DANDELION COLLABORATIVE
Our Mission
The mission of Dandelion Collaborative is to support simple, sustainable living and healing. With personal coaching, community education, and herbal medicine support, DColl aims to build a just, kind, and healthy community that values social justice and equity, liberated healing systems, and traditional holistic wisdom.
Collaborative
adjective
[kəˈlæbərətɪv]
involving two or more people or organizations working together for a particular purpose
[from Cambridge Dictionary]
I'm going to let you in on a little secret: The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is NOT "42." (Sorry! Also, props to anyone who gets the reference - let's be friends!) The meaning of life is actually found in cultivating meaningful relationships and experiences.
While true in personal life, I would argue that this philosophy is more poignant in civic engagement. It truly does take a village -- it takes a network of hard-working, like-minded, mission-driven people to build a strong community founded in reciprocity and restorative practice.
No one out there can do it all by themself. I mean, seems simple enough, right? We're here to lift each other up and help each other thrive. If not, then what's the point?
Why Dandelion, though?
Dandelion is a mighty little plant, commonplace but miraculous. It can grow in places where nothing should grow - between cracks in the sidewalk, along polluted highways, and throughout yards and prairies where it is continuously mowed over. A weed, some say. But did you know the entire plant, from the root to the flower, is edible and medicinal? It is among the first food sources for pollinators in the spring. Even its seeds offer a magical, whimsical joy. Dandelion does nothing but grow and give and persevere. A wildflower, not a weed. A gift. Roasted Dandelion Root was my first herb. A desperate attempt to ease the symptoms of a chronic condition opened the door for me to a new world - not just herbal medicine, but deep medicine. Soul medicine. Social medicine. Injustice and politics and rewritten history. Unwritten history. Ancestry. Spirituality. And, of course, connection and collaboration. Dandelion is a lifestyle. So cheers to Dandelion, sunshine of the earth.
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Amy (she/they) is an educator, an ally, a speaker, an activist, an herbalist, a performer, and a lifelong learner.
Amy came to holistic and herbal medicine instinctually as a response to her own chronic health issues, and over the span of more than a decade they have continued to learn and grow their capacity as a healer, herbalist, and educator. Amy's identity as a queer, neurodivergent, psychiatrically disabled Latine woman informs her study and practice entirely.
Their health and herbal education is rooted deeply in cultural and experiential learning, including Wild Medicine Ways with Hannah Schiller, FitoSofía (Wise Green Boricua Medicine) with Maria Benedetti, and Caribbean Medicine Making with Brandon Ruiz, She holds a certificate in Holistic and Integrative Health from Allegra. Amy continues to expand her understanding of holism and health with certificate programs in Nutrition and Healthy Living via Cornell University, as well as Global Healing Systems through Allegra.
Through a lens of health sovereignty, liberation, cooperative community building, ethnobotany, and environmental sustainability, Amy is building Dandelion Collaborative with the intent of making decolonized folk medicine accessible.
Amy lives, forages, and creates with gratitude and care on Muheconneok and Haudenosaunee ancestral lands.