I started Sassafras Healing Arts in 2012 because I couldn’t find any local herbalists that I felt safe working with as a queer & trans person. I was also very concerned (and I still am) about the ways in which white herbalists uphold & reinforce white supremacy in teaching & in practice. I wanted to be able to offer herbal supports to my community and other marginalized communities and bodies in a way that de-centers whiteness, cis-heteronormativity, + ablism. It has always been a project built on love, blood, sweat, + tears. I practice within a sliding scale fee framework, I redistribute herbal supports directly to Black + Indigenous People through my own practice as well through Herbalists for Racial Justice, and I maintain a regular, re-occurring monthly reparations practice.

Centering my practice on my values and communities I care about is in opposition to the violent + oppressive capitalist system that we all live in exploitation under, and it comes with it's own set of consequences. You can read further below about my experience being reported to the FDA / witch-hunted in 2017.

In my 8 years of being in practice, I have yet to figure out how to sustain myself financially through my healing arts practice. After a horrendous, long, drawn-out battle to become a Registered Nurse in 2018, I was forced to leave my first RN position in September 2020 due to ablism, transphobia, and unsafe working conditions under COVID-19. I am now in a process of re-envisioning my practice to continue living, embodying, + integrating my values while also prioritizing caring for myself financially. As for now, Sassafras Healing Arts is my sole source of income for myself and my family.

If you feel so moved, and if you have the means,
these are some tangible ways that I could use your support:

Share My Work
I have put years + countless hours into the creation + evolution of my practice. I manage + maintain: ​
I have written an astrological reference guide zine, and my words + my work has been featured in Make MN Magazine.

If you have ever enjoyed any of my herbal medicines, consultations, bodywork, my astrology zine, etc — please:
  • tell your friends and family about your experience
  • post on social media about it
  • like + share my content on social media
    • please comment on any of my posts with at least 4 words to overcome the algorithm
​
I absolutely love making medicine! However, to be honest, writing copy for social media to help guide folks to my online apothecary and website is incredibly draining and zaps my spoons. I'm also trying to spend less time there for my own mental health. Your support in helping to spread the word about my practice + offerings - especially your direct experience with either - is deeply appreciated!

Share Your Herbal Resources With Me
Do you have yarrow, rose, lemon balm, tulsi or really any other herbs that you could share with me? Due to housing instability and under threat of eviction, in May 2020 my partner and I were forced to leave our medicinal garden beds we created + tended to, as well as the apartment we shared for 4 years. We still grow what we can with 2 small garden beds in our backyard, but this is has had a devastating impact on my medicine growing + plant tending practice.

Purchase Herbal Medicine in the Online Apothecary
There are over 45 individual herbal supports dreamed up + crafted by me and available for delivery to your doorstep!

Work With Me
Are you interested in working with me? Do you know someone else who might be? 
I am available for herbal consultations + astrology readings, offering both virtually at this point in time due to COVID-19.

Write Me A Review
If you have ever enjoyed any of my herbal products, herbal consultations, and/or energy /bodywork sessions, please do leave me a review over at my Facebook page: Sassafras Healing Arts. You can also email me a testimonial / review if you would prefer it be anonymous & I will post it on my website without your name. I've found that it has been *deeply meaningful, grounding, and healing* to read or listen to words of support and encouragement from people who have benefitted from / appreciated / resonated with my practice.
Email: sassafrashealingarts@gmail.com

Send Me $ To Support My Ongoing Community Care Work + Healing Justice Practice
Venmo: @reresuzette
PayPal: sassafrashealingarts@gmail.com (please select sending money to family & friends)
PATREON: https://patreon.com/sassafrashealingarts

🌿❤️
With all my love,
cheré

Witch Hunt Testimony

"Darling, you feel heavy because you're too full of truth. Open your mouth more.
​Let the truth exist somewhere other than inside your body."
-Della Hicks-Wilson

Originally written on 9.2.2017
Updated 9.2.2019
2nd Revision 10.16.2020
​
It feels like it’s taken me years to write this even though it’s only been 2 weeks. My heart has been time traveling. I’ve been calling all of my energy back to me. Even now as I type, my fingers feel unsure of where to go & my words get tangled up in my throat. I wanted to make this super brief, but I realized I had to let that shit go. What I need to do is to tell you all what I have been through, how it has affected me, & how it has changed my healing arts practice. What I want to do is throw my computer at the wall and snap the fuck off about institutional oppression and witch hunts. So let’s see what happens as I type!

