In what feels like a past life, but was actually a short time ago, I had a day job. I was a front end investigating social worker for close to 30 years. There were many long days, and an abundance of stress. During the time that I was able to carve out for myself, I escaped, usually to the beach or my garden, to regroup and regain my sanity. I liked to nurture plants that made me happy… or didn’t die immediately. I grew roses, sweet peas, lavender, basil, and rosemary- to name a few. I displayed my flowers in the house and cooked with my herbs, and what I didn’t use I gave to friends and family. I derived a great deal of healing from this practice, which nurtured my curiosity about the full potential of plants. I kept my day job, and for a long time, I kept my curiosity to myself. Then, one day, my experiments began in earnest.

My daughter made me do it. No, seriously. She was in graduate school, and, as she would tell it, I was moping about not being able to find a willing audience for my kitchen experiments. She asked me, well, why can’t you? And, according to her, I did not have a satisfactory answer. So she told me she wanted shampoo, and said I better be the one to make it. So I did. I made a rosemary shampoo with essential oils and castile soap. It smelled amazing, and it was definitely stimulating to the scalp- but it turned my hair to straw. So, to fix the straw hair, I made a conditioner with a coconut oil base… and then I just had greasy hair with straw-like ends. It was not good. I never did get that shampoo recipe right and gave up completely on the conditioner, but I give it another shot from time to time. Next came the eye makeup remover, which actually turned out great! Given that this was one of my first trials, one might wonder why my first lateral move would be to put my products near my eyes. The honest answer is that I was tired of buying overpriced eye makeup remover. During those first few attempts, I learned that my products would take some trial and error, and that coconut oil is not easy to get out of hair.

And then, one magical, beautiful day, I retired, and my second life began. I bought a home that had belonged to a master gardener. It came with raised beds, a pond, a stream, trees, and a greenhouse. Now that I had space for my plants, I got right to work. I spent hours with my hands in the dirt getting to know my new hardiness zone, and observing the movement of the seasons. While I was developing my new garden and making new plant friends, I pursued several in-depth courses in herbalism. I was committed to understanding as much as I could about Mother Nature’s true bounty, about plants and the magic they worked on the body, mind and spirit.

I learned and learned, I read anything I could get my hands on, talked to other herbalists, went on plant walks, and learned some more. I became the (hopefully less now) obnoxious friend who offered unsolicited advice about everything health related. Although, during a recent visit with my sister, she informed me that I STILL give lots of unsolicited advice. I invented more products with the plants I grew, and gave them to my friends and family. Lo and behold, they liked what I had created. My friends and family told their friends, and then people actually started to buy the things that I made. Wow!

I am so lucky that I am able to learn more about nature every day. The plants are my teachers and I am their humble and willing student. I am blessed to dream up products to make and-- to offer my contribution to the world. There’s nothing I’d rather do, no place I’d rather be. I’m grateful. I’m here.

