🌿 Why I Started Making Tea Slowly — For Life Transitions & Nervous System Support

I started making tea slowly at a pivotal point in my life.

It was a threshold moment—one of those times between what was and what’s next.
Maybe you’ve been there: after a breakup, in a career shift, navigating grief, becoming a parent, or shedding an old version of yourself.
These transitional spaces—the in-between places—can feel disorienting. But they can also be sacred.

For me, fatigue, brain fog, irritability, and sleeplessness weren’t just symptoms—they were signals.
I wasn’t dying, I was changing. But there was no map for this kind of transformation.

So I began searching.

✨ A Returning

A friend at a training handed me a bundle of motherwort to support my nervous system, and that opened the door.

I found the work of Susun Weed and her apprentices from the ’70s.
I discovered María Benedetti, a half-Puerto Rican herbalist preserving the plant medicine traditions of Puerto Rico. I almost apprenticed with her—until a hurricane interrupted those plans.

Still, the seeds were planted.

I remembered my abuela sending me down rainforest roads with little herbal packages for blood pressure and wellness.
My father told me my grandfather did the same—mixing herbs for neighbors.
Later, I met a cousin through ancestry.com who told me our family was known for healing across Puerto Rico. He traced us back to Guayama, a town known as the City of the Witches.

It was a remembering.

Eventually, I began an herbal apprenticeship with Alex of Mindful Wilderness and Vulgaris Herbs.
We were a circle of five women, gathering from spring to winter.
We foraged, blended, and supported one another in ways that can’t be fully captured in words.

What stayed with me most?
Nourishing herbal infusions.

They didn’t just support my body.
They restored rhythm, helped me listen, and gave me a way to reconnect with the quiet wisdom I carry.
Nourishing herbal infusions.

These infusions didn’t just help my hormones—they supported my nervous system, my sense of rhythm, my reconnection to body-based wisdom.
I wasn’t managing symptoms—I was nourishing my entire being.

🌿 The Five Nourishing Herbal Infusions I Turn to Again and Again

1. Oatstraw
   Supports the nervous system, calms stress, and soothes frazzled edges. It’s the herb I reach for when I’m overworked, under-rested, or disconnected.

2. Linden Flower
   A heart-centered plant that soothes grief, tension, and heat. It’s a cooling, comforting ally for times of overwhelm or emotional tightness.

3. Red Clover
   Known for its gentle hormone-balancing properties, red clover is rich in phytoestrogens and can support perimenopausal and menopausal transitions.

4. Stinging Nettle
   A mineral-rich powerhouse. Nettle supports kidney function, stabilizes blood sugar, and deeply nourishes the blood. Strong, earthy, and revitalizing.

5. Comfrey
   A deeply healing and controversial herb—known for its tissue repair properties. Do your research, but I honor her for joint aches, muscle support, and resilience.

🌱 Note: These are whole dried herbs, not powders or tea bags.
You’ll want to source from reputable herbal suppliers. (I don’t share affiliate links for internal herbal ingestion due to ethical and regulatory reasons—but I’m happy to recommend sources off-site.)

🫖 How to Make a Nourishing Herbal Infusion

Before we get into the how-to, here are a few of the supportive tools I personally use in my own practice:

• Quart-Size Mason Jars – I prefer using wide-mouth glass jars for easy steeping and straining. These Ball Mason Jars are my go-to. (affiliate link)

• Funnel – This stainless steel wide-mouth funnel helps prevent spills and makes pouring infusions easy. (affiliate link)

• Mesh Strainer – I use this Cuisinart Fine Mesh Strainer Set to filter herbs after steeping. (affiliate link)

  Instructions:
  1 oz of dried herb (about 1 cup by volume)
  1 quart of boiling water

  Place the herb in a large mason jar or teapot. Pour the boiling water over. Cover and let steep for 4–8 hours or overnight.
  Strain and drink throughout the day.

  ✨ Bonus tip: Nettle can be a strong taste to adjust to—feel free to add a pinch of peppermint to ease into it.

  🌸 A Ritual for All Seasons

  Whether you’re in a hormonal shift, a spiritual one, or simply looking for softer rhythms in a hard world—this practice can hold you.
  Slowing down became my resistance. Tea became my ritual.

  These rituals aren’t just about wellness—they’re about remembrance.
  Of who we are. Of where we come from.
  Of the wise women who came before us and the ones we’re becoming.

  If this spoke to you, consider downloading the 10-Minute Ritual Reset Guide and begin crafting space for softness and sovereignty in your everyday life.

  With warmth,
  Catherine Dawn
  Birthing Dawn

Mothering Myself Through the Unknown

Mother’s Day brings more than celebration—it brings a quiet reckoning. A soft (or not-so-soft) stirring beneath the surface. For some, it’s a day of sweet joy. For others, it brings grief, longing, or reflection. For me, it’s all of it.

This year, I find myself not just honoring mothers—but learning to mother myself.

We often talk about the early phases of womanhood: the new mother, the threshold of birth, the rites of becoming.
But what no one talks about is what comes after. The unnamed space between roles. The shedding of an old self that no longer fits.

This season hit me like a wave. Brain fog. Sleepless nights. Unexpected emotion. A deep feeling of unraveling—and becoming. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t linear. And no one had prepared me for it.

The systems I turned to had few answers. But the plants, the stories, and the memory of my lineage offered something else: belonging.

🌿 Remembering the Lineage

I remembered my grandmother—sending me down rainforest roads in Puerto Rico with thermoses of medicinal teas for neighbors.
I remembered my father’s stories about my grandfather mixing herbal blends for the family.
I remembered my mother teaching me to pick spearmint from the backyard for tea when I had a stomachache—something I still do, whether from a garden bed or a bunch at the market.

Later, through a chance encounter on Ancestry, I met a cousin who said, “We come from a long line of healers. People used to travel to see our family in Guayama—the City of the Witches.”

It clicked: the ache in my body, the call to slow down, the pull toward ancestral practices.

I wasn’t unraveling—I was returning.

🤲 Becoming My Own Mother

So I began again.

I paused. I brewed tea. I sat in silence. I let emotion move through me like waves.

I stopped asking, “What’s wrong with me?”
And started asking, “What do I need today?”

Some days the answer was movement. Some days stillness. Often, it was nourishment—in the form of herbal infusions, breath, or permission to rest.

I mothered myself.

🫖 A Practice to Begin With

One of the first ways I began holding myself was by making tea slowly. That simple act opened everything else. The herbal steam rising from a mason jar became a prayer. The steeping became an act of care.

If you’d like to read the full story—and learn how to make your own nourishing infusion—start here:
👉 Why I Started Making Tea Slowly

📓 A Prompt for You

“How am I being called to mother myself right now?”
“What do I wish someone would do for me... and can I offer that to myself today?”

Take five minutes. Light a candle. Write it out. Speak it aloud.

💌 Want a Ritual to Begin With?

Download the 10-Minute Ritual Reset Guide—a free, gentle practice to reconnect you to your body, breath, and inner rhythm.

[Download the Free Guide →]

In reverence to all our becoming,
Catherine Dawn