I observed my own giddy state while gathering herbs & flowers from my newly curated apothecary, to prepare a love oil on this new moon. I have been excited & fascinated by the idea of potions, spells and herbal remedies and elixers since I was a kid and this moment brought me back to the woods of my childhood, mixing potions from leaves and marsh water with my girlfriends, enchanted by the idea that nature held answers and spells. And now, I’ve relocated back to where I first experimented  decades ago and after years of transition, deep soul excavation, and walking through some of the darkest corridors of identity and…

When I arrived at the final destination of a ten-month sojourn—set in motion after leaving a lucrative career and New York City, my home of 22 years—I found myself on an organic homestead in Selçuk, Turkey, owned by a mother and daughter. I was dealing with a tangle of symptoms that felt extreme for my usually healthy self. After months of travel without healthcare or routine—peppered with a bout of dengue fever, food poisoning, an identity crisis, and my 40th trip around the sun—I knew it was almost time to return home and begin the daunting process of untangling the root cause(s) so I could truly begin to heal. Among…