
What if the key to healing lies in reconnecting with the wisdom of our ancestors? What if the foods we eat and the plants we use in our daily lives carry the power to nourish not only our bodies—but also our spirits?
In this new episode of On Health, I’m joined by Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz, the Kitchen Curandera—a traditional healer, Indigenous foods activist, and author of book Earth Medicines. Felicia’s journey is deeply rooted in the practices of her great-grandmother, a curandera in northern New Mexico who healed through herbal remedies, nourishing foods, and sacred rituals. Together, we explore how these ancient practices can support women’s health across all stages of life.
Felicia’s insights remind us of the profound healing power of food and herbs, from pregnancy and postpartum to menopause and beyond. Whether it’s the warmth of a postpartum broth, the grounding nature of ancestral foods, or the calming benefits of herbs, this episode is filled with timeless wisdom for today’s women.
Join us as we chat about:
- Food as medicine: Felicia shares how food is more than just nourishment—it’s a form of connection. She explains how preparing and consuming ancestral foods can honor our lineage while deeply supporting our health. Discover recipes and rituals, like blue corn atole (gruel) and healing broths, that nurture the body (especially during postpartum and menopause).
- Healing with herbs across lifecycles: Felicia and I discuss herbs that every woman should know, from raspberry leaf for postpartum healing to motherwort for emotional balance in menopause. We also dive into how herbs like nettle, lemon balm, and chamomile can provide nourishment, calm, and restoration at any stage of life.
- The importance of rituals for women’s healing: Rituals play a vital role in marking life’s transitions. From the sacred 40 days of postpartum rest (known as la cuarentena) to the deeply nourishing practices of menopause, Felicia offers ideas for creating healing rituals that honor our bodies and spirits during these transformative moments.
- Ancestral wisdom for modern wellness: Felicia shares how rediscovering the foods and practices of her great-grandmother shaped her life’s work. Whether through kitchen medicine or gentle movement, she shows how reconnecting with ancestral wisdom can ground us in our often hectic modern lives.
- Honoring the wisdom years: As women transition into menopause and beyond, Felicia highlights the importance of simplicity and listening to our bodies. Foods like bone broth and calming herbs can support this stage of life, bringing nourishment and strength to our changing bodies.
Episode Takeaways:
- For Menstrual Health
- Herbal Allies: Use motherwort to ease emotional swings and tone the uterus, and raspberry leaf to support uterine health and reduce cramps.
- Gentle Movement: Opt for restorative practices like walking or yoga to align with your body’s needs during your cycle.
- Honor Your Cycle: Create rituals like sipping herbal teas or journaling to ground yourself emotionally and physically.
- Warmth and Rest: Use heating pads or warm compresses. Prioritize rest to soothe cramps and support healing.
- Ancestral Practices: Reflect on or research your own family traditions and ancestral wisdom to connect with meaningful menstrual care practices.
- For Postpartum:
- Prioritize warming foods like broths, porridges, and teas.
- Use supportive herbs like nettle, raspberry leaf, and motherwort to tone the uterus, boost milk supply, and calm emotions.
- Incorporate belly wrapping (rebozo) to support healing and honor your postpartum journey.
- For Menopause:
- Focus on simple, nourishing foods like bone broths and avoid overly stimulating foods if you experience hot flashes.
- Turn to calming herbs like lemon balm, chamomile, and passionflower to promote relaxation and sleep.
- For Everyone:
- Explore your ancestral food traditions as a way to connect with your roots and bring vitality into your life.
- Create rituals to honor life transitions, whether it’s new motherhood, menopause, or another significant change in your life.
Felicia’s work reminds us that healing doesn’t have to be complicated—it can be as simple as a nourishing meal or a calming cup of herbal tea. By reconnecting with ancestral wisdom, we can bring greater meaning and balance to our lives, no matter where we are on our journey.
Be sure to tune in to this special conversation, and don’t forget to share it with anyone who could use a little healing inspiration.
Links and Resources
- Learn more and register for Herbal Academy's FREE 2025 Virtual Herbalism Conference
- Learn more about Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz and her book Earth Medicines at her website, Kitchen Curandera
- Aviva’s article about herbal support for menopause, including motherwort
- Study herbal medicine with Aviva in her Herbal Medicine for Women course
Join the Conversation
- Tune in to the full conversation for even more insights from Felicia and me.
- Let us know your thoughts on this episode on social media! Tag me @dr.avivaromm and Felicia @feliciacocotzin.
- Don’t forget to share this episode with someone who could use a little ancestral wisdom in her life.
Don’t Miss Out
Make sure to subscribe to On Health wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you found this episode helpful, please leave a review—it helps us reach more women like you who need this information.
The Interview Transcript | Aviva Romm + Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Aviva: What if the secret to healing wasn't found in pills or clinics, but in the simple and sacred rituals of our ancestors? Imagine a world where every meal is medicine and every plant holds the wisdom of generations. Today we're diving into that world with my guest, Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz, the kitchen curandera. Felicia is a traditional healer and Indigenous food activist whose journey is deeply rooted in the traditions of her great-grandmother, a curandera from Northern New Mexico who caught babies, crafted herbal remedies and healed through touch and wisdom. Felicia has carried this lineage forward, blending ancient practices with modern insights to nourish not just the body, but mind and spirit. You may know her from her work featured in Food and Wine and Spirituality and Health, or where I first saw her on Padma Lakshmi's Taste The Nation. The only episode I've ever watched, and here I'm finding that our paths are crossing for real in person.
In this conversation, we're exploring the power of ancestral knowledge, the importance of ritual in healing, and how we can integrate sacred practices into our busy modern lives, including through our food. Whether you are a new mama navigating postpartum, a woman entering your wisdom years, you're seeking to connect with your roots or you're simply curious about the kitchen magic medicine that we're going to talk about this episode, I'm sure we'll have something really special for you.
