About this episode
Collapse is not a single event that occurs everywhere, once and for all. It occurs in fits and starts, unevenly distributed across communities. When there are floods and fires, when there are supply chain disruptions, when there is war and strife – these are expressions of collapse. Recognizing them is not in any way saying we shouldn’t bother to try and stop them, or reduce their severity! But it is a necessary acknowledgement of reality. Making plans for collapse in all its manifestations is a solid way to mitigate their effects on you and your family or community. It’s also good for your mental & emotional health in the meantime! These plans must include community. No one can go it alone for very long, even in the best of circumstances. When there’s disaster, we need each other even more. Stockpiling supplies is not a long-term solution. Building skills, and developing a community of people who are enthusiastic about learning these skills, is the best way forward. (Check out makerspaces, skillshares, & mutual aid collectives to find like-minded folks.) And that’s where herbalism comes in! Start today: build yourself a list of herbs which grow in your ecosystem and can play important roles in a situation where medical care isn’t available. Getting to know your local antiseptic herbs, nutritives, herbs for emotional support, digestives, and respiratory support herbs is a great foundation to begin with – that’s what we’re focusing on in this episode. We have online video herbalism courses that can help you develop these skills, too! Our Herbal First Aid course teaches you all the fundamentals of working with herbs for acute care. Wounds, burns, sprains, bites & stings, and emotional first aid eeds can all be addressed with herbs! The Emergent Responder program is a complete guide to holistic disaster response & preparedness. Learn how herbal first aid, long-term care strategies, and emergency clinic management unfold in austere environments. Get the skills you need to be confident and ready to care for yourself, your family, and your community – even if help never comes. Our Herbal Community Care Toolkit is chock full of low-cost, abundantly accessible herbs for addressing common health issues. Students in this program learn our most inexpensive strategies for improving health and well-being. This course is available by donation, but if you can’t afford it, email us and we’ll send you a coupon code so you can get it for free! Once enrolled in any of our courses, your access never expires – and you get any updated material we add in the future, free of cost! Other resources we mentioned in this episode: Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? , by Bill McKibben The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters , by Juliette Kayyem FEMA Training & Education and CERT (Communit Support the show You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!