Cut to two years ago. I was working as a nurse advocate for women with chronic UTIs and vaginal infections. I was having the same conversation over and over about opportunistic bacteria that found their way into my patients’ urinary tracts and refused to leave. The pattern was almost always the same: painful and disruptive symptoms, a doctor’s consultation, testing to confirm the infection, antibiotics, relief for a few weeks or months, and then the symptoms returned. For some of these women, that cycle had been repeating for decades.
At the same time, I was caught in a cycle of my own, just a different version. Chronic hives on my face. A gut that reacted to nearly everything. Anxious stretches that appeared cyclically, seemingly tied to my hormones. I was supposed to be the one advocating for these women, but I was also stuck fighting a body that was speaking so loudly.
So I started to explore: How do we heal? Not just emotionally or metaphorically, but tangibly. How does a body turn away from being consumed and back toward repairing itself?
The tools Western medicine offered for my current flare were prescriptions: antibiotics and steroids. Both are genuinely useful in the right circumstances and potentially harmful in the wrong ones.
At that point in my nursing career, I was thinking about the bladder and vaginal microbiomes every day. I was researching why recurrent infections happen and trying to find answers for the patients I was supporting. Antibiotics could be remarkably effective at clearing an infection, but when inappropriately prescribed could disrupt beneficial organisms living alongside the bacteria causing harm. In a vulnerable microbiome, that disruption could leave room for opportunistic organisms to grow again - especially in a body already navigating chronic illness, prolonged stress, or changes in immune function.
Yet I had been prescribed antibiotics without ever being tested for a bacterial infection. My skin wasn’t even behaving like bacterial acne. It was what the dermatologist I saw had been trained to reach for first.
So I had to begin exploring for myself, a reality those of you living with chronic health concerns may know well.
By then, I knew the pattern of my flares. Hot, itchy, raw bumps would begin as welts and build, one by one, into full-fledged hives. I had tried nearly every sensitive-skin product on the market, and everything burned and inflamed my skin further.
I went back to basics. What actually causes hives? A release of histamine. I didn’t yet know what was triggering mine, but I could begin learning about the processes involved in regulating and clearing histamine—and what might help my body perform that work.
This is where my love of plants became something more than beautiful home decor or a nice salad to eat. I began studying calendula, chamomile, and oatstraw, looking closely at their traditional uses and what modern research could tell me about their compounds. I learned about plants long used to care for irritated tissue, support digestion, calm inflammatory processes, and tend to the nervous system.
Plants stopped being ornamental to me. They became living, relational beings—and an entire library of ways to support the body’s work of mending.
Without realizing it, I had found what I was looking for. Not a way to overpower my body, but a way to work alongside it.
And as I began cultivating a more flourishing environment inside myself, one started blooming outside, too. You should see how different my actual garden looks compared with two years ago.
She is full, let me tell you.
With much warmth,
Bethany
Tell your plants I say hi. 🌿