So let me ask you again, what would it feel like to reconnect with the traditions of your ancestors to embrace food, herbs, and community as pathways to healing? Let's find out together.
Felicia, welcome. It's such an honor to have you on the show with me, and I just wish we were sitting here in person together.
Felicia: Yes, I would love that. And I also want to say I'm just such a big fan of your work as well.
Aviva: Thank you. Thank you. Well, I have a whole host of questions for us to explore together across the arc of women's lives and healing and your healing work. But before we do, I'd love to ask you something kind of up close and personal. Can you share what phase or cycle of life you are in right now and with that, what's new for you or on your mind and how are you feeling in that cycle and phase?
Felicia: I love that question. I've never been asked that question before. I am curiously and joyfully. I think at the same time entering the age of the Crone. So when I turned 52, which was last now two years ago in my own culture, 52 is when we are recognized as an elder. So I became an elder. I wasn't sure if I was ready, but I feel like now I am embracing it in a way that I feel like you're preparing your whole life to get to that stage. And now here I am, I'm arrived. And so it's all very new, but I'm very curious about it and it's exciting at the same time.
Aviva: Has any of it been challenging? Like, whoa, I'm here. This is a lot of changes. Anything scary or surprising for you?
Felicia: I would say perimenopause and menopause had a lot of surprises because I didn't know what to expect because in our own family, my mother, she had a hysterectomy in her thirties that left her not being able to share with us what that was going to be like. And so, it was really just a surprise ride the whole way. I feel that as someone who has been active and a dancer and just enjoying that movement, that lively movement, not necessarily kickboxing and things like that, but I love dancing. I love movement. I felt like my body just was at a space where it was like, what are we doing now? It just felt like suddenly my metabolism felt stagnant and things like that. But now that I've made it through menopause, I feel like something is now I'm feeling like a little bit of a spark is coming back. So again, that's that joyful part that's coming through.
Aviva: I love that. I remember around this, so I'm 58 and I remember I was around 53, 52, 54, somewhere in there. I was teaching at a big women's herbal conference and a couple of women, one who is a little bit younger, but then one who's much older came up to me and said, you're an elder now. There were all these young mamas with their babies in their backpacks, and I didn't quite feel like an elder. In fact, for me, I'm exploring words and feelings between, so we've got maiden, we've got mother, and we've got crone, but I feel like I'm in this place, which isn't quite crone yet. It's more like Queen is the word I'm playing, so I'm considering this my ‘reignarch’. We have menarche and puberty and matrescence.. I'm like, this is my ‘reignessence.” I'm becoming in the queen phase. And then crone feels somehow even yet a couple of decades further out to me. And I think it's because of my visual of what I imagine a crone, but also because known women in their late seventies, eighties, nineties, and to me those are crones. What do you think of that space in between mother and crone?
Felicia: Right there with you. I'm entering the age of the crone, I guess by my ancestor’s standards because long ago, I think this was considered the age of the crone
Aviva: True.
Felicia: I think it was when I turned 52, I started saying this was the age of the diosa, which means the goddess. And so that's what I felt like. I somehow transitioned into this new space where I wasn't quite feeling like the crone because my own interpretation was a little bit like that 75, 85-year-old woman. But within my own circle, like students and other people in the community that are much younger than me would sometimes refer to me as doña or maestra, which is definitely for someone of my age. And so that's when things really started clicking in that I was, okay, I'm not going to resist this. I'm going to redefine what the crone actually can be.
Aviva: Yes. And that's so powerful. And sometimes when I find myself slipping into kind of cultural mindset, the common cultural mindset of getting older, I remember that moment and one of the women said is that you are now able to wear the mantle of the crone, and that is the elder, the wise woman and the mentor. So sometimes in my mind, I envision myself putting on this beautiful cape and it's this woolen cape and there's a pin, and I am mentoring younger women as a role model for what I'm doing.
Felicia: Yes.
Aviva: Now, you mentioned your mom, and I hope this is okay to ask and not too personal. We can always edit out or you can say no. But you mentioned your mom had a hysterectomy when she was 30, and I'm assuming your mom is also a First Nations woman.
Felicia: Yes. So I'm all right sharing this. My sister, who is actually a traditional home birth midwife in California, we've talked about this many times because there was a lot of mystery around that and
Aviva: A lot of mistreatment and a lot of genocide vis-a-vis hysterectomy.
Felicia: Yes. So we are of Mexican indigenous descent as well as Pueblo descent from New Mexico, and our mother is very much a Native-appearing person. And here in Phoenix, what the story always was was that she actually had my sister and brothers, they're twins, and the doctor didn't believe that she was pregnant with twins, even though she had already had two children. She had my older brother, she had me. And when she was in labor in the hospital, she kept saying, I think there's another baby in there. And they were like, no, they didn't believe her. And then out came my sister, and it was kind of a traumatic birth, but there were twins, and I don't want to diminish this, but our understanding was that she went home with a hysterectomy and that it wasn't discussed like that wasn't really, there was no option. And that was very common for women of color here in the southwest, specifically here in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, parts of California.
Aviva: It was legal in California to do an unconsented hysterectomy on women of color until the eighties, 1980s. And so many people don't know that. To me, you have to let that drop in for a minute.
Felicia: Yeah, yeah. I think she was 34. And so that was our understanding, and I think that was partly why my sister was really called to become a midwife and why I was really called to work with pregnant people and all of that because we didn't see all of the beauty that could be surrounded with birth.
Aviva: So at what point in your young childhood or adolescence or trajectory did you recognize that your great-grandmother's practices as a curandera were something that weren't just part of your lineage, but that you were going to intentionally learn and carry forward?
Felicia: I think that I didn't really get that aha moment until I was about 20 years old. And as I share in my book is that when my brother, who was seven years older than me, I was 20, he was 27, he had HIV/AIDS in the nineties. And when I was just helping look after him in the hospital at his last days, he would let me put his hands on him and I would just massage his feet. And I was just, honestly, I didn't know what I was doing. I think people would probably say I was doing reiki or energy healing, but I was just sitting with him and I was just sending him as much comfort as I could from my heart. And he had told me, “You should really consider becoming a massage therapist, working with your hands. Something is happening.” And that for me is where that seed was planted.
