| Susun S. Weed
Susun Weed has no official diplomas of any kind; she left high school in her junior year to pursue studies in mathematics and artificial intelligence at UCLA and she left college in her junior year to pursue life.
Susun began studying herbal medicine in 1965 when she was living in Manhattan while pregnant with her daughter, Justine Adelaide Swede.
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She wrote her first book -- Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year (now in its 29th printing)-- in 1985 and published it as the first title of Ash Tree Publishing in 1986. It was followed by Healing Wise (1989), New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way (1992 and revised in 2002), and Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way (1996).
In addition to her writing, Ms. Weed trains apprentices, oversees the work of more than 300 correspondence course students, coordinates the activities of the Wise Woman Center, and is a High Priestess of Dianic Wicca, a member of the Sisterhood of the Shields, and a Peace Elder.
Susun Weed is a contributor to the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women's Studies, peer- reviewed journals, and popular magazines, including a regular column in Sagewoman.
Her worldwide teaching schedule encompasses herbal medicine, ethnobotany, pharmacognosy, psychology of healing, ecoherbalism, nutrition, and women's health issues and her venues include medical schools, hospital wellness centers, breast cancer centers, midwifery schools, naturopathic colleges, and shamanic training centers, as well as many conferences.
Susun appears on many television and radio shows, including National Public Radio and NBC News.
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In Susun's Own Words:
Dedicated to the Wise Woman tradition, I help women to learn the oldest ways of healing - together we are rediscovering the green witch/healer in each of us.
My goal is to change how we think about health and healing. May we all reclaim herbal medicine as the simple, safe primary care it is; a gift of health from the green nations.
My primary ally, my teacher in all things is Nature: the Earth and her many companions. I live with the plants, and the weather, and my goats.
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I grow most of my own food, heat with wood, milk the goats twice a day. No radio, no recorded music, no TV, no newspaper intrudes on my day or interrupts my thoughts. I listen to the plants. I put their words into print. I publish their thoughts.
From March through November each year, I open my home to students, apprentices, and visiting teachers. Our workshops focus on the teachings of the Wise Woman Way, which nourishes wholeness through story, ceremony, and weeds. We have classes on herbal medicine, spirit healing, shamanic skills, priestess trainings, sacred sexuality, grief, chanting, and more.
Teachers from all over the world come to the Wise Woman Center, but the primary teacher is always Mother Nature, the Great Goddess. Each apprentice chooses a goddess archetype to live with during her stay, and she chooses a green ally -- one plant -- to work with for a year.
Part of their work is to herd the goats, which requires being alone in Nature for most of the day. I do my best to create for the apprentices the same situations that allowed me to hear the plants speaking, that opened my heart to the ways of Nature. We do trances, we chant, we listen to the plants.
I want my students to learn as I learned, not what I learned. I want them to find their own way and to trust their own intuition. This is the goal in my books, too. I am not telling women how to do it right -- because there is no one right way -- I am sharing all the ways there are to do it, so they can choose, so they have their own power.
Green Blessings,
Susun Weed
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