bragg & Erynn Sosinski
2019: Herbal Boundaries energetic essence intensive with Fino Burgos
2020: Practitioner Skills & Holistic Protocols with Blue Otter School
2020: Course series with Ember Peters: Herbs and Hormones / A Constitutional Approach to Chronic Pain
2020: Woke Without the Work with Amanda David and Mandana Boushee / Herbs for Fire Season with Madalyn Berg & Stascha Stahl
2020-21: Advanced Clinical Herbal Skills 4-month intensive: Holistic Protocols, Herb & Drug Safety, and Ethics with Ember Peters, Stascha Stahl & Vilde Chaya
2021: Clinical Mentorship & Roundtable 4-month intensive with Ember Peters, Stascha Stahl & Vilde Chaya
2021: Chronic Digestive Disorders with Linden de Voil / A Client-Centered Approach to Diabetes with Ember Peters
2021: Herbal & Somatic Support for PTSD with Kelly McCarthy / Herbal Support for Long Term Drug Users
2022: Herbal First Aid with Brunem Warshaw / Herbal Care for Cancer with Ember Peters
2023: AHG’s Herbal Support for Long COVID series with Ingrid Bauer & Paul Bergner
2023: The 3 Wells: Somatic & Herbal Teachings About a Celtic Energetic System with Brunem Warshaw & Hannah Harris-Sutro
2023: Ecology is Trans AF (as co-facilitator with Violet Moon & Ayelet Hashachar)
2023-24: Course series with Ayelet Hashachar: Doll Herbalism / Botany Autonomy / Photosynthesissification
2024: Herbs for Trans Feminization with Anita Nuñoz
Origins
My ancestors migrated through Mohican, Haudenosaunee, Warraskoyack, Nansemond territories & across northern Appalachia by way of Ahr valley, Orne, Friesland, Scotland & British Isles. The lands that raised me belong to native Kiikaapoi, Shawnee & Miami tribes. The waters that raised me are part of the Mississippi River watershed & Wabash River watershed.
What systems can we replace with our living, our repeated questioning, and our continual care?
– Alexis Pauline Gumbs