What's New in the Community: Spring/Summer 2025

By Lynda Gronlund

This ongoing column features upcoming events within Ann Arbor/Washtenaw County and surrounding areas’ Body/Mind/Spirit communities, new (during the past year or two) practitioners and holistic businesses, new books written by local/regional authors, new classes, as well as new offerings by established practitioners and holistic businesses.

New Practitioners and Businesses

Artist and Ann Arbor native Marcy Marchello started working on her Natural Ann Arbor Map in 2017 as a side project, working on it in spurts as she traveled home to visit her family several times a year from Massachusetts where she now lives.

Over a period of eight years, the hand-drawn map became an incredibly detailed illustration of the area’s natural history from the time of mammoths and mastodons up until the present. The map is now on display and prints are available for sale at Found Gallery and at Parrish Framing, both in downtown Ann Arbor. The original map is featured in the exhibit “Along the Waterways of Washtenaw County,” at the Washtenaw County Historical Society on Main Street. The exhibit runs through August 31. The map is also part of the Ann Arbor District Library’s Ann Arbor 200 project, consisting of 200 digital content releases related to the city’s history, celebrating the city’s bicentennial year..

Marchello grew up in Dixboro, just northeast of the city of Ann Arbor. Her parents both graduated from the University of Michigan School of Art which is where she began her postsecondary education. She later studied for two years through the National Audubon Expedition Institute, a travelling art program, and eventually earned a BS in environmental education from Lesley College (now University) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is now an adaptive outdoor recreation manager for Massachusetts State Parks. Before she started her full-time career, she had a custom mapmaking business, which she had to let go.

This project was a way of reclaiming that dream. Because she was visiting Ann Arbor regularly and exploring its parks and natural areas, she felt she had an opportunity to create something unique and interesting to the community. She said it “felt like something trying to be born.” As she worked on the map, and became more invested in the project, she learned more than she ever had while growing up here. She consulted some experts in the area’s natural attributes and history, including Becky Hand at the city’s Natural Area Preservation, Bev Willis and John Kilar at the Washtenaw County Historical Society, Dave Szczygiel, an environmental education consultant for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, Andrew MacLaren at the Ann Arbor District Library, and Paul Steen and Anita Daly at the Huron River Watershed Council. She also drew on sources like the Michigan State University’s Natural Features Inventory, which contains information from detailed land surveys from the 1800s.

“Part of the fun,” she said, “was figuring out how to show something as simple as the changes in the river,” which was reshaped by dams as Ann Arbor grew. She learned that some of the present roads of the city began centuries ago as animal paths, then made into trails by Native Americans. The map is full of illustrations of animals, plants, and birds that live or lived in the area, information about waterways and habitats and even about invasive species, and history of the people who have lived here. She said “I believe in understanding the place you are. Not just the scenery, or a backdrop for human life…. I have a lot of awe and respect…. I hope that people will gain some of that.” She views the map as “an educational tool and a treasure map,” which she hopes will inspire people to look around and see the town with new eyes.

She worked on the map in spare moments, drawing and redrawing and rearranging every part multiple times. Last summer, she began to add color, a process which took two to three months. It was finally ready for printing in late 2024. “You can look at this [map] many times and see something new each time,” she said.

Marcy Marchello can be reached by email at marcymarchello@gmail.com. Prints of the Natural Ann Arbor Map can be purchased at her Etsy shop: Ferncliffstudio.etsy.com or at Found Gallery or Parrish Framing. It can be viewed online at the Ann Arbor District Library’s Ann Arbor 200 site: aadl.org/naturalannarbor.

Diane Ratkovich is introducing her new program, Stable Wisdom Family Coaching, this year.

Based on her 15-acre horse farm in Dexter, she is offering individual meetings and a variety of classes for families with adolescents who want to improve their communication and connection. Ratkovich holds a master’s degree in human development, is certified in equine facilitated learning from two programs: Eponaquest in Arizona and Spirit of Leadership in Ohio. She is certified in mediation through Mediation Training and Consulting Michigan and has worked for 25 years with children and families. Now retired, she is excited to begin a new journey of service. Her daughter, Jayne Bailey, is a horse trainer who graduated from Michigan State University in horse management.

