Partnering With Plants for Healing and Ritual with Melanie Griffin

This workshop is a discussion about the different uses of plant medicine, physical, spiritual, and emotional. It's an opportunity for us to learn from each other and share knowledge. We will also talk about personal ritual, the elements of a ritual, and ways to use plants in our rituals. Participants will walk away with a ritual they have created for themselves, a worksheet with uses of different nervines, and if possible some tea made by me.

Melanie Griffin is a non-binary, queer Black artist and herbalist living in Virginia, who has also spent formative time in LA and New York. She is an ardent believer and lover of plant medicine, plant magic and healing justice. They are deeply invested in collective healing and creative paths that center Black and Brown people. Through her experiences with chronic illness, Melanie was moved to begin studying herbalism after becoming frustrated with the limitations of allopathic/ western medicine. She has studied on her own for many years and in formal settings. After drawing connections between the medical industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and systemic racism, she became passionate about how care and wellness practices can be used to support abolition and the building of a world beyond the systems of interlocking oppression that affect us all. Additionally, through textiles, multimedia works, writing, and performance/ritual/magic, Melanie explores issues around home, self-care/ self affirmation, sickness, healing, race, gender, sexuality, capitalism, liberation and our relationship to this planet. They have held workshops and shown work in different spaces including SOMArts, Human Resources, and LACE.