Why I Started Making Tea Slowly

I started making tea slowly at a pivotal point in my life. You see, I’m in the midst of a deep transformation—a time between motherhood and post-menopause that few people talk about, let alone honor. PERIMENOPAUSE…SAY IT LOUDER

Some women pass through this transition quietly. For many of us, though, it feels like the ground shifts underneath us. I call it the third puberty. The second one hits when you become a mother—flooded with hormones, identity shifts, and a total reorientation of the self. But the third? The third arrives with joint pain, fatigue, brain fog, irritability, flooding periods, insomnia, swelling, hot flashes... and silence.

There’s no ritual for it. No mainstream map. No celebration of crossing into Cronehood.

For a while, I truly thought I was dying. That’s how severe it was. And most doctors? They’re not trained in how to support women through this. Especially not BIPOC women. Especially not in systems where birth and menopause are marginalized instead of revered.

So I began searching.

A friend at a training handed me a bundle of motherwort for my cycle, and that opened the door. I found the work of Susun Weed and her apprentices from the ’70s. I learned about María Benedetti, a half-Puerto Rican herbalist who’s kept the indigenous plant medicine traditions of Puerto Rico alive. I almost traveled to her for an apprenticeship—until a hurricane interrupted those plans.

Still, the seeds were planted.

I remembered my abuela sending me down rainforest roads in Puerto Rico with little herbal packages for blood pressure or diabetes. My father told me my grandfather did the same—mixing herbs and kitchen remedies to heal 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—herself a former apprentice of Susun Weed and a dear friend. We were a circle of five women, gathering from spring to winter. We foraged, hiked, made ritual, and healed in ways that can’t be captured in words. One of the most impactful things I learned? 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.

Community is medicine. So I’m sharing with you the five foundational herbal infusions I turn to again and again:

🌿 The Five Nourishing Herbal Infusions

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)

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.

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.

In devotion and nourishment,
Catherine 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’s grief, longing, reflection. For me, it’s all of it.

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

We talk a lot about the early phases of womanhood: the maiden, the new mother, the wild initiations of birth. But what no one talks about is what comes after. The uncharted season between motherhood and Cronehood. What I call the third puberty.

This phase hit me like a wave. Brain fog. Joint pain. Insomnia. Rage I couldn’t name. And the deep feeling of shedding a skin I didn’t yet know I had outgrown. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t linear. And no one had prepared me.

Doctors had little to offer. Society offered even less. So I turned to the only places that had ever truly held me: herbs, ritual, and memory.

🌿 Remembering the Lineage

I remembered my grandmother—sending me down rainforest roads in Puerto Rico with thermoses of medicinal teas she had prepared for the neighbors. I remembered my father’s stories about my grandfather mixing herbal remedies in the kitchen to care for his wife and their eleven children. And I remembered my mother teaching me to snip spearmint from the backyard and boil it into tea when I had a stomachache—a ritual so dear to me that I still do it today, whether from the garden bed I once tended at the botanical garden or from a fresh bunch found at the farmer’s market.

Later, through a chance encounter on Ancestry, I met a cousin who told me: “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 silence from the world. The call back to my roots.

I wasn’t just aging. I was being initiated.

🤲 Becoming My Own Mother

So I began again. I wrapped myself in ritual. I poured tea. I sat in silence. I let grief move through me like ocean 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 it was stillness. Often, it was nourishment—in the form of herbal infusions, breath, and permission to rest.

I mothered myself.

🫖 A Ritual to Begin With

One of the first and most powerful ways I began holding myself was through the act of making tea slowly. That ritual became the opening to everything else. The herbal steam rising from a mason jar became my prayer. The steeping, my surrender.

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