Bailey runs her own horse training business and also enjoys working with youth. Ratkovich said that Bailey has a strong intuition that connects her with both horses and children. Both volunteer with Detroit Horse Power, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization teaching Detroit students to ride and care for horses to develop skills that set them up for success in school, work, and life.

Stable Wisdom Family Coaching incorporates nature, music, meditation, movement, journaling, art, and horses to help parents and adolescents improve their family lives. This work can help families improve communication, resolve conflict, solve problems, enhance connection, and be fun for all family members. Emphasis is placed on developing self-compassion and compassion for others while setting boundaries and deepening trust.

Ratkovich and Bailey have lived at the current farm for seven years. It has an outdoor arena for Bailey’s horse training business and plenty of room for the Stable Wisdom program. In individual family meetings, Ratkovich guides families in interacting with the horses, journaling, movement and more, while helping the family identify what issues are creating difficulties and mediates while family members make agreements between themselves. This work can be helpful for any family with tweens and teens, including but not limited to those experiencing behavioral issues. She describes it as “not therapy, but more like problem solving, while also having fun.”

“Families are so pressured they don’t have fun with their kids anymore,” she said. It also takes pressure off of parents to have someone else be in charge for a time, allowing them to enjoy the time with their families.

Stable Wisdom Family Coaching is located at 11400 North Territorial, Dexter, MI 48130. More information is online at stablewisdom.net. Diane Ratkovich can be reached by phone at 734-845-542 or by email at connect@stablewisdom.net.

Manya Arond-Thomas M.D. is returning to Ann Arbor after a 12-year retirement in Ecuador and will be offering her services to the community as an Enneagram-informed coach, counselor, and teacher.

She has been in the field of personal development for 50 years as an energy healer, massage therapist, a counselor and psychiatrist, and as an executive leadership coach. She first learned about the Enneagram, a personality theory which classifies people into nine types based on how they relate to the world, in 1974, but didn’t become a serious student of it until 2014, after a major life crisis. In 2021 she began a three-year intensive study culminating in Enneagram teacher certification in September of 2023.

In describing the Enneagram, she wrote, “The Enneagram provides a brilliant and precise map to navigate our inner world and to discover the essence of our true nature and best self. This is where our deepest potential lies. More than just a typology of nine personality types, the map gives a process of transformation and self-actualization for each type. It is the only tool (of all the many assessments available) that integrates psychological development (gaining increasing clarity while reducing reactivity) and spiritual growth and maturing of the soul.”

Arond-Thomas said that she has seen Enneagram-informed coaching help some people understand their children better, help one woman leave an abusive marriage and start a new life, and help others “jumpstart” their growth, healing, and ability to live more consciously. She wrote, “While this tool for transformation illuminates your gifts and provides a framework for our personal and spiritual evolution, it also reveals how we’re often held back by the shadow side of our personality—our own deeply rooted, unconscious patterns that are hard to see.” She said that the Enneagram has almost unlimited applications, including use in schools, prisons, leadership and team development. It offers ways to understand differences in communication styles, leadership styles, and to resolve conflict.

Arond-Thomas offers Enneagram-informed coaching and counseling for individuals and couples, as well as Enneagram classes. She also works with leaders and teams in business settings. She will offer an introductory class titled The Enneagram: A Path to Liberation in June, with dates and location to be announced.

Manya Arond-Thomas can be reached via email at Globalmagic1@gmail.com or by phone or Whatsapp at (954)789-4052. Her website is manyaarondthomas.com.

In February, Toni Dallas opened an Ypsilanti office for Modern Shaman, her plant-based wellness brand offering wellness coaching, an herbal apothecary, functional mushrooms, and native medicinal landscape consultations.

