The world can be a very harsh place for those with a kind heart. Those who hold onto kindness and resist the dominance of selfishness and greed are helping to make the world a better place. A Helping Herb is here to strengthen this struggle with knowledge and resources that can help us all take better care of ourselves and others.
A Helping Herb is based in Meanjin on the land of the Jagera people. We live as colonial-settlers in a nation that is built on stolen land and the attempted genocide of the First Nations people – a genocide that continues today. There is an deep social sickness created by the denial of this truth. It is a social sickness that is reflected in the every day reality of racist violence experienced by First Nations people. It is reflected in the deathly ignorance of the majority of colonial settlers about the realities of their own histories and how their ongoing silence makes them complicit in perpetuating racism and attempted genocide.
We are unapologetically political in our approach. We live in a sick society on every level – politically, culturally and spiritually. We bear great contradictions every day between our human instincts to cooperate and help each other and the drive to survive in a society that rewards and often demands selfish individualism.
To maintain a system that generates such untenable contradictions, it is necessary for the dominant political powers to foster and feed division based on race, gender and gender expression, sexuality, physical ability, culture and anything else they can use to marginalise and dehumanise oppressed people. These divisions are driven by institutions of power and privilege, but the inhumane and devastating results of this division are perpetuated and enacted by all those who are given advantages over others. It is a poor reflection on the human spirit how ready so many people are to stand on others to advance themselves. It is because of this devastating combination of abuse of power and privilege that those from dispossessed and marginalised groups in this society face daily violence and fear of violence. This generates an imbalance and illnesses that cannot be seen in an individualistic framework.
Building health in a sick society
Intensifying the impact that this social incohesion has on our spiritual and mental health is the fact that the predominant dietary and health systems we live with are designed to make profit, not for our health. The food that we are eating is literally killing us. The predominant approach in the health system is to sell us drugs, which are often very necessary but can also have a tendency to shift the seat of imbalance from one place to another rather than provide support for healing.
We believe that nature’s medicines can help overcome these imbalances. The work we do is informed by decades on the front line of the struggles for justice and several years of intensive study of European herbalism, nutrition and energetic balance. We hope that we can combine the understandings we have gained from these experiences and studies to help support all those who believe in a better world.
We realise though that no amount of meditation or green smoothies can stop the impact of violence at the hands of this sick society and those who defend it. But we have also learned that there are things we can do to mitigate against the effects of this sickness. Some of what we can do is simple. Some of it takes hard work. But like anything we do as humans, it is always stronger if we work on it together and support each other.
We can support each other to heal and build our health, individually and collectively. We can learn how to better know how to help each other to navigate the trauma and the heartache. We can support each other to develop our cooperative spirit in a world that tries every day to turn us on each other and on ourselves. We can support each other to build the generosity and kindness in our hearts.