Taya is a daughter, sister, auntie, momma to four leggers, tender to the ones birthing into mothers, witness to the new ones being born, she is a herbalist, medicine maker and midwife. Her place in the great order of things is to be in service at the veil of birth and to what the unseeable ones are asking. She works and moves from the earth, in communion with the great mother, the plants and her heart. Her interest is living intimately with the elements and cycles of the seasons. Mostly you will find her in the garden, walking with her beloved dog, sitting in a birth room, soaking in warm water, making Medicine or reading Mary Oliver poems.

Tayas journey with plants started at a young age in the garden with her mom. Here with hands in the dirt she started a relationship with the green that would span her life. An herbalist with 20 years of study and practice under her belt she is committed to the continued learning of what the plants and their voices have to share. Her herbal studies include the North Western School of botanical Studies and the California School of Herbal Studies where she did the 500 hour roots program, as well as 2 years of clinical training at CSHS and the Ayurveda foundation program with Deanna Batdorff. She has worked in herbal first aid clinics and street clinics helping those most vulnerable.Committed to listening to plants and knowing the innate wisdom of each lies within its own story and relationship with all living beings.

My journey as an herbalist began on my grandparents farm. I would follow my grandmother around and harvest dandelion greens and rosemary sprigs. She would put them in her apron pocket and mix them in with dinner in such a way that my grandfather would not know.  Her and I would sit under the willow tree shucking peas in great swarths of silence. I didn’t know it then but I could feel her transmissions to me and I still rely on her wisdom to this day. This was my original introduction to folk medicine; using the plants and herbs growing in your yard and fields as food and medicine.

This naturally led me to my first herbal apprenticeship in 1991 in a little apothecary on the seacoast of New Hampshire called the Mustard Seed. It was here that I first started to learn about formulations and the spirit of plants and herbal medicine. We kept specialized formulas on index cards and the local folks would come in for their particular tea or tincture. I felt so at home inside these wooden walls. Over the past 33 years, I have worked for various small batch herbalists making medicine of all kinds from tinctures to teas to body oils and healing salves. I have studied with the greats such as Rosemary Gladstar, Susan Weed and Deb Soule. And of course, my greatest teaching has been from the hundreds of women, birthing people and babies that I have worked with over the past twenty years and how herbal medicine has supported them through their initiations of fertility, reproductive healing, pregnancy, miscarriage, birth, postpartum and breast/body feeding.   Co-creating HeartFolk Medicinals is a dream come true. It is a convergence of all the wisdom I have gleaned over the years into a product line that nurtures across the time space continuum of the reproductive years. From menarche (menstruation & fertility) to Matrescence (/giving birth/developmental stages of becoming a mother) to Sagessence (menopause), Heart Folk has a formula for you to support your journey as a human with an affinity to the earth and a call to the angelic realms.