Dallas is an herbalist trained under local Master herbalist Jim McDonald in his ten-month Lindera intensive in energetic folk herbalism. She is also Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) certified for wild mushroom identification, and has done additional training in various foraging, wildcrafting, and related topics through the Michigan Folk School.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Dallas worked in supply chain technology sales and consulting in food, drugs, and supplements for over ten years. She had realized that food, spices, and supplements imported from other countries, and even from the United States were in many cases “very compromised.” Since supplements are not regulated by the FDA, she explained, they are even more likely than food or drugs to contain contaminants from sawdust to heavy metals to rat feces. At the same time, especially with the supply chain chaos of the pandemic, she saw that things were being imported from far away at great cost when they are grown right here in Michigan. Global shortages, tariffs, and trade issues, she said, would be negated if we had a simpler, more local supply chain. Community-based food and medicine sourcing seemed to her to be a much better way. “I got fed up with the impact of large and complex supply chains and wanted to do something for my family and community by providing my own ‘farm-to-farmacy’ experience,” she said.

Around the time she left her corporate job in 2020, she moved with her husband and children to a five-acre property in Superior Township where they started work to replace one and a half acres of manicured lawn with Michigan native pollinator-friendly plants and medicinal herbs. They removed another two acres of invasive plants from a forested area and replaced them with native plants appropriate to the area. She began experimenting with wildcrafting and cultivation, inoculating the property with various functional mushroom spawn and introducing more medicinal plants. In late 2022 she formed an LLC and began offering wildcrafted products, functional mushrooms, and advice around herbal medicines at first to friends and neighbors and branching out as she made connections.

Functional mushrooms, Dallas said, tend to have an adaptogenic effect, bringing body systems back into equilibrium. She has wildcrafted Ganoderma (Reishi) and Turkey Tail, and she is cultivating Stropharia rugosoannulata (Winecap or Garden Giant mushrooms), which she said are native to this area and which remove heavy metals, biotoxins, and other contaminants from soil, leaving behind clean compost. They are gregarious growers, she said, and also a delicious renewable food source, containing high amounts of protein and vitamin D.

Dallas has done work as a sustainability project manager for the Rudloph Steiner Lower School of Ann Arbor where her children attend. There she designed and managed installation of a food forest, mushroom beds, and medicinal herb spiral on campus. She has done similar projects for private residences. She has also led a nature-based play group called Tree Town Tots, taking children on foraging adventures where they learn land literacy, plant and mushroom identification, and develop a reverence for nature. She is associated with a consortium of practitioners including MDs, Dos, LMSWs and alternative wellness providers, offering various mind, body, and spiritual wellness services. Through cooperation and referrals, they are able to offer holistic customized wellness plans with mind/body/spirit and earth balance in mind. “My aim is to connect clients with the right resources to achieve their wellness objectives, always with a tie to nature and spirituality.”

The Modern Shaman office is located at 876 Grove Street., Ypsilanti, MI 48197. Office hours are by appointment, seven days a week. Toni Dallas can be reached by email at toni.m.dallas@gmail.com and more information is available on her website, modernshaman.net.

New Books by Area Authors

Local husband and wife psychiatric doctors Simran and Mansi Chawa recently published their coauthored book: English Explanation of Sikh Holy Scriptures Japji Sahib: A guide to understanding Japji Sahib.

The Chawas are members of the Sikh faith, which is the fifth largest religion in the world. Guru Nanak, the Indian spiritual teacher who lived in the 15th and 16th centuries, regarded as the founder of Sikhism and the first of ten Sikh gurus, wrote a body of hymns, scriptures, and prayers and traveled the known world at the time spreading the message of the Oneness of all. His most famous composition, “Japji Sahib,” the song of the divine, is recited daily by Sikhs. Dr. Simran Chawa explained that in Japji Sahib, Guru Nanak “describes the spiritual journey step by step, sometimes addressing Yogis, sometimes singing the virtues of God in a state of ecstasy. He also walks us through the different psychological-spiritual realms that we progress through as we ascend on the inner path.”

