I just spent the past three days at the first annual South East Women’s Herbal Conference and I had a blast!! There were classes Friday, Saturday and Sunday about anything you can think of related to herbs! It was held at Camp Merri-mac, which is a beautiful camp set in woods ~15 minutes from Asheville. Susun Weed was the Keynote speaker, but I wasn’t as impressed with her as I was some of the other herbalist/speakers. I mean, she is very vibrant and fun to watch, but I could see all these people just drinking in what she was saying without even questioning it, just because she is Susun Weed, Goddess Herbalist. Like, ok, she talked about being a Wise Woman herbalist, and claims to have ‘discovered’ this tradition. Um, no, there have been shaman and granny herbalists for thousands of years! I am truly happy that she is helping to give herbalists a name and all, but she is not the founder of the wise-woman tradition. She says that being a wise woman is all about being flexible, being able to adapt to the situation, use your intuition and that there is no set of hard and fast rules. Yet, then she totally contradicted herself by saying that flower essences and essential oils are crap and should never be used by a good herbalist. (wait… isn’t that a rule??) Anyway, her talk was enjoyable for the most part. She is known for being a very wise herbalist but also a hard ass, and I could see both of those as she spoke. But, I did enjoy the talk.

I also went to talks by a local herbalist friend of mine, Lauren Connell, about Flower Essences, and a local midwife who discussed homeopathics. Then I heard talks on Menopause, the Endocrine System, and Winter Immune Strenthening given by Kathleen Maier, who is a very knowledgable herbalist and fantastic speaker! The highlight of the weekend, though, had to be the talks given by Sheri Winston, a reknowned “Certified Pussy Professional” and “Pelvic Priestess”. I took the class on Vaginal Ecology and the one called “Maps of the Clitoris” and I have to say they were awesome! Not only is she a very vibrant speaker, but it was just in-your-face stuff that we all should have been taught about ourselves when we got our first periods!

The food was fabulous (I think I gained a few pounds!). Friday night, there was a girls band called the Buckarettes, and Sat. night was Baraka Mundi a belly dancing troupe. I camped out and spent the whole weekend there, which was wonderful! It was also very hard, cause I missed K a lot! But, she and Toby did just fine and had some good bonding time!