Becoming the Medicine

You don’t have to carry the torch. You are the fire.

There’s a quiet turning inside me.

A sense that something I’ve done for years — something that’s lived in my bones — is asking to shift.

Painting by Susan Seddon Boulet

I was raised in a family of proud, passionate liberals.

My parents stood against McCarthy. They marched against war. They believed in justice, and they passed that fire on to me.

And I carried it forward — protesting, organizing, writing, calling.

Always carrying the torch. Always ready for the next battle.

But lately, I feel… tired.

Not just body-tired. Soul-tired.

And in that tiredness, something surprising is beginning to speak.

A whisper I’ve heard before — in prayer, in the garden, in the sacred stillness of early morning:

It’s time to become the medicine.

You see, I’ve spent my life walking between worlds.

Yes, I was raised among activists — and I’ve stood in protest lines, raised my voice, and refused to look away. But I’ve also spent decades leading in the public sphere.

I served as president of my family’s business for many years.

I worked inside some of the most respected nonprofits in my city — in boardrooms and ballrooms, shaping strategy and building relationships that mattered.

And at the very same time, I was training in the sacred ways of healing.

Practicing energy work. Learning the language of plants.

Sitting in ceremony. Listening to the quiet voices of the earth.

I began visiting Native reservations when I was a child. It was one of the most profound gifts my parents gave me — an early exposure to medicine ways, reverence for the land, and a sense that healing is a form of relationship.

For years, I moved between these two worlds — the visible and the mystical, the strategic and the sacred. And now, at this point in my life, I no longer want to choose between them.

Because what I’ve come to understand is this:

The most meaningful work we do happens at the meeting point of both.

Where leadership becomes love.

Where structure holds soul.

Where healing meets strategy.

Where food becomes prayer.

I still go to protests. But I don’t carry the signs anymore.

I don’t chant. I don’t shout.

I just stand. I witness. I hold space in the way I know how.

I’m not drawn to outrage right now.

I’m drawn to nourishment.

To the garden. To the kitchen. To the quiet medicine of growing real food — whole food — the kind the body recognizes and knows what to do with.

I want to teach people to tend the soil the way they tend their nervous systems.

To understand that food isn’t just fuel — it’s remembrance. It’s ritual. It’s medicine.

I want to gather women and remind them of what they already know:

That healing starts in the broth, in the roots, in the breath.

That the rhythms of the body are not broken — they are seasonal.

That there’s wisdom in rest and rebellion in joy.

We don’t just need louder voices right now.

We need steady ones. We need rooted ones.

We need medicine.

If you’re feeling this way too — tired, overwhelmed, questioning the path — I want you to know:

You’re not giving up.

You’re evolving.

You’re letting your activism take on a new shape — one that honors your season, your gifts, and your soul.

We don’t need to fight in the old ways forever.

Sometimes we need to become the ones who teach others how to rest, how to rise, and how to come home to themselves.

Sometimes the next revolution is ritual.

Sometimes the deepest protest is presence.

And sometimes the most powerful thing you can become…

Is the medicine.

With affection always,

Beth