“Sikh,” said Chawa, means student or disciple. Chawa was born into the Sikh faith here in Michigan and spends time mentoring Sikh youth. He wanted to really dig into the Japji Sahib, as something that Sikhs tend to recite almost mechanically as a formality, he said. The book is the result of his and his wife’s and parents’ explorations and reflections. Because it is in English, it is accessible to younger people and non-Sikhs. It explores the meaning of each paragraph and views it through the lens of questions we ask today, like ‘What is the meaning of life?’ and ‘Why was the world created?’ “Through it, we hope to make Guru Nanak’s path of enlightenment available to the general public,” Chawa said.

Drs. Simran and Mansi Chawa regularly post about Gurbani—the study of the Sikh scripture—on their Youtube channel, @gurbanimessage1504. They also have a Facebook page dedicated to the topic at facebook.com/gurbanimessageenglish/. They can be reached via email at mansiandsimran@gmail.com.

Local authors Helene Gidley and Thomas Meloche published their book, The Art of Agile Living: Conquer Procrastination, Hit Deadlines, Reduce Stress in May of 2024.

Agile Living is a project management approach which emphasizes adaptability, collaboration, and continuous improvement. It started in the IT field and was codified in The Agile Manifesto in 2001, quickly spreading to many other industries. Gidley and Meloche met when Gidley took a class from Meloche about using Agile techniques. She was subsequently downsized from her job at Pfizer and joined Meloche’s company, Menlo Innovations. Meloche then moved to Texas for a few years. When he returned, he and Gidley reconnected. She pitched a collaboration to him, showing him how she had applied Agile concepts to manage her work and time. Meloche suggested they write a book together. They proceeded to write the book, originally publishing in a digital format, followed by a printed version last year.

The book focuses on key executive functioning skills: breaking down projects into bite sized pieces; estimating the time each of these pieces will take; establishing a daily schedule with time for study, exercise, socializing, and sleep. It also includes developing a plan to avoid distractions of social media and technology. Mastering these kinds of skills, Gidley explained, helps students and adults to maintain a healthy, positive self-image and succeed in school and work. Further, the strategies empower readers to reduce overwhelm, increase focus, and embrace adaptability with grace.

Meloche and Gidley have also formed a business together, offering classes and coaching in the Art of Agile Living techniques and their applications for people in their personal and professional lives, reducing stress and procrastination with which so many struggle.

On Thursday, July 17, they will host a book signing and workshop called,, “There’s a Book in You, Let’s Get it Out.” The workshop is designed to “transform [participants] from passive listener to active contributor,” and “spotlight the significance of storytelling in the Agile community.” Practical advice will be offered on getting started and overcoming common obstacles like writer’s block and time constraints. An interactive portion will allow attendees to brainstorm and outline potential topics, fostering a collaborative atmosphere for idea exchange and development.

The workshop will be hosted at Gidley and Meloche’s office at 455 East Eisenhower Parkway, Suite 300, Ann Arbor, MI 48108. The office is open by appointment. Helene Gidley can be reached at Helene@A2Agile.com, and Thomas Meloche can be reached at tom@a2agile.com. More information is on their website at A2Agile.com.

Sharon Diotte, who lives in Ann Arbor, published her book Te’Ora: From Vulnerability and Wounding to Wisdom and Freedom in September of 2024.

The Rapa Nui word “Te’ora” means “a beautiful new life.” The book is a memoir that reads like a novel, telling the story of Diotte’s wide-ranging life in Canada, the United States, Pakistan, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and her journey of healing and building a new, thriving, beautiful life after terrible trauma caused by domestic violence, rape, and living in a patriarchal, misogynistic society.

