Above all else, A TETHERED GOD strives to contribute to the dismantling of systems of oppression. This is done through learning from & upholding tenants of anti-racist, decolonization/unsettling, and abolition movements; examining the pervasive impacts of systems of harm and the bedrock of covert beliefs that white folks have benefited from; and continuing to examine and uproot systems of white supremacist, ableist culture that creep up in this work. A TETHERED GOD strives to break from a culture that perpetuates unmetabolized trauma through ages of suffering and gaslighting. A TETHERED GOD does not claim innocence, but works with reverence rather than fear.

The backbone of A TETHERED GOD is service, and this is a space of ever-evolving and imperfect showing up to service.

ethos & ethics

Plants & potions to raise more questions than answers. We are capable of holding it all. Systems of oppression and power are complex. Our body within these systems are complex. The dismantling of them requires a nuance we carry within the knowledge of our bodies. Because of cultural conditioning, access to this knowledge may not be automatic - plants help us cultivate stillness, curiosity, rooting in the body, whatever can help us get there more easily.

This is not a business, this is a personal endeavor for connectedness & healing that is very much figuring itself out as it comes into its own - and this vulnerability is a model for our movements & movings in this world. 

personal ethics & indebtedness

• It is not the intention of A TETHERED GOD to be making money off of marketing systems of oppression. These formulas are not intended as a replacement for the physical, tangible work of dismantling systems of oppression. I recognize that positing them as such is unethical and opposite my intention for a better, more just, more truthful world. These formulas arose from my own experiences trying (and often faltering) in activism - I intend for them to act as systems of support for this work, not as the work alone. There is no “take this potion and you’ll become un-racist!” intended here. I recognize this is a fine line to be walking, and am open to feedback about how to be doing it better & more clearly.

• The marketing of mental health is almost as convoluted as the experience of mental illness itself. The products here are not meant to further complicate or contradict the picture. You are the master of your own story. Know yourself and know what works for you, without shame and without outside pressure. 

• I am a white, European settler living on unceded territory of the Wabanaki Confederacy. My ancestry is primarily German, Swedish, Irish, and English with older ties to the Baltic States, the Volga plains of Western Russia, Turkey, and the Black Sea. I was born and raised in the South. Much of the inspiration for nature connection & plant medicine that has changed my life has been connected to these places and lines of ancestry. And, I am aware that most “traditional” knowledge has been passed in a more in-tact way through Indigenous cultures & peoples of these regions, and not the culture of my whiteness in which I was raised. It is a basis of my health & practice that everyone, as some point in time, had ancestors indigenous (meaning deeply rooted) to a place, and traditional practices that came along with this indigeneity. And - I acknowledge that this claim is not the same as having a direct claim to the Indigenous experience, which has for many hundred of years been one of subjugation. I do not claim to confuse Indigenous, a political identity, with indigenous, to mean deeply rooted or historical. I am also indebted to the Indigenous communities who preserved “traditional” forms of knowledge for them to be “rediscovered” by folks. My aim in promoting the industry of this knowledge is to encourage remembering what once was ours rather than taking what is not because we feel empty.

• I am aware of my white, European face in a sea of white, European herbalists who have claimed herbal fame. I do not think it is neutral. And I do not think that my white, European face automatically disqualifies me from the field of practicing herbalism and traditional healing - but I want to approach these considerations with the utmost respect, strategic consideration, ancestral indebtedness, and reciprocity to the communities I have learned from (either directly or indirectly). 

• These are questions of culture and indebtedness that I am currently living.

• I don’t have answers, I have an attempt at ethics and best practices. These things look like:

  • Cultural acknowledgements of the land I live & practice on. Cultural acknowledgements of the influences in my practice without attempting to directly “sell” a lineage or tradition that is not mine. 

  • A specific amount of my profits being directed to organizations that are either run by or directly support BIPOC, LGBTQIA & Two-Spirit folk, and donating formulas to folks without the financial resourcing.