And it's helped me really begin asking questions to other people in our family, what our grandmother, our great grandmother did, because it was just so part of our life to see her massaging people or to hear the stories of her and my mother going around the village and her catching babies. And it was just part of our story that I had never really thought, wow, could this be part of my calling as well? And when I started asking people, it was really, I don't know, it was really special to me because they were saying, you're so much like her. You're always with the plants, you like all of the food, you taking care of people. And it was coming very naturally to me, which made me feel that perhaps this was actually a calling for me rather than me looking for that as a career choice or something.
Aviva: And then what unfolded for you intentionally to say, okay, learn? How did you learn her healing ways and the healing ways that you carry forward? Were you in a period of apprenticeship and mentorship? Was it really more living your life as part of this community where this was practiced? What did it look like?
Felicia: All of that. At 21, I decided to go to massage school, and I was very fortunate that I got to go to a very intimate, small massage school that also worked with herbs, worked with essential oils and energy and Ayurveda, and it opened my mind to traditional healing practices around the world. So I think in a formal way, that was my first way of really understanding that there were all of these earth-based, plant-based systems around the world. So that was at a very young age. But then just talking to my mother, talking to some aunties and really getting a better understanding that curanderas and curanderos within our New Mexican community that everybody seemed to have one in their family. It was like everyone would tell me, oh yeah, your great aunt or my aunt or my grandmother. And it was very hush hush because a lot of people understood it more as like witchcraft, which to me, I don't mind being called a witch now, but back then it was still very much a derogatory thing.
So there was a lot of quiet talk about it, but everybody trusted them. They understood that this was a part of our culture and part of the way that they kept our families well. And so just by me being curious as I was, I began apprenticing under people in Phoeniz Arizona where I live, and I still am. You're always learning. You're always a student. And that's definitely something I want to point out to the young people learning is I could not call myself a curandera when I was 23 and learning. I had to wait until, wow, I think it was 2018 until I could actually call myself that with permission from my community and my elders. It's calling yourself a medicine person and you don't gain that with two years under your belt. Yeah.
Aviva: Thank you for sharing that. I think that is so different than what people expect. Oh, I'm going to go to a few months of weekend classes and I'm going to take an online program for two years. And I'm like, traditionally, people in so many cultures, the number seven seems to be very common, where people would apprentice for seven years and not be paid. They're not just doing the plant work, but they're doing some of the what in hospital we call scut work, like cleaning the bottles or jars or cleaning the space. We can often have a very romanticized idea of how we get there. So thank you for sharing that.
Felicia: Yes. I always thought of it in many ways as walking in someone's shadow because you really are just walking sometimes with just their belongings and their baskets, and you're not really asking any questions, you're just observing. And I think that because the tradition I come from is an oral tradition, and it's one of just being in the presence and listening and just watching everything. You're not taking notes. Now it's changing, of course. But back then for me, even as a young girl with my great grandmother walking with her in the Pecos area of New Mexico, I do have a vivid memory of walking with just paper, grocery stack bags, not asking any questions and just watching her decide which plants could be picked to go into that bag. That was my first training, I would say.
Aviva: And how has your connection to your healing work impacted your personal health and wellbeing? Have you had challenges that you took your own medicine or how do you kind of weave your healing into your daily life?
Felicia: I think at a very young age, I learned very well the types of foods that were out there. I was always skeptical even as a teenager, and that has been a deep part of my practice since late teens. I think my own body, I remember when I was a restaurant owner for many years, I was absolutely depleted and I was inside a lot, standing a lot. I probably wasn't as well hydrated and getting sunshine and all of those things. And I remember my body finally just shut down and I thought I had perhaps an autoimmune disease or something, and it allowed me to hit the master reset button of my own self and go really deep within and decide that at that moment that I really needed to walk my talk more intentionally. And I did a whole turnaround with my health, and I don't have any of those symptoms anymore. But it really was being so present with my body in a way I had never been before. That would've been 2008, 2009, I was already walking this path, but boy did that hit me, and it's so ingrained in how I operate now.
Aviva: When I was 15 is when I came into this work and this life path. And so I had a lot of allergies, seasonal allergies as a kid, got colds and sick often as a kid, and then got onto this path when I was 15, and it was like everything cleared up, weight I had gained in my early teenage years just kind of dropped off. My fitness improved. I stopped getting sick. I didn't have allergies at all. And it's interesting because now at 58 I've had this way of life that has really been very aligned with keeping me well and not just well, but feeling really well and energized and clear and my sleep good and all of that. And now I'm finding that at this juncture in my life, at this turning point into these crone years or these wisdom years, I'm having to relearn what it is that my body needs in a different way. And not just my body, but my whole being, my willingness to accept certain kinds of stresses or overwhelm or busy-ness, not so much anymore. My time feels more sacred to me and protected. And I wonder for you, as you've gone through these different cycles and stages in life that we go through in female bodies, have you found times where you had to readjust or adjust what was working for you then and what you need now?
Felicia: Yes. I've always been a dancer my whole life, so that's been something I've just always done. But when I introduced things like hit classes and kickboxing and boxing, I would leave the class, and I am not a medical doctor, but I felt like my cortisol level or something was through the roof. I felt absolutely, like I had just taken an injection of something and I felt almost like I couldn't come down from that kind of stress of the hitting and things. It lasted a while, and I realized that for me, it was almost too aggressive and my body needed to quiet down a little bit, and that's when I started just being more into gentle movements. I've always loved walking and dancing again, but I think I got more into wanting to have a yoga practice or having Tai Chi more part of my body movement, and it was like, I can't even imagine taking one of those classes now. I try to do weight training and things, but it's on my own terms. It's not with that aggressive, something about that energy around that time was when my body was like, “No, we're not doing this anymore.”.
