67 | Ember Peters, Stascha Stahl & Vilde Chaya Fenster-Ehrlich on their Advanced Clinical Herbal Skills Program

Camille (00:01)
Hi there. My name is Camille Freeman. I am a clinical herbalist and licensed nutritionist. And in this podcast I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners. Today I'm bringing you another interview from our summer of interviews on this podcast. And I'm so excited about this one because I've got three guests here. Amber peters, sasha stahl and vilde chaya fenster. Ehrlich? Here to talk to us about their advanced clinical skills program. And ostensibly they are talking about this particular program. But what I think is really interesting for everyone about this conversation is that we're not just talking about this one program, but we're talking about the work of creating anti oppressive spaces and trainings and doing our own work as practitioners. So how we can sort through some of our beliefs, practices, thoughts, et cetera, and create spaces that are safe for our clients and for ourselves. So I hope this will be an inspiring and revelatory episode for you, whether you are interested in herbal clinical skills or not. If you are, I encourage you to check out their program. So let me just share briefly the BIOS of our three guests today and then I will turn you over to the interview.

Camille (01:19)
I'm going to give you abbreviated Bios just for the sake of time and I'll put the full bios in the show notes. You can check out all of the juicy details about each of our presenters there. So we'll start with Ember Peters. Ember has been in clinical practice for a decade and has been teaching advanced herbalism for the past seven years. Their practice integrates vitalist western herbal traditions, scientific research, phytochemistry, pathophysiology, and flower essences. They are particularly nerdy about diabetes, cancer, fertility autonomy, trans health, and hormonal and endocrine support. Trans inclusivity and anti racism are cornerstones of Ember's practice and part of their lifelong commitment to fighting for liberation of all peoples. Stascha Stahl is a community centered clinical herbalist medicine maker, apothecarist and educator. Practicing in chochanyo oholone territory or so called Oakland, California. Stasha has been studying herbal medicine since 2006 and seeing clients in free or sliding scale clinics for the last twelve years. She prioritizes harm reduction and focuses on complex chronic conditions. And lastly, Vilde Chaya Fenster-Ehrlich is a community herbalist committed to sharing the bizarre and beautiful gifts of flowers, trees and fungi in accessible, inclusive ways centered on love.

Camille (02:29)
She creates spaces of care and growth for trans and trans allied community and hasn't been involved with organizing free multimodality clinics in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Arizona since 2010. Is presently an educator with Wild Current herbalism and at the Wild Cherries Herbal Studies program in Pittsburgh. And before working as an herbalist, she spent a decade as a standardized patient teaching medical students about competent anti oppressive care. And we are going to have to have Vilde back to talk about that a different time. So I'm going to let you read, like I said, the more extensive bios of our guests in the show notes. And right now, I will turn you over to the rest of the interview.

Camille (03:12)
All right. I am so excited to be here talking about the advanced Clinical Herbalist program, and I'm really grateful that you all have agreed to come on and share a little bit more about the program, putting it together, the philosophies, and so forth. So the first question that I have is, how did the three of you come together to create this program? It's a little different than most of what I've seen out there.

Ember (03:38)
Yeah, thanks for asking that, Camille. I'm super happy to be here. Ember here.

Ember (03:43)
So I guess the very first part.

Ember (03:48)
Of this sort of percolating was I had quite a few people reach out to me about just, like, clinical mentorship in general. And so it sort of became a bit of an idea in my mind, oh, maybe it would be cool to do know, do sort of more of a program with a few students. And I reached out to Stasha, who I've known for a long time. We've been good friends for very long time. We went through our herbalism journeys very much, like, in parallel. So me and Stasha got together to sort of chat about it, and I asked Stasha if they would do it with me, and then we decided to bring Vilda in. I knew Vilde from the clinical program at VCIH, and it was just Vilde was just kind of an obvious fit for, you know, it really was just about finding for me, about finding people.

Camille (04:38)
With different kind of clinical experiences, with.

Ember (04:44)
Aligned values, people who like each other and want to work together. Anything else? Anyone want to add to that story?

Vilde (04:56)
I was so excited to be invited by Y'all. I'm just a sucker for a good collaboration. This is Vilde. It just seemed like too much fun to pass up when you all contacted me, and it really has been. I've been so glad to be building this program with you all these last few years.

