Active Hope

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Friends, it's been a long and beautiful winter full of a whole lot of grief, anger, overwhelm, illness, and endless tiny moments saturated with love.

How I wish I could invite you into the barn and offer you a steaming mug of white pine and rose petal tea.

I've been quiet but busy over here divining new tinctures, elixirs, and essences that might keep us company and sustain us in these uncertain times.

I don't want to write too much, as I feel oversaturated with information lately and have a sense that you might feel this way too.

So, in brief, please welcome Active Hope and DREAM elixirs to with/in's apothecary.

May these elixirs soothe, inspire, and restore.

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Active Hope, an elixir to inspire (r)evolution rooted in nourishment, embodied activism, and emotional intelligence. This elixir soothes the nervous system, calms the digestive system, and uplifts the heart, spirit, and mind.

This carefully curated formula of nine organic plant extracts and essences brings us into the body. Taken daily over time, these plants soothe, ground and restore us, transmuting fear, anger and overwhelm into inspiration and action. They center our thoughts and emotions, nourish our imaginations, all while helping us tap into deeper time scales, have important conversations with clarity and grace, and channel the collective.

This elixir is for you if you feel burned out, disembodied, disillusioned, exhausted, anxious, have empathy fatigue or are frayed with fear or overwhelm. This is an elixir to help you return safely to your body, restore your sense of Earthen belonging, find your sense of meaning and purpose during uncertain times, and infuse your being with nourishment and inspiration so you can dream and work toward a present and future you believe in.

Active Hope origin story —

In the spring of 2019, I taught an Ecopoetics workshop at the university where I work. To help us hold and process our climate grief, we began the course by reading selections from Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone’s incredible book, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power. Of Active Hope, Joanna Macy has written:

“Active Hope helps us to discover new strengths, open to a wider network of allies and experience a deepening of our aliveness. When our responses are guided by the intention to act for the healing of our world, the mess we’re in not only becomes easier to face, our lives also become more meaningful and satisfying.”

With this book as our guide, we worked to deepen our aliveness by honoring our grief and letting our fear act as an organizing force as we composed our ecopoems. The first week of class, I also introduced some medicinal herbs to my students who could help us in this work. We blended them together in an organic vegetable glycerin and took turns taking the jar home as they infused for one moon cycle. We named our blend: Active Hope elixir. Over the years, I’ve perfected the recipe but kept the name in homage to Macy and that first ecopoetics cohort. 

You can meet the nine plant extracts and essences that make up Active Hope elixir over in the apothecary listing.

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And, now, DREAM, an elixir to inspire calm, restful sleep & visionary dreaming. 

A nighttime ritual in a bottle, DREAM elixir relaxes the body, calms a racing mind, eases tension and anxiety in the gut, and invites in vivid dreams. 

DREAM elixir is a potent blend of bitter, floral, aromatic, and calming herbs: organic Passionflower, Skullcap, Hops, Chamomile, Lavender and Cardamom pods extracted in an organic cane alcohol and a touch of local raw organic honey, then blended with flower essences of Mugwort, Wild Angelica, and Sea Rose. Pictured below.

Mugwort essence taps us into the wild-liminal and invites in vivid dreams. Angelica essence calls in our guides and protects us during our dream journey. And Sea Rose essence acts as heart compass and sanctuary in the dark. 

Learn more about how to work with DREAM elixir and dream with intention over in the apothecary.

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Wishing you a restorative start to spring.

xx

Danielle