What I know:

What I know is that the herbs I am in relationship & the healing arts I practice are older that institutions like the FDA. What I know is that my role in the community as a queer trans witch, abortion doula, & healer either threatened or bothered or pissed off someone so much that they decided to narc on me to the FDA. With one phone call, someone was able to throw the weight of an entire federal institution right at me. I want to make it very clear, as the FDA did to me, that this person hadn’t used any of my herbal products. According to the FDA agent who investigated me, this person “came across your website, saw your medicinal products, and thought they should call us to let us know”. And no, the FDA is not allowed to tell me who it was. Which honestly is probably for the best because this cancerian’s pinchers have been all the way up & at the ready since all this went down. Plus my ancestors and all my best witches are already on high alert about this situation so the covens have been working their magic for me.

What I did to prepare for this investigation:

Along with help from my beloveds, I created a batch number system for my apothecary of over 112 different dried herbs & tinctures. I created a standardized label that I then applied to those herbs & tinctures. I wrote a 10 page Standard Operating Procedures Manual and created templates such as a Master Manufacturing Record, a Batch Production Record, and a Formula Dispensement Record. I ended spending $1,000 to get my space up to their specifications. I lost countless hours of sleep and time I wanted to spend relaxing before I begin an intensive grad school program in September. I probably lost out on at least $1,000 worth of sales I could have made if my shop had been kept open and if I would have continued to table at the farmer’s market. I missed opportunities to harvest some of my most treasured herbal allies that I utilize in my practice throughout the year, such as yarrow & rose. I wanted to do everything in my power to pass a manufacturer inspection so I could continue to offer herbs to my community as I have been doing for the past 5 years.

Why they came:

I was told verbatim: “The reason we are here is because someone reported you because they didn't like what you are doing + how you are doing it. We wouldn’t be here if that hadn’t of happened.”

What happened when the FDA came:

Basically, the agent conducted an investigation & concluded that, because I had shut down my online shop, they did not need to conduct a full inspection of me as a manufacturer. To clarify: someone is considered a manufacturer if they produce internal-use herbal products that they then sell to people outside of the context of a consultation. I want to make it really clear that this is, in fact, the way the vast majority of herbalists that I know and that you probably know practice herbalism. I was not doing anything differently than most other herbalists. So it leaves me to wonder - what is different about me and most other herbalists out there who are practicing? Is it that I put my identities as a queer & trans person out there? Is it that I am unapologetic about the practical abortion support that I provide in the community? I honestly don’t know the answer, I just have guesses & scenarios that seem the most likely in my head. Thanks to one of my amazing bodyworkers, I understand that what is happening to me is an act of institutional violence. This has helped me to feel less gaslit by the whole situation.

Back to the details: according to the FDA agent who came to my house, the FDA is not concerned with practitioners, they are concerned with manufacturers. If you make internal use tinctures that you sell to consumers outside of the context of a consultation, that makes you a manufacturer. Because I am currently only operating as a practitioner - meaning I only dispense internal use herbal supports to clients that I have conducted a consultation with - they are (supposedly) not concerned with me at all. Please note that flower + gem + astrological essences are not regulated by the FDA, according to the jurisdiction that I fall under. This was told to me verbatim by the FDA agent who came to by home so that is what I am going off of. If I decide that I want to re-open my online shop & start selling internal-use herbal products (tinctures specifically  to people without a consultation (as the vast majority of herbalists out there currently do), then I will considered a manufacturer and am subject to a full inspection from the FDA to ensure that I am in compliance with dietary supplement cGMPs (Current Good Manufacturing Practices). What I might end up doing is just doing whatever the fuck I want and then waiting to see what happens. Honestly, that is what almost every.other.herbalist.out.there.is.doing *without* being subjected to / held accountable to cGMP regulations.