Aviva: Yeah, it's funny. I was in my medical residency in that late thirties, early forties, and so I had to be in that very intense space and I really liked it. But I have found in the past two years, it's kind of what you're describing with coming out of the exercise class is that if I get ramped up or jacked up on something like some stressful situation, or it could be even a movie or a scene in a show or something, it takes me much longer to come down from it.
Felicia: Yeah.
Aviva: Just that metabolic downshift, that energetic downshift, just so I find myself avoiding the things that cause the jack up.
Felicia: Yeah, that tuning into our bodies deeply and honoring that. And who knows, maybe I'll turn 55 and my body's like, “Okay, it's time to turn the volume back up.” I don't know. But I'm deeply listening to where I am now and where I am now, Since I took that intense jacked up feeling, as you said from the exercise, I do feel like it did something with my hormones. I wasn't all over the place.
Aviva: Well, what you're describing really strikes a visual for me, which is that as women, as people in female bodies, so much of our life is cyclic. We are cyclic beings. We ebb and we flow. I think of a spiral rather than a circle because in a circle you go around, but you kind of end at the same point, but in a spiral, you go around, but then you're a little further on the path and then you go. So we're kind of having repeated patterns, but at different spaces along a trajectory. , if that makes sense. And it makes sense that we would want to listen to our bodies, whether it's through our monthly cycles or through the childbearing cycle or the perimenopause menopause cycle, because men don't have those same ebbs and flows. It's kind of like a steady state of something. We do. And so expecting that we're going to kind of fit into one workout program or one way of eating or any one way of living throughout a very long life doesn't actually make sense with how we really are as organic beings. I think
Felicia: I agree, and I think that's such a beautiful point because not no one can fit into this one box, and yet sometimes we feel like we can't even fit into that one box. There's all these different seasons and stages. Yes.
Aviva: So foods and herbs, which to me, I think of foods and herbs really on the same continuum. I just think of them as the plants in our lives and then of course, they're foods that are not. Plants have been profoundly important to me for 40 something years now. And I know from your work, food and plants and plants as medicine and food as medicine and food as delight and nourishment and also ancestral awareness of food is deeply, deeply ingrained in the fabric of who you are and what you're bringing to the world. Can you talk more with us, share with us what that means to you, how it manifests and shapes your life, your own cooking, what you're sharing and why it's important to you?
Felicia: Sure. Food for me, and I actually want to clarify this too, because whole foods, real foods, like that type of food, for me, it is such a way for me to communicate with others and with myself. It's a way to communicate with my ancestors. It's a way to communicate with people I love. It's a way to communicate with my body to say, “You deserve to eat these things.” It is always been some sort of messenger for me that I don't feel with maybe like an ultraprocessed food that came in, something that you toss in the microwave or something. I don't feel that connection at all. If I had to eat that food, I don't want to say it's a dead food, but it doesn't feel alive to me. Growing up, I was very fortunate that if I saw my dad fishing or friends of his, they would maybe go hunting rabbits or deer.
So we had a very beautiful relationship with animals, but we also understood that no part was wasted. And I still live that way today. And to me, I just resonate so deeply with the energy of the food that I can't explain it to people in a way, that it's like a piece of my heart. And when I prepare food that I know my grandmothers, my great grandmothers, my great great great great grandmothers have prepared, it's like a part of me just lights up. And I love that. I love just talking about, it's making m smile, I'm radiating and I want other people to feel that. So when people come to see me and they just want help on eating those types of foods, I'm known for wanting to first ask, what did your ancestors eat? Which I think is very different than “the ancestral diet.” I think a lot of people then bring in the keto and the paleo and all of that. I'm just talking about what did your great grandmother eat? And let's just start asking a question. So sorry if I got a little bit excited, but to me it's so magical.
Aviva: No, please. I had an experience about two years ago. My family ancestry is Eastern European, Hungarian and Russian Jewish. A lot of that food actually is not the food that resonates with me. My grandmother could have a big slab of cow tongue on the kitchen counter or chicken livers like, no, thank you, is not what vibes with me at all. And yet, I had an experience. Tracy, my husband and I were in New York City, and we were looking for a place to have some dinner on our way out of town to drive home, which is a two and a half hour drive back to the Berkshires. And we stopped in a restaurant that was right near us that had healthy food, and it is a deli. So on the menu, they had a chicken matzo ball soup, and it looked really authentic.
And so I got a bowl and they set the bowl down in front of me and I took one bite and Tracy looked at me, he said,”Is it good?” And I just put my hand up and I closed my eyes and I just kind of shook my head and waved my hand, don't interrupt, this is reverie. And I took another bite, and Felicia, I was sobbing, sobbing at the restaurant. I'm like, full sobs. It tasted just like my grandmother's. And with it, I mean even just now, it just gives me this full feeling of embrace. I was very close with my grandmother and it just felt like being fed by her all over again. And it brought me to my own essential self. I could remember being four and six and having it be such a deep part of my family's tradition. So I feel you on it.
And also, I'm a gardener. I mean, we're intense gardeners, so we're closer to farmers except we don't do it for a living and we don't sell it, we just share it. But the food that I eat and feel grateful and privileged to eat from my garden is so different in vitality, even from the organic food I can buy at the market, let alone processed food, which I stopped eating processed food as a teenager. But there were a few times in residency where I had run a few codes and the cafeteria was closed, and we had gone through our snacks on a 30 hour shift and I had to get something from a vending machine. And I'm grateful for whatever nourishment it gave me or whatever nutrients and energy it gave me, but it didn't give me vitality. And that is a really big missing piece.
