Atava is the founder of Ancestral Apothecary.
She is dedicated to remembering and honoring the healing traditions of her ancestors and also to creating spaces to support others to also make this connection.

Abi Huff is an ever- evolving community & clinical herbalist, medicine maker, intuitive life strategist, community activist, and overall plant nerd.

Myrna Cabán Lezcano is a queer Boricua herbalist, educator, and cultural organizer. She grew up eating mangos and being doused in Agua Florida. Her abuelxs inspired her to connect to Spirit and healing by growing gandules, raising chickens, making dream-based predictions, and singing spontaneous songs.

Ayo is a community herbalist, educator, artist, and historian. She is a believer in ancestral tradition, a documentarian of Black herbal and cultural practices, and a community worker. Trained as a clinician, Ayo is an instructor at community-based herbal schools and conferences, owns a small herbal business (The Creative Root), and runs the Planting Reparations Project, a reparations-based, mutual aid initiative that redistributes plants and healing resources to Black people.

Melissa (she/her) is an herbalist, writer, facilitator, and birthworker based in Ohlone Territory/Oakland, CA. Melissa’s family has roots in Puerto Rico and Poland and she has spent over 18 years working in a variety of social justice, learning, and healing spaces.

Batul True Heart (they/them) is a Yo’eme (Yaqui) and Panamanian-American (of Indigenous, African, & European descent) Queer and Two-Spirit community herbalist, medicine maker, caregiver, and death doula. On a lifelong journey of uncovering their ancestral roots, and all the trauma their ancestors both endured and enacted, Batul has been walking a healing road for over 15 years reclaiming the truth of who they are by (re)connecting with their ancestors, (re)membering everyday traditional practices and ceremonies, (re)learning languages, and making relations with the medicine of the plants (re)matriating.

Tatille Jackson, CMT, is a lifelong student of massage therapy, herbal medicine, and the ways in which our bodies innately strive toward a state repair.

RaheNi Gonzalez I’naru is a Two-Spirit Boricua Taino Ceremonial Prayer Warrior, Healer & Activist. They have spent the past 20+ years focused on healing and learning how to transform trauma, chronic illness & suffering into beauty, love and a higher consciousness.

Rebekah Sze-Tung Olstad is passionate about building relationships and connections with nature in all its forms. She graduated from the first Cecemmana cohort in 2018, and is now practicing as a community herbalist.

Danielle is an Afro-Indigenous herbalist and astrology apprentice, called to self-healing and soul evolution, inwardly and together. Danielle is a 2019 graduate of Cecemmana.

Indigo Som cross-pollinates her practices of dreamwork, tarot, artmaking, foodmaking, meditation and the Dharma, embracing metaphor as a powerful tool for self-knowledge, healing and transformation.

Eleanor Barron Druckrey (Ellie) has been a student of dreams for most of her life, having kept a dream journal since 1976 when she graduated from Cal Berkeley where she studied US and Latin American History

Margarita is a certified and licensed Massage and Craniosacral Therapist. She practices Curanderismo in combination with other ancient healing practices. Margarita Camarena was born in Mexico City growing up with the traditional medicine through her grandmothers and the elders in her family.

Avani recently completed Cecemana, the 3 year herbal medicine program at Ancestral Apothecary. She stumbled into (Western) herbalism and loves the magic Cecemanna has brought into her life.

Kara Wood (she/her), lives on Ohlone land in Oakland, CA.

She is a folk herbalist and an ancestral medicine connector. She creates a container for people to connect with their ancestors, the elements, the plants and with their bodies.

Rachel Lee is a healer whose practice is deeply rooted in reclaiming the wisdom, power, and history of her West African ancestors. As a doula, yoga teacher, and folk herbalist, her path to cultivating wholeness embodies a radical Black feminist praxis where the personal is inseparable from the political and spirit work is essential to social freedom.

Luz C. Valverde is a queer mixed race Xicana indigena raised by Gay and Lesbian parents in the 70’s. She has been active in dream work since 2009, holding space for a community dream circle in her home over the following year’s cycle. She believes the circle – ritual is a profound container for deepening ancestral wisdom, healing inter-generational trauma and receiving guidance.

Cera Merrick (they/them) is a fourth generation grower of chili peppers, medicine maker, pregnancy loss/abortion doula, and fertility awareness educator. They humbly walk with the plants on the path toward liberation and reproductive autonomy.

Elisa (she/her) grew up in the vast and beautiful Sonoran Desert and currently resides in the foothills of the Sierras. She is a zine writer, sun bather, medicine maker, and grower of plants. She practices place-based herbalism rooted in ancestral wisdom. Her work is dedicated to helping people and animals ground into their bodies and heal themselves, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. She sees her work with plants as an extension of activism towards social and health justice. 

Erin Caitlin Sweeney (she/her) is a cis woman of European descent living in Huichin, the unceded Ohlone territory now known as Oakland, CA. She is a politicized healer, educator & group facilitator. She’s a Leo Sun & Aries Rising with a Pisces Moon. She’s a storyteller, plant lover, and dancer.

Khadija (they.them.theirs) is a queer muslim-indian plant person, medicine maker, birth worker, and caste abolitionist in learning currently on Huichin, Ohlone territory.

Zhayra Palma is a trauma-informed life coach, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and a creative who is passionate about the intersections of trauma healing and the redistribution of resources. She believes in the medicine of connecting, creativity and the body, and believes that she is enough, you are enough and there is enough. When she’s not erratically clicking keys on her favorite calculator, you can find her admiring every soaring bird and blossoming flower in sight.

Beth Sachnoff of Wild Child Apothecary is an herbalist, educator, and mama to two little girls. She helps overwhelmed mamas replenish their reserves so they can have more energy and create more calm.