Diotte said that she began working on the book in her 50s but was not ready at that time to write about her trauma, though she was writing a daily log that would eventually help her put together the story of her life. She wanted to be able to write from a place of having healed more and lived more in order for her story to feel more inspirational. The Covid-19 lockdown was a great impetus for her to finally write her story and to navigate the emotional energies generated by the writing. She is now 76 years old. She said that she has had a lot of therapy over the years and has been diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). She said, “PTSD doesn’t mean that something is wrong with us or we’re weak; it means we are strong.” She wrote her story in part to share with other women who have experienced violence and abuse at the hands of men they loved. She wanted to support them into seeing their own strengths and path to healing.

Diotte worked as a nurse, and she observed that, “people don’t heal if they only address chemical modules of care. Mind and spirit need to be included for healing.” Part of her healing was looking deeply into her spiritual path, especially exploring the divine feminine. She explained that this allowed her to heal by deeply knowing that women are important, strong, and have purpose. This journey culminated in her writing this book.

Publishing her story was difficult, as she struggled with shame about what had happened to her and anxiety about what people in her life would think. But, she said, “we all have our sacred marching orders.” It felt very heavy, and she felt very vulnerable. She said she, “wrote it like I was walking hip-deep through mud.” In finally getting it written, she said, “I felt like I could step back and see my life like a mural. It was all interwoven with all the beautiful things that had happened, too. Then you see that your life really is meaningful and has purpose and every person is necessary.” She credited age, therapy, and wonderful friends and family with making her finally ready to write and share this story.

She is grateful to have received a lot of support and appreciation from people she knows and others. Her children are in support of her and have praised her for her strength. One woman said she was glad it wasn’t simply a man-bashing story. Diotte said she has a beautiful husband and son and that she knows men are beautiful. She has received messages from friends and family and others, acknowledging her strength. She said that she wants this story to be encouraging—to be about not only healing and getting past what happened, but truly thriving and creating one’s own beautiful new life.

Sharon Diotte’s website is SharonDiotte.com. She can be reached via email at Teoramemoire@gmail.com. Te’Ora: From Vulnerability and Wounding to Wisdom and Freedom is available at local libraries as a Kindle e-book and at the Crazy Wisdom Bookstore.

Author Dianna Rhyan, PhD, LPCC, published her most recent book Mestra the Shapeshifter: Ancient Heroine of the Sacred Grove as part of Moon Books’ Pagan Portals series in late 2024.

Rhyan is a therapist and mythologist who has studied nature goddesses, languages, and the spirituality of sacred landscapes

throughout her career in academia. She fell in love with mythology and goddesses in the third grade, she said, and has maintained this passion all her life. As a college professor she has taught courses on various goddesses and heroines, including one on Helen of Troy who she described as “very misunderstood” and another on Penelope, queen of Ithaca in the Odyssey, who outwitted one hundred and eight suitors to stay faithful to her long-absent husband Odysseus.

This book focuses on the myth of Mestra the shapeshifter, a little-known heroine about whom only fragments of the story survive. Repeatedly sold by her father for her bride-price, she used her shapeshifting ability to escape her marriages and return home in the shape of beasts. Rhyan invites modern readers to journey with Mestra, exploring transformation, creativity, cycles of change, and the pull and power of nature and elemental forces. Journaling questions are provided at the end of the book, and Rhyan suggests sitting in nature to contemplate them—perhaps even finding a sacred grove or other special place as Mestra did to journey spiritually in a chosen sacred place.

Rhyan is also the author of Staff of Laurel, Staff of Ash: Sacred Landscape in Ancient Nature Myth, also from Moon Books. She lives in Ohio but frequents the Ann Arbor area, where her son lives and works. “I am an author who wanders in, writes about, and cherishes the green spaces of Ann Arbor,” she said. She said that she is excited to “bring these voices that are fading from the world alive again.”

Join Dianna Rhyan at Crazy Wisdom on Wednesday, May 28 for an author event. More information on Rhyan and her books is available at staffoflaurel.com. She can be reached by email at staffoflaurel@gmail.com.

Former psychotherapist-turned-intuitive business coach and author, Tal Shai published the Inner Child Soul Movement Cards in the spring of 2025.