Felicia: Yes. Thank you so much for sharing.. My daughter, her father is actually a Russian Jewish family. And so I always tell her, :I never want you, mija, to feel like you have to pick sides. I want you to embrace all of those pieces of you with your food and how that makes you feel.” And so I've heard her talk about her own experience eating those types of Ashkenazi foods and just how it lights up her energy. And I think that's such a part that I want people to really understand is you don't have to pick any specific lineage or side.
What do you remember and what brings you that vitality even as you're eating it? It's such a, just watching you on camera talk about the food, it shifted something – that memory. And to me, when we say food is medicine, food as medicine, we sometimes only boil it down to the nutrients. And I remind people that it's also a spiritual medicine. Food is an emotional medicine. It's everything.
Aviva: It's pleasure too. And we're so busy denying pleasure in some ways the food industry feeds us artificial pleasure in the form of these very concentrated tastes and flavors and sounds and all the things that are literally manufactured to make certain kind of foods addictive and appealing. And so I think we have gotten scared, especially in women seeking wellness, from remembering that healthy food whole food can still also be part of creating pleasure. And that is a wonderful thing too. I call it vitamin P to my patients. I'm like, we all need vitamin P. When your food becomes nutritionism and you're just thinking about how many milligrams of this or grams of that, are we enjoying it anymore or are we afraid of it and managing it and controlling it?
Felicia: Yes. When people say they don't remember any foods or they didn't know their ancestors for various reasons, I always tell them, this is an opportunity to write your own story and make that shift. And so I do talk even in my own practice about people being a generational pattern shifter within their family that if your grandmother and your mother, that family didn't have all of these foods full of vitality or they didn't remember any of those, and this is an opportunity to create a beautiful new story for your family and your lineage.
Aviva: So part of an important part of your work has been decolonizing medicine and preserving wisdom. So on the one hand, we have this melting pot that we all live in, and we have people like your daughter who have very deep indigenous roots in this country, and then also Russian Jewish roots to pull from. But she is inherently part of both.
Not everybody is inherently part of a culture that they identify with, or many people, I think I know many people have a sense of spiritual poverty. They don't come from traditions that they relate to and so often look to other traditions. So we see lots of white folks smudging and doing sweat lodges and using Ayahuasca. Walk us through your thoughts and feelings on the importance of respect and non-appropriation as part of supporting decolonizing medicine and people having the sort of freedom to explore and find and apply things that they do resonate with, especially when they do come from cultures where they don't resonate.
Felicia: Right. I love that question. So let me start first by, let me backtrack a little bit. So I would say 15 years ago, I definitely would use the word decolonize. It was very much this affirmative, like we're taking a stance and we're decolonizing. And I still do that work, and I still feel strongly about that. But what I have realized because of working with so many different types of people from different backgrounds, that I've really tried to empower them by using the word “re-indigenize” because it feels less subtractive and more like we're adding to because we're indigenizing it. And I feel that energy of that word felt more potent for me.
Aviva: Yes, I really feel you on that. And it's not making it about the other anymore. It's actually re-owning the power.
Felicia: Yes.
Aviva: That’s beautiful.
Felicia: Yeah. So it was coming from this space of exactly that, an empowering feeling versus a disempowering. Now we have to research and figure out how to decolonize. And there's more beauty to me when you can add the ingredients into the pot. And so when I'm working with people that are more with my own types of indigenous culture from here, from what is now the United States, Arizona, North America, it's all around us. It's easier to connect perhaps with the land because we're walking where ancestors walked and things like that. So re-indigenizing could even be a simple thing as just going outside and saying, “Wow, my ancestors have walked here for thousands of years in this now city called Phoenix” and learning what the original name was. That's re-indigenizing, I think, for people that are not from here and they feel disconnected from their own culture.
Yes, there's a lot of appropriation, and I wouldn't even say it's cultural appropriation, it's misappropriation. And what I share with everyone is that for Native people here, we were not allowed to participate openly in our traditional, spiritual ways until 1978. That was not very long ago. And so sometimes it is unsettling for me when I see people that are non-indigenous openly doing things that I feel like, wow, my own family couldn't even do that and this was their own medicine. So I've had a lot of internal conflict and dialogue, and I finally asked one of my aunties on my Tewa side, and she said, “Well, the medicine is for everyone, but only certain people are the keepers of the medicine.” And that's always been something that I've listened to and honored, and I don't want anyone to ever feel like they can't benefit from these medicines because it is for everyone.
But I do do strongly believe there are some people that are the keepers of the medicine. And even that said, I'm not even allowed to be a keeper of some of these medicines because it's not even my direct lineage. I think what's important is for everyone to understand. We all come from somewhere. And as we were talking about the Matzo soup, it gave me an instant memory of, I remember working with a client one time who knew probably more about indigenous herbalism of, I'll say the Southwest, than I did, because she just had learned so much. And I asked her, “Well, what is your background?” And she actually was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. And I asked this simple question, “Why don't you know anything about your own families herbalism?” And she said, “We just never learned it, doesn't exist.” And it made me think that there are books out there, there are stories out there. You might have to dig a little deeper, but they do exist. But I do feel a lot of people feel that when their families immigrated here, so much of their own umbilical cord to their culture was also cut and severed. And so I invite them to go and investigate that because it's going to feel so much more important then just learning all of the things from another culture.
Aviva: Yeah, I was in my early twenties, and my listeners, I'm sure, or some have heard this story before, I had started practicing, seriously studying and practicing herbal medicine at 15, and I was in my early twenties. I already had two kids, and I was visiting my grandmother's house. My great-grandmother had long passed. I knew her until I was eight years old. She came from Hungary and her son, my great uncle who just passed actually this year, like 98, and my other uncle were on the front porch of my grandmother's house. Now, first of all, my great-grandmother apparently, and I didn't know this until years later either, she had had a dream when she was pregnant with my uncle, one of the uncles, Lou, that when she was pregnant, she dreamed a man came to her. He was wearing a suit and holding a suitcase. And so she could see in the hand holding the suitcase around the handle that he only had three fingers.
