Wild Cherries – Intro to Herbal Medicine Homework

For: July • June • May • April

Check back on this page for monthly homework assignments for our 2025 Intro to Herbal Medicine class.

Turning in Your Homework

Homework can be turned in in-person, emailed to homework@wildcherries.org (to share privately with the teachers), or uploaded to the shared google drive (to make it available to the whole class).

For July

Patriarchal Medicine

The Racist and Sexist History of Keeping Birth Control Side Effects Secret by Bethy Squires (8 pages)
Alternately, a past student made an audio recording of this piece for us – 12 minutes

The following two writings on the history of the American Medical Association and how it strategically destroyed women’s roles in healthcare and healing. The first writing is very Eurocentric and doesn’t include a comprehensive history around practitioners and healers of color in the USA. We’ve included the article about race and the AMA to add some parts of that history, but haven’t found a comprehensive resource covering both. The brief history that the Witches, Midwives, Nurses covers of the destruction of lay healers and witches in Europe, can also be traced into any culture around the globe that was colonized by Europeans — one of the first tactics in colonization is to destroy healers and their knowledge.

Witches, Midwives and Nurses (Text or Pamphlet) by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English (68 very short pages, plus a 25 page introduction you can read if you want)
Or listen to this (77 minutes) or this (92 minutes) audio recording”

The culture war between doctors and midwives, explained by Ranjani Chakraborty
(6 minute video)

Where did all the granny midwives go? (4 minute video)

Reflection Questions and Ritual

How does patriarchy show up in your experiences of western medicine?
How does patriarchy show up in your relationships with plants?

Invite magic and anti-patriarchy into a healing ritual for yourself and maybe others this month.  What do you do?  How does it feel?

BONUS CONTENT

The American Medical Association and Race by Robert B. Baker, PhD (10 pages)Mary Coley’s 1953 film All My Babies- A Midwifes Own Story (54 minute video)

Tend to the Garden

weed, water, spend time with the plants, harvest as needed and make communal medicines. We’ll go over more notes about making medicine as the plants get bigger, so look out for that tutorial

Digestion

Continue to think about an herb or formula for yourself. Maybe make it and try it out!

Energetics

Make a body map- at least twice this month make a body map- where is your body experiencing heat/cold/damp/dry/constriction/looseygoosey?  Do you see patterns?  Do you see changes?  Can you affect changes?

Plant ID

Key out 5 new plants in Newcombs

For June

Plant Connections and Community Care

  • Connect with oats and motherwort medicine (or another nervine that we mentioned in class that you feel a connection with) this month.  Make a tea or take the tincture 1-2 times a day.  How does it feel?  Are there short term or long term changes?
  • Put a loved one in a foot soak.  How does this act of community care feel?
  • Tend the garden 1-2 times this month (water, weed, pick up trash, hang out at the garden and observe/just be there)
  • Key out 5 plants

Video/Audio – Fatphobia

  • Maintenance Phase, The Body Mass Index (audio – 69 min) – Apple Podcasts, Spotify
  • The Roxanne Gay Agenda, Best of Hear to Slay: The Fat Tax, w/ Sabrina Strings and Sonya Renee Taylor (audio – 78 min) – TuneIn
    • ** NOTE— You may have to find the episode by name at this link – scroll down and click SEE MORE **
  • Or if you need a shorter listen, Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body is Not an Apology ~ Radical Alchemy (video – 22 min)

We also like….

  • This American Life, Episode 589: Tell Me I’m Fat (audio – 67 min)
    • (We feel the interviews in this episode are really meaningful, but we apologize for subjecting you to Ira Glass’ commentary, which we find unbearable.)

For May

Capitalism, Mental/Emotional Health

Reflection – pick two or more of these questions to think/write about

  • How has capitalism shaped how you think about your own health?
  • How do your ideas about health perpetuate health stigmas?
  • How do we build anticapitalist care networks?
  • How do the stigmas around mental illness affect your relationship to your own emotional health?

Materia Medica

  • Seek out plantain or violet — finding it in the world, observing, keeping it company, eating it, using the medicine, meditating with it, daydreaming about it. Write about your experience.
    • If you pick the flowers or leaves, notice how it feels to do so. Notice the impact you have on the spot the plant is growing. Also be mindful that you’re not eating plants from a location that’s likely to be polluted with lead or chemicals!
  • Bonus: Make a tea from fresh violet flowers! Add a little lemon, and watch the color change! Cool! Take a video of it and post it to the discord!

Plants and Botany

  • Key out five plants. (Turn in a sample or drawing of the plant, plus the steps you took in newcombs and your id.)

Change Work

  • What does care look like in your life, and the lives of people you care about? How can we give and receive the best care possible? What are the barriers? What are the resources we have for our care or to share with other people?
  • What role do you feel more comfortable in: a caregiving role or a care-receiving role?  Reflect on that. How could you feel more comfortable in both roles?

Other things we love

For April

Wildcrafting

Cultural Appropriation

Reflections

Write ½-1 page about a family healing tradition you grew up with.

What ways do you strive to or want to practice a culture of gratitude?

What are ways you want to have relationships with wild plants that don’t involve gathering them?

What are the impacts on us when our cultural practices are appropriated? What healing do we need around that?

What are the impacts on us when our cultural practices are lost, and what healing do we need around that?

Materia Medica

Make wild cherry tea, tincture or syrup this month.  What tastes and energetics do you notice?  How does it make your body feel?  Where do you feel it in your body?  What do you like about it and what do you dislike?  Try drinking it 4-8 times.

Bonus: spend time with wild cherry trees in the woods.

Plants and Botany

Go look at trees, choose two trees and spend 15 minutes with each tree.  Observe. Write down all the observations you make of the tree so that someone else could go find that tree. 

Bonus resources:

When We Talk About Cultural Appropriation, We’re Missing The Point by Ijeoma Oluo
https://medium.com/the-establishment/when-we-talk-about-cultural-appropriation-were-missing-the-point-abe853ff3376

Past Homework Assignments from Bygone Years

Proudly powered by WordPress