They are an oracle deck that is designed to “deepen your connection with overlooked aspects of your younger self, fostering self-awareness and healing.” Shai holds an M.A. in counseling psychology with a specialization in spiritual psychology and has over thirty years of experience in the psycho-spiritual development field. She is the founder of the Soul Movement Method, a “somatic-based, trauma-informed methodology” which helps to “reveal hidden blocks, clear ancestral entanglements, and resolve root-cause issues… optimizing success in relationships, business, and life.” Shai has created several oracle decks in her Soul Movement Cards line, but this is only her seconddeck that is available as physically printed cards. Others, such as the Inner Soul Home, Twin Flame, Mystic Hag, and Heal the Root, are available in a digital format.

Shai uses the cards in coordination with the Soul Movement Method to help her business coaching clients, including small business owners, project managers, and CEOs of large companies. She also trains coaches, therapists, and healing practitioners in the Soul Movement Method to integrate the system into their practices for their clients’ and their own transformational work. The cards, she said, can be helpful tools to facilitate the exploration and understanding of soul-centered concepts, and assist with introspection, healing, and psycho-spiritual development. They can be used by professionals for client work, as well as by “anyone on a journey of self-discovery.”

Shai said that she has incorporated inner child work into her psycho-spiritual practice for almost 25 years. “Our childhood experiences shape us in ways that run deep, and much of my work is about reconnecting with these younger parts of ourselves for healing and integration.” The Inner Child deck helps to “bridge the gap between the wisdom of the child within and the mature strength of the adult you have become,” she explained. She imagines the inner child speaking directly to the adult self through the cards’ messages, “revealing what it needs to feel safe, whole, and integrated.”

The Inner Child Soul Movement Cards are available at the Crazy Wisdom Bookstore or can be purchased online at SoulMovementCards.com. More information about them and about Tal Shai is available at talshai.com, and she can be reached via email at SoulMovementMethod@gmail.com.

New Offerings by Established Businesses and Practitioners

As part of the Ann Arbor District Library’s Ann Arbor 200 project celebrating the city’s bicentennial, local composer Sarah Tea released “Fifth Wall,” a soundtrack for the historic Michigan Theater.

The digital soundtrack is available virtually, allowing listeners to explore the 1927 building while experiencing the music. A map of the theater with a suggested path for the soundtrack is included on the library’s permanent web page for the piece. Tea talked about growing up in the 1980s, when many movie theaters built in the 1930s were neglected or carelessly updated by destroying the original ornate decoration with layers of paint, neon signs, and ugly carpets. Today, some of these theaters have been restored to their original architectural and decorative grandeur including Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater. In this project, Tea invites listeners to appreciate the theater for itself as an architectural work of art and a place of rich history. It has housed many performances and soundtracks, but this soundtrack is its own.

Tea said “at its core, this project is about pausing. It’s about reflecting on the individuals and the hard work that goes into creating spaces like this in our community. With this soundtrack, we’re breaking the ‘Fifth Wall’—bridging the gap between creators, caretakers, performers, and audiences.” She added that much of the time, people don’t feel they have permission, or a reason, to pause and appreciate a place and take in the full experience. This soundtrack is “a permission slip to really take time with the theater and the space in a new way.”

The piece was composed and recorded digitally, with a mixture of synthesizers, audio samples from the interior space of objects within the Michigan Theater, and samples from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which were made available to musicians during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown so that they could continue creating and recording. Tea said that she would love for the piece to be played live, but funding would need to be obtained to make this possible.

Tea is chronically ill, and the ability to use digital programs and samples for composing has been very valuable to her. Other songs and projects she’s done have incorporated a mix of live musicians and digital/orchestral samples as well. Her recent work Resonant Soundscapes used the downtown Ann Arbor belltower carillon mixed with organ and electronics to “emphasize the meaningful resonances that emerge between people and the spaces they occupy.”