And while my uncle Lou was born, he was born with three fingers. So it was always the story, Nanny was psychic. And so anytime I would have something like, oh, I'd mentioned somebody, and then they'd call, or the phone would ring and I'd say, oh, it's my grandmother, or my mother would say, oh, she has what nanny had. And so it was really validated, even though I didn't really know what it was. And then I was on this porch, this patio with my uncles and my uncle Saul, the one who just passed, said to me, “So I hear you're practicing that barbaric herbal medicine that Nanny used to practice.” And I kind of skipped over the word barbaric and went right to “What! Nanny used to practice herbal medicine. I had no idea!” And he said, “Yes, we'd go up to the mountains in upstate New York and we'd pick blackberry leaves.”
And it was so specific, he knew it. And he said she used to do mustard plasters, and she had a burn remedy that people came all over the Lower East Side for, and she did cupping. And there's this Rumi, the ancient Sufi poet. He says, “What you're seeking is also seeking you.” And I just thought I had come onto this because I loved it and was fascinated with it. And then to find that this connection was so deeply powerful for me that I can barely convey how powerful.
And also I realized that for every single woman listening right now, if she goes back even just a few generations, there is going to be someone in her family who either knew the medicines or knew a few medicines and used them in the family. It's woven into every single one of us as women
Felicia: 100%. I've now worked with people for decades, and it's always amazing to me how many people feel like, no, no, my family didn't do any of that. I'm like the first one in my family. And I think that is that feeling of I'm the generational pattern shifter, and that is a beautiful space, but this is coming from somewhere, especially when you were saying about the dreams and three fingers. I'm like, I feel that. Well, I know that I pass on. I'm going to be coming through in so many dreams of those just,
Aviva: Yeah, I think they didn't talk about it because they were embarrassed by it, first of all.
Felicia: Well, the fact that people called it barbaric. Yes,
Aviva: Right, exactly. They didn't talk about it because they were embarrassed by it. And I will say that for me, coming into herbal medicine as a young teenager, and even now as a very adult woman doing herbal medicine as a way of life, I live herbal medicine. I still haven't found much deeply connected to my own lineage of herbal medicine, very limited. And so part of my learning as I was coming along was learning many traditions and having different teachers, an Italian herbalist, a Shoshone woman, half Jewish, half Shoshone, Janine Parvati Baker, who took me under her wing to teach me and also have had various gifts of initiation into cultures that aren't inherently or ancestrally my own. So there are practices that have been shared with me that I keep to myself at home or may share in a small group, but would never monetize or never claim as ownership, but they are deeply part of healing for me. So I do struggle with that sometimes because I really want to be honoring, not misappropriating. So I was so curious to talk with you about this.
Felicia: Yeah, no, I love that. I think it's important for exactly what I said. We can learn all of these different things, but it doesn't mean that now you should turn around and be the teacher and the expert on it after just learning a few things. And so I myself have learned a lot of things about a Ayurveda, and I integrate some of those aspects into my work, but I would definitely not feel comfortable teaching on a Ayurvedic herbs. But I feel that most teachers of folk herbalism from around the world will probably have what, 5, 6, 7 herbs that they know extremely well and how to eat them, make a tea, make a plaster, steam them. It's never been this wide apothecary that I think some of the herbalists want now, the more the better. And I think that our long ago ancestors definitely had a very small apothecary that they just knew how to use them in so many different ways.
Aviva: I am the same. I mean, I know hundreds of herbs. I have a large apothecary at home, but when I have to replenish my herbs, it's usually the same 10 herbs that I'm replenishing. And when I'm teaching my students I’m like, yes, this is great to know, but actually this is what I'm using over and over. And it's kind of boring and simple, but it works. There are so many herbs and so many foods that we could talk about, and I want to hear every bit of it from you. What I'm thinking is that I feel like where there's a deep deficit and almost like a spiritual hole for women is in these major lifecycle changes, whether it's that transition into puberty, the transition into being a mother, the transition into menopause, we often lack ceremony and ritual and demarcation of that shift. It's not just a physical shift.
It's a whole mindset and spiritual shift, within that. The two really big shifts that I would love to talk with you about, and perhaps some of the foods and the herbs and the practices that can ease that shift are postpartum and menopause. Can we talk about some of the principles that you would bring into postpartum for helping a mother to, I never use the term bounce back unless I'm saying it in the term of never using it, but I like to use the term reintegrate because we're bringing, or to remember literally to bring our body parts together, to bring our memory, bring our mind, heart, soul, spirit, body into wholeness when we go through these sort of earthquakes of transitions. So for postpartum, let's start there. What are some of the maybe top food principles and foods, body care principles, and also spiritual, whether it's herbs or practices that you would feel comfortable to share, that women can bring into their lives?
Felicia: I love this. So in my own practice, or rather in my own culture, we have the time of postpartum. It's called la cuarentena, which means the quarantine. And it's 40 days, and it's being remembered and being re indigenized into our communities. I understand wholeheartedly how we're taught to bounce back, to fit into skinny jeans and all of those things. And I don't like that language either. I feel like postpartum time is a time to replenish and restore. It's a time to rest, and it's the opposite of what we're sold out there. But in my culture, it's definitely about warmth. I would say warmth in our feet, warmth in our home, warmth in a temescal, which is like a sweat lodge. It's warmth in our womb space, warm teas, warm broths. Everything's about the warmth and bringing that back to our bodies to help restore our vitality.
:I would say what's being remembered is community. That's a big part of our postpartum practice, is for people to feel well supported. So in my own community, not around too many people that are of childbearing age, I'm not friends really with many people in their twenties and thirties having children, but the friends I have who have daughters that are about to have children and things, I definitely see that there's more support and community coming around with different meal trains, and we tie the rebozo around their bellies for support. A lot of our indigenous practices are making a beautiful comeback. I would like to say that they've never been forgotten, but they're being remembered in a way that feels extremely, I don't know. There's momentum because I feel like even when I was 25 years ago giving birth, I didn't have that around me in a way that people wouldn't call you like hippie dippy or,
Aviva: Yeah, I got called that because I was! Because I had all that, but I had a beautiful rebozo that was given to me from Mexico. I had these Indian families I knew bringing me warm Indian food. It was like every cultural mishmash that nourished me so deeply in this beautiful quilt of a life. But it was weird. I mean, it was weird at the time.