Lemon Balm or Melissa officinalis is one of the first plants that I learned about on my herbal journey. As luck would have it, I was already growing some in my herb garden when I began to learn about all of the magnificent properties of this beautiful herbal ally. It seems as though I have always had Lemon Balm in my garden. I like to grow it because it is fragrant and attracts bees that pollinate other plants around it. I vaguely recall knowing that people would drink lemon balm tea and it helped with indigestion. Given that I had plenty of it growing in my garden and already felt like I had a friendly relationship with this plant, I decided that I would be brave and make my very first herbal remedy with it.
One of the first things that I learned from my herbalism teacher, Sajah Popham; was that when you begin to work with a plant that you plant to make into a medicine; you need to develop a relationship with the plant by “sitting” with it. He described “sitting” as literally sitting in close proximity to the plant you want to learn about and then paying very close attention to your senses and noting anything you may feel, hear, see or smell. This is a drastic oversimplification, but since I already have developed a regular meditation practice, it didn’t seem odd or difficult to do. I also spend a lot of time in my garden, so it wasn’t a stretch to sit near my Lemon Balm and pay close attention to what this plant “had to say to me”. During my time with Lemon Balm, I felt a calm and uplifted mood and a sweet gentle, shy spirit. I also felt a strength in my belly which I later related to its affinity for the digestive system. Now I know that not everybody who creates herbal remedies feels the pull to relate to the plants they work with in this way, but I wanted to develop a deeper knowledge so that felt right for me. However, since I’m a Sagittarian, I also have to balance the feeling nature with some intellectual learning so I went to the internet for a little more grounded data.
After doing a little research I found out that Lemon Balm has origins in the Middle East and North Africa. It moved to Southern Europe and Europe in the 1500’s and then to North America by 1700. The name “Melissa” comes from a Greek word for “honey bee” and still has a significant place in Greek culture. They believed that it helped the bees find their way back to their hive and even rubbed the hive with Lemon Balm to help the bees feel welcome. Other cultures believed that drinking the tea of Lemon Balm promoted longevity and had mystical soothing powers. Traditional uses dating back centuries were for dog and scorpion bites, staunching blood flow, earache, toothache, morning sickness, preventing baldness and straightening crooked necks. It has also been utilized as a surgical dressing to guard against infection and aids the healing of wounds. Of all of the qualities of this plant, the one that piqued my interest the most was the “mystical soothing powers”. This was also the quality that my research indicated Melissa was most known for.
Next, I asked the plant for permission to harvest it. I told the plant that I intended to make a remedy that I wanted to take so that I could learn about more about how it helps people and also to understand how it affected me. I sprinkled a little bit of cornmeal as an offering on the ground near the roots and snipped about a third of the plant growing in my garden. Then, I consulted a YouTube video I found called “how to make a Lemon Balm tincture” which suggested stuffing a large mason jar with fresh plant material, then pouring 80 proof vodka over it and waiting 6 weeks before straining out the plant material. I also recall reading someplace else that you should cut up the plant material very finely so the alcohol has more surface area to work with. I combined both methods and stuffed the plant material in the jar, poured in the vodka and then used a hand blender to chop up the plant in the jar with the vodka. This worked pretty well but was kind of messy. Picture the green vodka splotches on the kitchen counter, backsplash and floor from the spraying blender. I have refined my technique a bit since then!
Six weeks later, I strained out the plant material and put what was now a dark green vodka back into a clean mason jar. I now had my first tincture! It was another week or two until I put it into a small dropper bottle so I could take it more easily. I remember taking a dropperful of the tincture on my tongue and anxiously waiting to see how it affected me. I felt nothing. I did the same thing for a few days in a row with the same result. Needless to say, I was disappointed and assumed that I had made a mistake during the medicine making process which is why it “didn’t work” or worse that what I had learned wasn’t true and that the plant really didn’t work like people said it did. I continued to commune with the plant and to make a summer time iced tea with the leaves to keep me cool or to combine it with other herbs and vegetables for flavor when making vegetable stock. The seasons changed to Fall and then to Winter with the jar of tincture a dropper bottle sitting in my cabinet. Around the time of the winter solstice a familiar uneasiness crept over me. It is something unique to my constitution and something that I have come to recognize over the years. Some years it is worse than others. I have learned that it is something called Seasonal Affective Disorder. For those that don’t know, it is a type of depression that affects people when there is less daylight during the late autumn and winter. I was doing my best to power through the episode that year but it was a particularly bad one for me. Finally, in the middle of January and faced with the need to be fully present and functional for a family members birthday celebration; I was desperate. I saw the dropper bottle with the Lemon Balm that I had made the spring before in my cabinet (like I did every morning) and it caught my eye. I remembered that I had read about how Lemon Balm is “Sunshine in a Bottle” and can aid depression and anxiety and lift one’s mood and spirit. I took some of the tincture and felt the bitter tanginess roll down my throat. It tasted “different” than it did before. It seemed tastier and sweeter and less bitter and “medicine-y” than before. I took a dropperful in the morning and at night in a cup of tea. I gradually began to feel less despondent and began to have more energy. I wasn’t hyper and giddy by any stretch of the imagination, but simply less tired, more hopeful and a whole lot more willingly functional than I had been. I felt that shy, sweet, steady energy that I felt when I first “sat” with the plant. I continued to take the remedy into the summer and incorporated the fresh plant and tincture into my daily water. I was able to stay on an even keel and maintain a level of steadiness that I found very grounding. I attribute all of that to the healing properties of Lemon Balm.
Fast forward a few years to the current time. I have made several different iterations of tinctures with Lemon Balm. My current favorite is an elixir which is made with some honey to sweeten it a bit. I also feel that the elixir harkens back to Lemons Balm’s affinity with honey bees. I can truly say that Lemon Balm is for me “Sunshine in a Bottle”. It was my healer during a time when I needed it and continues to be my ally. I continue to learn and grow with this plant friend. Lemon Balm and I have a different relationship than we did a few years ago and it continues to grow and change. Isn’t that what a relationship is all about anyway?