Where is Witch Mom?

Hello, y'all! Sorry it has been a month since my last post. Witch Mom has been taking a back seat to Boline Apothecary and my call to heal  in this last month and the attention is creating some really wonderful things!

Boline Apothecary now in three retail locations, with two more in the works. I have three workshops to teach in October in November. I did two farmer's markets this summer and will be doing two more this winter (indoors, of course!). I have increased the number of products I offer (last year, I started with 5, I now have 60). I have been written up in a small local publication and have started to make even more local contacts that will be important next year (growers, beekeepers, store keepers, journalists, market managers and more)!

Most importantly, I am furthering my healing abilities with Boline and answering the call of my patron to heal. Boline has reached more people in need that I ever did as just me, Lily. I have done one-on-one consultations with several here in C'bus for their ongoing conditions and feel like I am helping. And even bigger news- I am adding to my healing abilities by entering a master's program for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCN, which includes acupuncture, Chinese herbalism, cupping, moxibustion, and more) this week!

I am all at once excited, anticipatory, fearful, and intimidated. I got my textbooks for the quarter last week and have been doing the first week's assignments (I got my syllabus in one class already- surface anatomy.) and... wow. I will be memorizing a LOT of stuff. Unfamiliar stuff. Time to brew up some brain tonic! Good thing I have some ginko, gotu kola, peppermint, and rosemary (my fave blend for such a thing!)- and Boline will probably sell the stuff as "student helper"!

My TCM program is three years long. I will likely post here about what I am learning both in class and outside. I will also post about the other aspects of my life: I continue training with my apprentice and teaching my son the Craft. We are organizing a rite for Samhain. And I encounter interesting information that gets added to my theological knapsack weekly.*

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* Last week on The Forum (A wonderful BBC radio program), they were discussing breath. A scientist there was studying "breath prints", explaining that each person has a unique exhale, based not only on the air that they inhaled, but their unique biochemistry and what they have consumed through their digestive tract. They are as unique as fingerprints. I have been, since a wee tot, using deliberate exhales as an offering to our sap-kin and green-kin. Sometimes it was an unsolicited offering. Sometimes I offer this in exchange for taking a part of the plant for medicine. Now I understand it is not only food for the plant, but also a personalized gift, that could only come from me.