About This Blog
We write for customers, neighbors, and anyone interested in what we do and how we do it. This is a place to stay connected, learn something new, and get a closer look at what’s happening around our business.
Welcome to The Peony Apothecary: Bridging Medical Roots with Botanical Wisdom
My first love was medicine, and then I fell in love with herbs and natural remedies. I spent 15 years in the medical field working my way up from a Certified Nursing Assistant to an Emergency Department Technician. and ultimately to a Certified Medical Assistant. I worked in Urgent Cares, Emergency Rooms, Cardiac Clinics, Vascular Surgery Clinics, and Skilled Nursing Facilities. The pay wall for the medical field is a pretty large wall for a single mother to climb, so I gained as much knowledge as I could from every specialty I could.
The Switch
After spending 15 years of my life in the medical field, I found myself drawn to the natural healing properties of herbs and the body's ability to heal given the right environment and nutrition. This was after I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease at the age of twenty-two, and my daughter had just turned one. I had gotten over a one-month hospital stay at the University of Washington, and I was staring at a list of scary prescriptions from my doctor.
This is where I insert that I am not a doctor and I am not giving medical advice EVER. I am just someone who trusts their body and understands the body functions better when we give it the proper nutrition and supplements it needs, as well as living as stress-free as possible.
That being said, I looked at my doctor and told her that I am sure she is correct, but that I had been living a very unhealthy lifestyle, and if I made some serious changes, I believed I could get my body to a healthier baseline.
I have had some ups and downs managing my own illness, but for the most part I have been in remission and surgery-free, so I think there is something to be said about natural and holistic medicine. I started off making tummy oils for myself to aid with my Crohn's symptoms. Then it grew into using them on my daughter to help her with congestion or calming for bed. I noticed a huge difference when I kept exposing us to natural remedies.
Flash forward to 2020 and COVID. I was sent home nearly every day due to a slightly elevated temperature. This prompted my final exit from the medical field. I began managing a crystal shop in town, and it had a small section of herbs. I began to intuitively gravitate to certain herbs and started mixing them to find good flavors to recommend to our customers. I had been working with essential oils the whole time, but herbs and tea were new for me.
I started creating blends that would help my Crohn's, but unfortunately, the work environment grew toxic with the owner, so I ended up leaving for a new industry. One that would give me the financial security to build the kind of business I wanted to leave behind as a legacy.
With my passion for clean, natural ingredients like 100% beeswax, rich plant oils, and pure essential oils, I am committed and driven to create products that I feel confident using on my own family. Our core mission here at the apothecary is to combine practical wellness with a sense of cozy, daily magic.
Here you can expect to find topics like tea-steeping rituals, natural skincare guides, and behind-the-scenes looks at our processing and day-to-day activities.