She is also an advocate for women in and around music, including sharing resources, access to education, and removing gatekeeping in an industry that is not always welcoming. She is part of a collective creative studio and record label of chronically ill artists and makers called Magic Guts Collective, with artists in Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, and New York City. Her work encompasses elements of experimental, ambient, drone, and contemporary music. She also has a band that uses elements of neo-folk and neo-psychedelic music.

The permanent website for “Fifth Wall” through the Ann Arbor District Library is aadl.org/fifthwall. The Michigan Theater is located at 603 East Liberty Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Sara Tea can be reached via email at info@saratea.com and her website is saratea.com.

Local writer, healer, artist, and teacher Mary Ledvina finished advanced creativity coaching training with Eric Maisel in May and is accepting coaching clients.

“Creativity coaching is a way to get help and support on the challenges and concerns that are particular to being or wanting to be a creator,” she explained.

Ledvina considers herself a multi-creative with interests and experience in writing, visual arts, music, improvisation, and dance. She has been studying the creative process for over twenty years. As a healer, she uses many healing approaches for creativity aligning with the mind, body, and spirit. She is excited to help people create a regular writing or art practice, finish a project they have been stuck on, clear blocks, get clarity on what they want to do creatively, or reduce anxiety as they begin or continue to share their work. She can work with clients via email, phone, Zoom, or in person.

“Creativity can be really healing and really helpful,” she said. Creative endeavors can be done as a career, or for personal healing, as a form of self-care, to help with physical or mental illness, or a combination of any of these. Her goal for her clients is to have self-care and healing be a part of their creative practice, not just constant pushing to produce. It should include self-expression, fun, and play, she said. “A creative practice can help people lead more balanced lives and can also be very spiritual,” she explained. Working with people in this way comes very naturally to her, and she has been doing it for friends prior to having any formal training in it for a long time.

In addition to her new creativity coaching offering, Ledvina will lead two classes this summer. Her nature journaling class will take participants to the Matthei Botanical Gardens on Thursdays from 2 -4:00 p.m. May 8 through June 12. On Thursday May 29 she will teach a class on Plein Air Poetry which is poetry inspired by nature and written outdoors; She will also teach at Matthei Botanical Gardens from 6 - 8:00 p.m.

More information and class registration are available online at maryledvina.com. Mary Ledvina can be reached via email at mary@maryledvina.com.

Chelsea-based small-scale herb farmer, somatic practitioner, and local food advocate Emily Springfield is working on a new project: creating a collaborative of local small-scale medicinal herb farmers in order to increase access to high quality, locally grown herbs and provide income for those farmers and processors.

She is calling the project the Gathered Roots Herb Growers’ Guild. 2025 will be a year of exploration, experimentation, and vision casting as a group of around six farmers begin to test the concept. Springfield explained that ninety percent of medicinal herbs are grown abroad. With supply chains disrupted first by Covid-19 and now by potential tariffs and international relations disruptions, as well as run-of-the-mill weather and shipping delays, the availability of herbs can fluctuate wildly. In addition, the costs of shipping both monetarily and environmentally add up. With current uncertainty around Medicaid, the CDC, and other healthcare institutions, she feels that the need for alternative medicines will only increase in the near future.

Many medicinal herbs grow well here in Michigan, and for the tropical herbs that would not grow here, she explained, there are alternatives that have the same effects. However, very few people are growing them for sale. She said that there is only one herb farm in the state that she would consider “commercial sized,” and it is only farming one acre and is out of stock of many items frequently.

Access to land, she said, is not as much of a problem as she had originally thought, but there are other problems that do face would-be medicinal herb farmers.

One issue is that most people interested in growing herbs don’t want to farm full-time. Farming is difficult work that can be hard on the body, and profit margins are slim. Most people are doing it as a part time endeavor or retirement project. They want it to be sustainable for their physical, mental, and financial health. Said Springfield of her own herb-growing endeavors, “It’s nice additional income, but it’s never going to pay my mortgage.”

