
Welcome To Mammal
“What do I feel like when I’m sounding?
not how do I sound when I’m singing?”
This question is one that was posed to me many times over the course of a recent six-hour workshop entitled “Freeing the resonant voice” by Odeya Nini. The truth is, I didn’t know exactly what had led me to walk through the doors of that studio on that Saturday, but I knew I was being called to spend time with my throat chakra and with my voice in some shape or form. In a kismet unfolding of events, this workshop had presented itself to me only earlier that same week. And with a combination of inner knowing and a gentle nudge from a friend, I took a leap.
Starting an herb business and a healing practice has been its own leap… and a dream of mine for quite some time. It was a dream that got me through stressful client transactions as a lawyer, through the days reduced to billable hours where even taking an intermittent phone call from an old friend felt it came at a “cost”. Starting this business was a dream that held my hand as I experienced the aching rock bottom of heartbreak. Ultimately, it was a dream that freed me from societal expectations, and to be honest, it freed me to be myself. And as I now begin to live this dream, to give it breath and life, I recognize that I don’t have all the next steps figured out nor do I know how it will fully take shape. I most certainly did not know that I would feel inspired to write a newsletter right away.
But as I come away from the deep, inner excavation that was this winter's resonant voice workshop, I feel compelled to question all of my shoulds, shouldn’ts, sounds, and songs. Not so much how do I want to sound in this business and in this next season of my life, but rather, how do I want to feel? how do I want my clients to feel?
And though I don’t have it all figured out, there are a few things I do know. I want to feel alive, inspired, and free. I want to feel free to follow the inner voice and the resonant sound within.
My hope through this business is to foster these feelings for others so that they too might feel alive, inspired, and free… free to build a relationship with herbs and to be empowered in their bodies and in their health… free to tap into the inner voice and to be supported and nourished along the way. This answer will evolve and unfold, contract and expand- as life does. But as long as those core tenets are underlying whatever future evolutions of myself, my offerings, and this business that may come my way, I believe the rest will find its rightful place.
So here I am, writing my first newsletter for Mammal and feeling alive, inspired, and free. Albeit, with little to say about herbs and more to say about the discovery of the self, of my self. But when you start a business and put it out into the world it feels much like extending a very real and very vulnerable part of you right there alongside it.
In future posts, there will be more herbs, more herbal and postpartum education, more nourishing recipes, more shared learnings of vitalism and practices to help cultivate a more rooted, symbiotic, and nature-centered life. But there will also be more of this, sharing the journey into this next chapter of my existence and the realizations that are surfacing along the way. What a vision it would be if together we deemphasized the societal focus on how we sound to others and what others might hear in our messages, and instead refocused our attention on how we feel when we sound and what we yearn to be felt?
Thank you for your support of Mammal and of what at times has felt like a far-off dream. I am passionate about reconnecting others to the magical and medicinal world of herbs and their rightful place in our everyday lives. Herbs are often fondly referred to as “the people’s medicine." It is my honor to foster a community where each of you might feel inspired to hone your own craft, create your own herbal remedies, tune inward, and perhaps find your own resonant sound.