  • Creating connections in order to pay Land Tax, fund rematriation of indigenous land & sovereignty, or fund some other form of individual reparations on the Indigenous land that ATG is housed on - this is a project in progress!

  • Directly growing plant materials myself in an environment I can monitor and source ethically, or practicing ethics in wildcrafting that are particularly rooted in the ecology of the area I am harvesting and often influenced by Indigenous land management. 

  • Moving beyond “checklist” mentality to move into actively rewriting the verb of whiteness - questioning & learning deeply how I perpetuate systems of harm and attempting to have this reflected directly in the running of this business.

  • Encouraging drop-dosage medicine as a more sustainable way to practice nuanced healing & reduce plant over-consumption.

  • Sourcing from companies that focus on sustainable practices or recycled materials in a dream for Earth wellness. 

  • Practicing tenants of radical mental health in an effort to combat a system that can be used to create divisions of credibility among bodies.

  • Crafting medicine that encourages self-knowledge & self-healing, cultivating community for support, a systems-wide analysis of health, practitioner and plant consent, and self-definition. 

• I welcome feedback on this process (with particular consideration for BIPOC, LGBTQIA & Two-Spirit, differently-abled, and neurodivergent folks directly influenced by the mental health industrial complex). 

• I believe that deep healing should be available to all, and understand that this claim mandates addressing specific roadblocks of accessibility in order to fully, deeply, dreamfully get there.

why the old stuff?

“The Neolithic way of life in Europe was based above all on a set of beliefs, values, and ideals, about the place of people in the scheme of things, about descent, origins and time, and about relations between people. It involved the conceptualisation of a universe peopled by spirits and ancestors as well as by the living. From spirits, ancestors, and other beings came a sense of the sacred, and this, rather than anything more secular, guided people’s values and ideals. Belief in relation to and descent from spirits and ancestor figures created a sense both of time and of origins. The future could be ensured by looking to and honouring the past.” (A. W. R. Whittle, Europe in the Neolithic: The Creation of New Worlds)

• Words like folklore, ancestral medicine, “traditional” practices are quickly becoming buzzwords in the alternative medicine & wellness community, a space proliferated by white women. I fundamentally believe that the sale of the soul required from settlers & their descendants to be able to perform & perpetuate colonization, genocide, and supremacy left many folks feeling empty-handed and empty-hearted. Reaching back in time for facets of our humanity is incredibly healing - and - often misappropriated or harmfully appropriated. The walking of this line feels tricky. Here are some of the reasons why I do it:

  • Researching into my own inherited, deeply ancestral practices has allowed me to show up to the feast of cultures feeling less ravenous, and therefore, less likely to grab at something before I am invited to.

  • These practices have served as a mirror: for my own whiteness, for my gender socialization, for the inner workings & dysfunctions of my family, for my privilege, for how I want to learn & move through the world.

  • I believe that connection to place & a sense of homeland is something many descendants of settlers are missing - or at least, for myself and many other folks in my circle of awareness. There is a reason why the hearth & home play such a centrally role in the tending to the wheel of the year. When we have less of a sense of rootedness, less of a sense of where our dead are laid, less of an indebted history to a place - we have less of a sense of what we are fighting for. Establishing connection with these further ancestral homelands has allowed me to cultivate greater connection and resourcing with the land of my childhood & the people that populate them. Ancestry is a relationship, but it is also a metaphor to be lived through.

  • Myth, folklore, and spirit are universal human experiences - a language that carries across time if we can unearth it from the rubble of empire. Everyone is indigenous to some place, and every place has stories & images indigenous to it. Connecting to our connected-ness feels like a powerful resource to have.

  • Cultivating relationships outside the sphere of human-to-human can provide so many sweet things for us - greater resourcing, a safe space to work through attachment wounding, a ripple effect out to our regard of the earth as holy & animate, a responsibility, a reverence from which to heal & act.

  • We learn from the past how to move into the future with greater wellness, respect, and regard for our capacity. We look to past for models and metaphors of the future.