Death and Transition Series at LICHEN CENTER presents a class on “PLANT ALLIES TO SURVIVE & THRIVE” with Catelynn Hendrick
“In this course, we will be tapping into an abundant resource for surviving & thriving through times of trouble: the animate world.
Exploring herbal allies through their various methodologies & systems, this course aims to help you build a toolkit of plant medicine for personal & collective resilience. We will work at building a framework to understand differing situations, stimuli, and emotional needs, along with ways to facilitate appropriate containers of response for them. This practice is rooted in self-knowledge, deep and care-ful listening, and compassion, rather than creating concrete solutions of intervention. Rather than management, this is a process of facilitating more embodiment, integration, and tolerance.
From this methodology, we will move into knowledge-building about a handful of plants and the medicine they offer. We will explore ways to build a responsive & effective practice through various preparations -- water (teas & decoctions), blood (tinctures & glycerites), and energy (essences & space-sharing). We will also look into moments of specific duress - death, grief, transitions - and the herbal allies that offer honed sets of skills for these particular moments.
This course draws on folk knowledge, plant medicine-ways indebted to Indigenous lifeways, and growing science. Moving between the micro and the macro, it is encased in an analysis of how we hold spaces of healing both for ourselves and others, and how to show up with integrity & empowered preparation. The framework of mental health is encased in a community-centered, interdependent, grief-positive model that is deeply indebted to the work of radical mental health activists.
As a content warning, this course will touch upon themes of suicidality, death, grief, and self-harm -- spaces for care, rest, and integration will be provided.” - Catelynn
Catelynn (she/her) is first and foremost a compassionate and ever-evolving human & threshold tender -- beyond that, she is an herbalist with a framework rooted in experience, emergence, reciprocity, and nuance. Her approach to mental health & grief-positivity came through years of formal training in direct care mental health and end-of-life work, filtered through the lens of her own experiences with mental illness and the lack of holistic & critical spaces provided for these experiences. This all led to an underlying philosophy of interdependent listening, growing, and healing.
Her herbal practice thrives through a structure of support from ancestral reverence, death tending, folk practice, ceremonial research & resistance, wonder, and disruptive queerness. Her toolkit is deeply indebted to the labor of activists & educators of abolition, radical mental health, and body-based healing modalities such as somatics.
Catelynn’s approach to education aims to be non-hierarchical and responsive to indescrepencies in power, presented in a way that is trauma-informed and steeped in reciprocity. Her offerings are life & death honoring both. You can find the hub of her work at atetheredgod.com, or on Instagram as @atetheredgod. She lives, tends, and bakes lots of treats on both Penobscot & Southern Sámi lands, although her heart is forever scaffolded by the saltmarsh magic of Timucua territory.
When: Sunday, September 12, 10-12pm
Where: LICHEN CENTER, Blue Hill, Maine / Penobscot Territory
Cost: $40 per person. Please let us know if $40 is more than you can afford; no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Scholarships are available upon request (please contact Catelynn directly to apply).
This offering will take place outside, so please bring what you need to be comfortable. We will provide water, tea and chairs. Bring your own cups, snacks and lunch. If you need any specific accommodations, please let us know.
Sign-up by September 10th, 2021