Searching for Ancestral Roots and Connection

Illustration by Pawel Jońca.

Searching for ancestral roots and connection. Throughout my life I have had periods where I would experience an insatiable hunger to tap into my own roots. I think this is an especially common phenomenon for white Americans. Occasionally I would just feel that intense hunger to find meaning and connection in my Scottish, German, and English heritage. Today as I reflect on this, I am suddenly reminded that with these plants, I am tapping into roots, much deeper and older. I am tapping into a part of my roots and a time before any of those countries meant anything. To a time before we lost our deeper connections with the plants and with nature and with the earth, and with all of these different worlds and realms. I believe I’m working with these plants in a way people were working with them thousands of years ago. I have seen nothing that shows I am working with them in the way that people were working with them 500 years ago and even more recently. What I am doing, what I am trying to do goes much much further back, and that is where I find solace and the groundedness in my roots, in these roots, in these roots I share with these plants. These plants that take me home. These plants that take me back to my original home, to my original people, to my original self.

Check out the numerous varieties of gourmet chocolate truffles I handcraft using these beautiful nightshades of which I speak.