Season Two: The Living Tree – 11 Insights from the Tree of Life

Season 2: 🫖 Tea Table Confessional

Some medicine is not sweet. Tonight we are sitting with dandelion root — the plant most of us were taught to call a weed, the one that pushes up through the pavement anyway, unbothered and faithful to its own nature. In this episode, I asks what it means that so many of us learned to do the same: to smooth over our heat, to rename our anger, to fold ourselves smaller so the room would stay comfortable. This is a conversation about the difference between anger and grief — and the way one so often wears the other’s coat. I share my own story of growing up without language for the shape of my spirit, of being mislabeled in rooms that only made space for straight lines, and of nights under the northern lights in Alaska where something ancient finally broke open and began, at last, to move. Through the lens of TCM and traditional herbalism, dandelion root has a long relationship with the liver — the organ that, in many healing traditions, holds the weight of what we could not let go. It is a bitter herb, an awakener. It does not shame the body for holding too much. It simply, with quiet insistence, helps what has been held too long find its way downstream. Bring your cup. Bring whatever you’ve been carrying. The kettle is on, & tea table is here ready to catch you, and so is the conversation you may have been waiting a long time to have. Steeped in intention — offered with care. The Gilded Leaf 🌿 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Season Two: The Living Tree – 11 Insights from the Tree of Life

There is an ancient map. It predates the wellness aisle, the apothecary, the printing press. In the Kabbalistic tradition, it is called the Tree of Life — ten luminous centers of awareness arranged like a body standing between earth and heaven. Root to crown. Receiving to giving. Contraction to expansion. It was drawn as a tree. That was not an accident. In this first episode of Season Two series, we begin at the bottom of the Tree — in Malkuth, the kingdom, the ground. The sephirah of the physical world, the body, the actual conditions of your life. Not the life you’re narrating. The one you’re living. Malkuth asks the most unglamorous and most necessary question of all: Are you here? Are you in a body? Is that body safe enough to feel? We explore how Malkuth maps directly onto the root chakra — Muladhara — and what it means when the lowest point of our energy has been cut off from its source. We look at the herbs that live in this territory: dandelion root, burdock, oatstraw, nettle — common, humble, and quietly extraordinary plants that don’t bypass the body to reach the spirit. They go straight into the soil of you. This episode also includes a simple root check-in practice you can do with your next cup — three quiet questions that will help you locate yourself in your own life, without shame and without spin. In this episode: * What the Tree of Life is, and why it was drawn as a tree * The ten sephirot and how they map onto the human body * Malkuth: the kingdom, the earth, the place where spirit becomes matter * The connection between Malkuth and the root chakra (Muladhara) * The Malkuth herbs: roots and minerals that insist on contact with reality * A root check-in practice to carry into your week Subscribe to The Gilded Leaf newsletter for the Wednesday Weekly Steep — one herb, one feeling, one honest cup at a time. 🌿 thegildedleaf.substack.com [https://open.substack.com/pub/thegildedleaf] Steeped in intention — offered with care. The Gilded Leaf 🌿 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Season 2: Tea Table Confessionals

Some wounds don’t announce themselves. They just quietly shape everything — the reaching, the searching, the particular ache of feeling like you were never quite enough to keep. This week at the Tea Table, I’m sharing something I’ve held close for a long time. A fairy-lit basement in Beaverton. A healer named Trisha Michaels — Reiki master, sager, channeler of Archangel Michael — who walked me home to myself over the course of twenty years and still does. And Burdock Root, the plant that goes down before it goes out, tending the dark, mineral-rich soil of things without needing to announce itself. This episode moves through adoption, divorce, inherited narratives, ancestral memory, and the quiet, devastating belief that we are not quite lovable — and what happens when someone finally holds the lantern long enough for you to look. This one is tender. Make something warm before you press play. In this episode: Burdock Root as a guide for interior healing — the TCM teaching on dis-ease as mirror — what it means to carry a root wound — adopted children and the soil of origin — ancestral inheritance and pattern recognition — Archangel Michael and energetic clearing — the difference between a character flaw and an inheritance — and what was found on the other side of all that looking. This week’s steep: Burdock Root Steeped in intention — offered with care. — The Gilded Leaf 🌿 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

🎙️ Season 2: Where the Roots Have Room · Episode 4

What Grows in the Dark There is a kind of work that doesn’t look like work from the outside. It doesn’t show up on your face or in your calendar. It happens in the quiet — in the unlit rooms of your interior landscape — in the places most of us have been too afraid to look. This week, Burdock Root is my teacher. In this episode, we sit with shadow work, the body as mirror, and the ancient principle that runs through Traditional Chinese Medicine and Hermetic philosophy alike: as above, so below. We talk about what it means when the body starts speaking what the mind has been carrying in silence — and why healing, in every tradition I have trained in, always begins the same way. By finding the root. I’ll also walk you through the energetics of Ground — the first blend in The Gilded Leaf Foundational Collection — and why Burdock anchors that formula the way it anchors everything: quietly, deeply, from beneath the surface. Make yourself a cup before you press play. This one goes down slow. and don’t forget the honey for it makes life all the more sweet. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

🎙️ Tea Table Confessionals: Learning to Hold Without Disappearing.

In this Sunday Tea Table Confessional, I’m sitting with the tender, complicated work of loving someone without disappearing inside the relationship. I share about a past partnership where I found myself carrying the invisible emotional labor of the home — managing schedules, tending my daughter’s inner world, holding his healing, and keeping the household running — all while slowly losing my own softness. I talk honestly about what it felt like to be “in partnership” but still feel alone in the daily holding, and how my boundaries blurred as I made excuses for patterns that left me depleted and small. Through the lens of plant energetics, I invite you into a conversation with a little “heart council” of herbs — motherwort’s lion‑hearted courage, linden’s soft nervous‑system canopy, and rose’s fierce self‑regard — as companions for exploring boundaries, self‑abandonment, and the moment you finally decide to set the load down. This episode is a love letter to anyone who has ever over‑functioned in relationship, shrunk themselves to avoid conflict, or wondered if they were asking for too much just by wanting to be met. If you’ve ever held it all and quietly wondered who is holding you, this one is for you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]