Another issue is that consumers want access to a large variety of small quantities of herbs, but it is difficult to grow a huge number of different plants on a given farm. Different plants grow well in different conditions: different levels of sun exposure and different types of soil. It is much easier to grow three or four kinds of herbs than 30, but potential customers generally don’t have the time or inclination to source each herb they need from separate farms. Hobbyists growing for their own use tend to hit a “weird spot where you’re growing way more than you can use in one year but it’s not enough to open a store or possibly even support one herbalist.”

Labor is also hard to come by. Harvesting and processing herbs—drying them, cutting them, crushing or powdering them, takes knowledge, skill, and physical effort, and the work is intermittent, dependent on growth cycles. Incorrect drying or processing can result in moldy, damaged, unsellable products. Equipment, like an undercutter, which makes the work of digging up roots much easier, is also expensive.

Finally, making others aware of the herbs one has for sale, and actually selling them, is also a lot of work. After all the labor of growing, harvesting, and preparing herbs for sale, a farmer may have to sell at farmer’s markets or shows, or figure out how to set up a website, market themselves online, package and ship, among other tasks.

All of these issues can be addressed, Springfield believes, with collaboration. Expensive equipment can be shared or rented between farms. A single website where multiple farms can list what they have for sale can help customers find what they need without individual farmers feeling they need to grow everything. People who are interested in earning income through harvesting and processing herbs can create more steady work by rotating through several farms. Farmers can communicate and grow whatever grows best on their properties. Marketing, shipping, and other tasks will cost less when several farms are sharing those costs.

This year, Springfield said she and a few other farmers in Chelsea, Ypsilanti, and nearby areas are going to attempt a test run of the concept. Each farm will grow and process a pound or two or three different items that grow well on their specific land. Together, they will sell what they grow at the Great Lakes Herb Faire in Chelsea in November. “This will let us test things at a moderate scale,” she said.

Anyone interested in getting involved with the Gathered Roots Herb Growers’ Guild may fill out an interest form at the website, gatheredrootsguild.com. People interested in learning to harvest and process herbs on other people’s land for income are especially invited to inquire. Emily Springfield can be reached via email at info@gatheredrootsguild.com.

This spring through early winter, artist and teacher Rocky Shadowbear Rains will lead Earth Church: outdoor workshop excursions in which participants learn to recognize liminal places in nature and work with land spirits.

These workshops will take place in metro parks, state parks, and national parks, inviting city dwellers to get outside, experience nature, and commune respectfully with nature spirits. One of the Earth Church events will be a “field trip” to the Serpent Mound in Ohio, a sacred earthwork resembling a huge snake made by the Adena or Fort Ancient culture of Native Americans at least 900 years ago. Rains said he wants to remind people that there are sacred spots close by, to teach them to approach them properly, and touch the power in those spots. He said that Earth Church is important to him because of the times we live in. “We need to reconnect with the living planet,” he said. “If we don’t take care of her, we are dooming ourselves.” He wants to make people more aware of the responsibility we have to this place, because right now there is no Planet B. “People say it’s too late,” he said. “I don’t think so, but we need to wake up.” Earth Church for May is scheduled for May 18 at Lower Huron Metropark at 11:00 a.m. More dates and locations are to be determined.

He will also facilitate a workshop called Art as a Spiritual Practice in which participants examine various spiritual traditions and create projects inspired by them. He had the idea at a paint and pour event he was invited to by a friend—to gather and make art or crafts together with others, but to put a spiritual aspect into it. He has taught classes on shamanism and druidism where participants create crafts like medicine bundles or crane bags from Celtic shamanism. These are both collections of power objects—mementos of powerful times in one’s life or things they may have found on a vision quest or walkabout. He teaches about putting these bags together and choosing objects to put in them. He has also helped people create maps and collages of otherworld travels, feather wands, corn husk dolls, and other crafts. Workshops are scheduled for June 22, June 29, August 25, September 14, and October 12. Times and locations are to be determined.

More details will be announced on Rocky Rains’ Facebook page at facebook.com/rocky.rains.9. Rocky Rains can be reached via email at rainsrocky4@gmail.com.

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