Even as a little girl, I wanted to be a crone.

I dreamed of turning into a medicine woman with an overflowing garden of secret remedies. I’d swath myself in whatever draped fabric I could find, press lamb’s ears leaves reverently against my injured dolls, tuck seeds into the pockets to ward against cold and flu.

One summer we steeped herbs in beeswax and oil. That tin of salve became my most cherished possession until I’d used the last dregs on mosquito bites — and even then, I held on to the little white plastic jar, just to smell the fragrance left behind.

The stories I loved most — still love — were always those of the women who know things. Leah and Rachel, dipping into pouches of sumac and dried pomegranate, bracing laboring hands on the bricks; Lark and Rosethorn, weaving magic by loom and by trellis; the Practical Magic aunts, giving each other knowing looks over someone begging for a spell in their kitchen.

I wanted to live by the sea and open a little clinic in my home, with a creaking screen door that led in from the garden, overrun with snap peas and buckets of mint and red raspberry leaf bushes.

I still do.

All the best kinds of relational and changemaking work happen around the kitchen table with a cup of tea (or a batch of midnight margaritas), don’t they?

the bulletin board

• 📬 We’re in the midst of a tech migration — please excuse the dust! Check your spam folders, move this out of the Promotions tab, and drop me a note to say “received,” so I know our digital postal service hasn’t gone too far astray. Let me know if you run into any broken links or other technical difficulties.

• 🎙️ I had the chance to talk about moral injury during COVID and an ethic of leadership with Rachel Alexandria on her podcast Lonely at the Top. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 🍁 Summer isn’t even remotely close to over (no rushing through the languid ocean days here!), but I am booking out organizational work for the fall. If your team is planning a Q4 senior leadership offsite or board retreat and you want an agenda that’s spacious, caring, and changemaking — a day for dreaming a better world around our kitchen table — now is the time to get on my calendar.

the medicine cabinet

• Nicole Cloutier introduced me to Brevity Magazine and I’m immediately obsessed. This piece — a flash nonfiction essay set in the NICU — took my breath away. I’ll be reading through the archives late into the night.

• I’m late to the pop culture moment, as usual, but I’ve been recovering from my hospital caregiving stint by binge-watching The Pitt — it’s brilliant, I’m obsessed, it’s got me researching clinical degrees again (oops). Pair with Stephanie Tillman’s analysis of consent, pelvic exams, and the SANE forensic rape kit done in season two.

• Recently published (or soon to be published!) books about changemaking, care labor, and social practice on my radar these days: Madison Murphy Barney’s Our Ancestors Want Us to Be Mushrooms, published last week; M. K. Thekkumkattil’s The Sexuality of Care, out last month; and Catherine LaSota’s forthcoming Practicing in Public, now available for preorder. What’s on your late summer reading list?