Felicia: Yeah, we were taught the opposite, I think, at least my generation for sure. And I think it's helping people recognize that our ways were not barbaric and that they were not even alternative medicine, because that's something that I talk about also is that the first ways of keeping our bodies well, were never the alternative. It was just the way and never feel like what we are doing is primitive. And I do talk a lot about this and have in the past that a lot of the wellness trends, they're just being repackaged and sold to us. And that's part of the indigenizing and remembering is to learn what those things are that were keeping our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers well, in times where they couldn't go to a larger village maybe to go see a doctor.
We knew how to keep ourselves well. And so that's what I remind people is that we know how to do it. We're just really remembering and sometimes how lucky you were and blessed to have all these people coming at you with all of their wisdom ways.
Aviva: I think it was because I was in the midwifery space, so I had different people who were carrying different traditions to me, or I was reading so much about birth cultural anthropology that I wanted to find the best way to create that, and things like warmth. I can't think of a single culture around the world, whether it's Eastern European, Caribbean, first Nations, anywhere around this country, Canada, Asia, that don't practice warmth in that first month after birth. It's so deeply universal.
Felicia: Yes, I agree. I mean, I would say people that have no option but to have a baby in our hospitals, it's like here comes all of the depleted cold food. And so that's what I really try to help people understand that it's also the energy behind the food, even with the families that are making the food. And it's also very empowering, I think, to feel that you have some say in seeing it as a ritual versus just the bouncing back
Aviva: That first 40 days or 30 days as some people do, really has the potential to create a sacred space is a bubble. It is a ritual, and I think that honoring that, especially for everyone who is able to, because certainly some mamas are not, if they're single, have to go back to work right away at a job out of the house. I don't want anyone to feel like they've lost something, but if we can look at this as something that we can aspire to and create in the ways that we can, it can be a very profound time, again for integration, slow integration of this new space that you're in, feeling like you don't have to rush through a learning curve time for nourishing yourself and nourishing your baby and healing. What are a few foods that you feel would be so nourishing for new mamas and a few herbs that you are just like, “I can't imagine not having these in a postpartum basket?”
Felicia: Well, within my own culture, we drink, it's a blue corn, almost like a gruel, I guess is the English word. In some cultures, it's very almost like a very thin porridge, cream of wheat type. And so that said, that would be something I would really suggest to people is that nourishment, that's not quite a beverage, but it's not quite a hearty stew. It's somewhere in between. It's easily digestible, it's warm, it's full of nutrients, and depending where the person is from, it can incorporate those ancestral pieces too. So for me, maybe it's blue corn where for another family, it might be a really wonderful nourishing chicken bone broth.
Aviva: Yes, I did a barley, almost like a congee So when you cook barley, one cup of barley, but 10 cups of water, you get this almost, it's almost like oat milk or something like that.
Felicia: So kind of taking that principle and adding just something in there. So that would be one thing I would say. As far as an herb, I really love all of just the womb restoratives and also things that really help for breast milk, if that is something that the mother wants or can do. I'm trying to remember, we had, what the heck was it? Well, definitely nettle and things like that, but I can't think of it right now. But just definitely the nutrient dense green teas, like a herbal leaf teas, raspberry leaf.
Aviva: Yeah, I like raspberry and nettle, A little bit of yarrow because it’s astringent, I love motherwort because it's so great for roller coasters of emotions, but it also helps tone the uterus and it means ‘lion’hearted.’
Felicia: Oh, I love that.
Aviva: Motherwort, healing herb for mothers. Motherwort to me is she is my favorite of all herbs, and that is because she is one herb that I feel like can be used at every lifecycle juncture that we're in. Menstrual cramps in teenagers, for emotional challenges that come up around the menstrual cycle for acne. It's a bitter, right, and you can't use it while you're pregnant, but if you're trying to get pregnant though, and you're struggling with emotions around fertility, you can use it as long as you're not just conceived. And then postpartum for those emotions and ups and downs. And then in perimenopause and menopause for hot flashes, sleep, rage, irritability, heart palpitations. It's just this thread of an herb for me that I love.
Felicia: Yeah, I love that.
Aviva: You mentioned belly wrapping.
Felicia: Yes, with the rebozo. Oftentimes I would say long ago, young, a young girl would receive one, and it would be traditionally carried with her throughout her life, through marriage, through birth, through postpartum, and with her until she passed on. And I love that that also is coming back when we were talking or when you had brought up the rites of passage and the ceremonies, my sister and I had a rite of passage for my daughter when she was 15, and she received a traditional belt and a rebozo, and I want her to have that. And if she ever has a baby, well, you can wrap her with that and we use it for stretching. I use it in my own practice when I'm working with clients, when they're feeling trauma, sometimes they need to be in that cocoon, that feeling to let go. So the robos definitely not just a piece of clothing. It's a sacred tool.
Aviva: Yes. I have one that was gifted to me when I was pregnant with my first baby from a friend who went to Mexico, and it was woven by Mayan women, and it's very unusual. It's kind of this golden black thread. It's almost like bumblebee or hornet colors. And now it has shreds in it because I've carried all my babies in it and carried my grandbabies in it and carried other people's children when I was at a birth. So now it's folded up and kind of precious. But I never thought about the idea of giving a rebozo as a gift to each young woman as she comes into comes of age. A few years ago, there was some pushback on the internet about white women or women of not of First Nations dissent here from this continent using rebozos. And so I always feel conflicted about sharing rebozos and using that term rebozo.
