About the name Thyme Herbal 

There was a time when I wanted to change the name of my business to something else.  I felt (or maybe even worried!) that the name did not encompass my work.  But when I really thought about why I chose the name, I remembered that I chose thyme not only for my love and connection to the plant, but because of the meaning it holds for others.  As a culinary herb that has been popularized, normalized and cultured, many people have personal associations with this plant – perhaps with the way it smells and tastes, or the ways they like to use it in their cooking.  Calling my business Thyme Herbal draws attention, for me, to the connection between food and medicine that I so dearly love, and is a reminder to us all that healing with herbs still remains – even if unintentionally – a part of the American kitchen.

About the Medicine Wheel

Just as many of us may have learned to use thyme through tradition and practice, people have been learning how to use herbs by word of mouth for generations.  In fact, herbal medicine is the oldest form of medicine practiced on the planet.  There is a rich history embedded in our relationship to this practice and to the herbs themselves.  The medicine wheel represents this idea of process to me. It is meant to look like the rays of a sun dile, the sun, the hands of a clock, or even a compass. These images that represent time are meant to symbolizing that healing, health and being are all processes that take time and that are connected to the natural flow of the seasons – the rising of the sun and the moon, the processes of birth and death, growth and decay. The plants in the center of the medicina wheel are in a co-creative relationship with one another – it is not just one plant, but many all growing together.

The 13 moons of the year, in their loose phases of waxing and waning, and the plant bodies giving way to new life, new plants… these serve as a reminder that living healthfully is about embracing the process of life in all its cycles.  The medicine wheel acknowledges that this process is flexible and alive — as mysterious as it is predictable, and as magical as it is practical.