Reconnecting Communities With Nature: Shelagh’s Story
Herbalist, educator, writer, and cultural worker Shelagh Brown, a member of the Alphabet Alliance of Color, at Meadowbrook Pond. Portrait by Chloe Collyer.
“In the city we’re really disrupting the hydrologic cycle, because there’s so many toxins that end up in our water runoff and back in our water systems - and in your yard where you’re trying to have a garden! So the more we do infrastructure-wise to create a place for that runoff to get filtered through, the more we can grow good medicine in the earth that is not filled with a bunch of toxins.”
Herbalist, educator, writer, and cultural worker Shelagh Brown with a Western sword fern during a visit to Meadowbrook Pond. Portrait by Chloe Collyer.
Shelagh Brown (she/her) is a Black, queer, fat disabled herbalist, educator, writer, and cultural worker who infuses ancestral wisdom and modern science to help facilitate healing in our communities today. Shelagh facilitates workshops, classes, conversations and produces content that centers liberation and healing for the those most impacted by systems of harm. Her work is guided by love and an innate desire to create a world that’s safe, healthy, and just for everyone. She has dedicated the majority of her life to understanding and exposing systems of harm created by colonialism, capitalism and white supremacy and the human experiences within them, while simultaneously learning how to heal the trauma, lived and ancestral, our relationships to and with plants, the land and our own wellness despite the constant impact and abuse of a culture and systems never meant to protect or include us. Shelagh holds a BS in Herbal Sciences, an MS in Acupuncture, a certificate in Chinese Herbal Medicine from Bastyr University, and she is currently completing a MA in Social Justice and Community Organizing at Prescott College.
Community Partner Spotlight: Alphabet Alliance of Color
Shelagh is a member of the Alphabet Alliance of Color (AAoC), an organizing alliance of two spirit, black, brown, disabled, femme, gender non-conforming, indigenous, pasifika, queer, trans, people of color who are healers, caretakers, dreamers, organizers, and community leaders. AAoC centers people who share these identities, serving an intersectional community experiencing racism, violence, transphobia, and economic violence. AAoC gathers community together, builds capacity, organizes, heals, and collects and archives stories of survival and resistance, in an effort to tell and collect its stories, build and change systems of healing and power, shift culture, and create the fullest version of a collective liberation story.