And there's some wonderful rebozo medicine for shifting babies that midwives do in labor. I did it with my midwife mentor for her daughter just a few years ago. There's wonderful rebozo medicine using a rebozo tied and thrown over a door to create a squatting rope. What are your thoughts on the use of the word rebozo by people who the rebozo tradition is not inherently part of their DNA of culture? And can it be done respectfully, or is it better to just use a different word even if it is actually a rebozo? I feel so I don't always know how to approach what's fair and right to do.
Felicia: Yeah, so I mean, I guess if I was working with somebody, sometimes they just need that permission. And even when they're maybe a teacher or they're sharing, usually then it's prefaced with this is aso and I learned how to use this from X, Y, Z teacher in this way. And I think that's that cultural part that I think sometimes that little space of just taking a pause to explain where the knowledge came from. So it's not Columbus-ized, I think.
Aviva: Yes, exactly. That's what I always do.
Felicia: Yeah, I think that's where, again, it's kind of like the medicine is for everyone, but maybe not everyone's supposed to be the keeper of the medicine. And for those that our medicine shares of that type of medicine, I think that the key point is to do what you just were saying, this is not as my lineage. This is something that I learned and I want to respect and honor my teacher who shared this with me, and this is what I know. And I think we need that because it's, again, it's a sacred tool. It's not just a piece of clothing for warmth. And yet we also use it for warmth and things too. But I put it over my head sometimes when I'm protecting my head from the wind, and that is a sacred tool in itself. So I think that, I guess it's a gray area and everyone might have a different answer, but I think for me personally, in my own practice, I give people permission to just use that word, respect, name their teachers, explain where they received the knowledge, and never affirm to anyone that you are not this expert on it because it's something that we're all still learning
Aviva: I really appreciate that. Thank you. So you and I, we have been through our early phases and cycles of life, and we're now in our wisdom years, and there have been things about entering this phase that have certainly surprised me. And so I find myself both being a student and a teacher of this entering of these wisdom years. And the menopause body changes, mind changes, cognitive changes, sleep changes, spiritual changes, all the things. And I wonder for you if you could share a few insights on perhaps foods and herbs that you feel might be and practices food, herbs, and practices, and maybe we'll wind our conversation spiral around with that, that can be deeply healing and nourishing and support women in this big life phase transition.
Felicia: Well, at the, I guess you could say the last quadrant of this medicine wheel, this wheel of life, and so I'm really looking at nourishing my body in a very different way, going through menopause. I wasn't able to eat a lot of the fiery foods such as ginger and chilies and those things that I love so dearly because they would often trigger a hot flash for me. So I'm past that and now I'm enjoying them again. But I felt like for anyone, I guess it's really listening of what your body needs. My body going through menopause and entering this new stage, it's really craving a lot of simplicity. I think it's like, I don't know how to explain it, but I am really wanting things that are not over complicated. And I don't know if that's why where that's coming from, but I am finding myself wanting to eat very comforting foods.
I guess that's the crone year. I'm wanting just that deep nourishment and I am really listening. And I think within the last decade, I've definitely returned to sipping on bone broth. That is not something that I did in my thirties and forties. I would save it for a soup or something, but it's something that my body is craving, and maybe it has something to do with the fact that my bones are changing, my organs are doing things differently, my hormones are craving things.
But I just want to share that, I guess what I'm listening to myself say this is I'm craving the simple things. I'm craving the simplicity where I think I'm not on all these supplements and powders and all of those things.I think it's just about remembering again and listening to yourself. I can't say that what my body needs is what someone else needs. So I don't know if I answered your question, but I think what I'm finding for myself is I'm listening in such a way that I want to be able to say in my really, really far away crone years, “At 53, I really listened to what my body was needing in this moment.”
Aviva: And what about any herbs? Are there any herbs accompanying you now on this journey?
Felicia: Well, I'm not embarrassed to say that. I think it was three years ago, I was actually on your website and I made the menopause tincture, and that got me through. That was something that was so important to me. I made the tincture with the motherwort and the, oh my gosh, it had five or six herbs in there. Right now, I'm really enjoying a lot of the things like lemon balm, hey lull me to sleep. They're helping my mind at the end of the day. That's not something that I really was enjoying when I felt like I was in a little bit more of a hustle state. I feel like where I am now is definitely turning into and honoring that quiet part and things like passionflower, even chamomile, which is something that I wasn't in love with growing up. I'm really feeling into these really beautiful calming herbs.
Aviva: I need those too. Chamomile and lavender and lemon balm, kind of my nighttime teas and just the more gentle herbs that are calming.
Felicia: Gentle.
Aviva: Yeah. Okay, so I have one question that I love to ask every guest before we end the show. If you don't mind, if you can tell your younger self one piece of wisdom or advice, how old would she be and what would you tell her?
Felicia: Wow. I would say I would be probably 25, 26, and I would tell her to never dim her light for anyone. That would be probably a big lesson that I've learned now that I'm older, that dimming your light in all ways, the way you want to eat, even with the herbs, all of it. I felt like I had to do that a lot in my twenties out of fear of how people would view me, especially in the nineties. I was so, it was such a processed food era and everything was just so ultra sleek, and I was always a little bit like this old lady in many ways living, and I felt like I had to kind of stifle that little grandma in me, and I would love to go back and tell her, actually, it's okay to be that person because in the future they're going to really need you.
Aviva: Thank you, Felicia, for sharing your heart and your wisdom and traditions, and for reminding us that the power we have is often in returning to our own roots and honoring the sacred in our own ancestry.
To our listeners, remember that healing doesn't always mean something new. It can mean rediscovering what's been within us all along. And to stay connected with Felicia, you can do so through her book Earth Medicines, her work at Herbal Academy and her inspiring teachings online. She's got articles and videos and please don't forget to share this episode with anyone in your life who might need a little reconnection to themselves. Until next time, stay curious, stay well, stay you, and I'll see you then. Thank you, Felicia.