But what’s wrong with Current Good Manufacturing Practices? Shouldn’t everyone who makes herbal products be adhering to them?

cGMP’s include a lot of stipulations that many of us already follow or yes obviously should be following re: making herbal products in a good, clean, sanitary way. The problem is that cGMPs ALSO include hella requirements that only make sense if you are producing herbs as a company with multiple employees. An example of this is a requirement that the manufacturer keep samples & conduct thorough testing & analysis of their raw materials AND final products. While there is a lot of debate about exactly what this constitutes & requires, and there is also a huge amount of variation between different FDA branches & how they interpret & enforce this regulation, what I was told by the agent who came to my house & is handling my case is that I would need to send both my raw materials and my final products to a 3rd party lab to have them conduct laboratory testing to verify that, for example: the lemon balm that I grew in my garden is in fact lemon balm. I brought up the fact that I have completed over 3,000 hours of herbal training & studies. I brought out my plant monograph binder of over 150 different herbs. She literally looked as me and told me that unless I have a PhD in Botany, I am going to be required to send my herbs out to a 3rd party lab for microscopic testing - in house organoleptic (sensory) & macroscopic testing procedures would not be considered sufficient to them.
“Medicine making is anything but basic. And that is something that I want folks who maybe be coming into this or who have not really practiced decolonial medicine making to realize. Just because we read and follow recipes or know some written properties and actions of plants, doesn't mean that everything is going to turn out that way we want. Our medicine is more powerful when we actually understand ourselves & those we are working with, respect our plant families & ancestors. And realize that our measurement & materials are only a tiny fraction of what will make medicine work or not. The western scientific model is based on the idea that we should be able to prove something works a number of times or be able to replicate that same results. This isn’t so helpful in our work & in our medicine making,  Once upon a time even doctors understood that they weren’t these heroes who had all the answers, who could churn out the same beneficial results again and again. Even they realized sometimes that the most they could do was sit by your side through pain or even death. They considered healing an art. They were a part of the healing arts. Art works with spirit, comes from spirit, and can be healing and liberatory, just like our plant medicine.”
-Toi Scott, Queering Herbalism & The Herbal Freedom School
So what does this mean for me moving forward?

Shit y’all, I am still trying to figure that out! But what it comes down to is this: I want to continue to make medicine the way that I have always been making medicine - in a good way & from my heart & without microscopic testing of my precious plant babies. I don’t want to have to complete 10 pages of paperwork every time I am feeling called to create a new herbal potion. If that were how I had to go about it, I would just never want to make anything. So, I am choosing to adapt* and shift my healing arts practice.

I shut down my online apothecary from August - December 2017 & I stopped selling CSH shares. But I'm done hiding now. The online apothecary is re-opened babes, although some of my products will remain available offline only. If you are looking for something that you don't see, please do contact me directly because I probably still have it I just am not listing it online for the time being.

This whole process has been so excruciatingly painful emotionally, spiritually, & physically that I really need some time to heal & build myself back up. I'm grateful for the time that I spent in solitude, at my altar, walking in the woods, consulting the cards, and just trying to get my head right. When it all went down, I felt very very salty & jealous of herbalists practicing without fear or threat of FDA surveillance and scrutiny. It was a hard heart space to be in, and to be honest...it still is at times. Those of us who remain disloyal to whiteness and work everyday to dismantle the capitalist, settler colonial state, we will continue to be targeted by that very system, and those who upload it. Until the stolen land behind my feet and across this continent are returned to the Indigenous original stewards and Black Freedom Fighters whose bodies continue to be exploited to maintain the illegitimate white settler state, my healing justice work will continue, and I will not silence myself or cease to live my values.

*I am grateful to adrienne marie brown for writing Emergent Strategy & specifically in this moment for her words on what it means to adapt.