Camille (05:17)
I know that for me, when there's a new thing brewing, it always feels like, a little bit risky to reach out to somebody and just say, like, oh, do you share this vision? Are you interested in being part of it? I feel like there's a lot of negotiation and perhaps even vulnerability in just throwing an idea out that so I love that you were able to kind of come together and find some common ground for this program. So the next question I wanted to ask was because there are a number of different pathways people can go down when they're learning more about herbs. Everything from kind of starting out, like, I don't know anything about herbs. I just want to understand what skullcap is and how do I work with it, and that sort of thing all the way to different types of trainings. So what role do you see this program playing as somebody is working to become an herbalist? Like, who is the person that can be served the best, or maybe not.

Ember (06:16)
The best, but who's the right type.

Camille (06:18)
Of person who could really use this program?

Ember (06:23)
Yeah, well, it's important maybe to say off the bat that this isn't like a comprehensive clinical training, right? This is more of a supplemental training.

Stascha (06:32)
So.

Ember (06:35)
Really, ideally we work with folks, we invite people into our program who have some clinical training elsewhere, who have maybe completed a clinical training program, or.

Camille (06:48)
Are at least kind of part some.

Ember (06:50)
People maybe who are going through that concurrently. People who really already have a lot of their sort of core herbal content.

Camille (07:03)
That they've already learned. Right?

Ember (07:05)
So really strong knowledge of the plants of physiology and herbal therapeutics, people who have somewhat of at least an interest in our values, if not a stronger alignment. We're not super. Like we only accept people who exactly know everything we mean when we talk about our values, but people who at least have openness to that. And so really, it's people who already have a lot of training and who want more specific clinical skills, and for people who want to learn in a cohort with people who have similar values, right? That is honestly something that has come up a lot when our students talk to us about why they're choosing that program. And we know that a lot of people go through a lot of other clinical programs or partially go through other clinical programs, and they might not feel like it fits for whatever reason. And often that does have to do with the sort of values of the program. And so we end up also having lots of folks who have maybe completed most of a clinical program who were just like, I couldn't finish it, and I really want more clinical training, but that wasn't the right environment for me, that kind of thing.

Ember (08:24)
So it is a case by case basis. We really just talk to each person who applies to see if we think they'd be a good fit.

Camille (08:31)
Yeah.

Ember (08:32)
Anything to add, Vilde or Stascha.

Stascha (08:37)
People who probably are ready to see people but don't feel ready, we do a lot of talking about impostor syndrome or just feeling like, how do you know when you're ready? And I think there's a lot of personality types who take a class and are practicing, and then there's some personality types who take twelve years of classes and never start. And I think we have both in our program, maybe not one class, but I think we kind of wanted to make the program that we wanted to feel ready, right? And so I think that that is really who's a good fit, like people who really have enough training but just don't have the guidance to start. And so that's usually who and then of course, our values are a huge part of that.

Vilde (09:30)
Yeah, and just to add to that a little bit, also, not everyone who's in the program has gone through a clinical training in that particular way. We have people who come from a less institutional background, and there are students who have been sometimes practicing for many years and are just feeling like there's something missing in my practice. I want to be more organized, or maybe it's not quite aligned with my values or my politics, and I want more companionship in my herbal work and looking to connect with other folks. And so I think we're definitely geared towards people who are practicing or on the cusp of practicing, but that there's really a lot of different ways that can look.

Camille (10:27)
I love the point about how it's never really too late to go back and get more training, even once you're already doing this work. Because I feel that myself, too. Even though I've been doing this for a long time, there's still so many people that I would love to learn with and from you all included. But I feel like for me, that's a hallmark of a really good practitioner is somebody who's showing up in these kinds of environments, even five years, ten years, 15 years down the road, and saying, what else do I have to learn? Yeah, so it occurs to me that we haven't actually told people what the program is yet. So I'm wondering if you all could talk a little bit about what's special about the program, but also maybe just a brief overview of what is the program. Maybe I can.

Vilde (11:21)
Ember, do you want to give a little overview of the program? And then I can kind of highlight some of the things that we're especially proud of?

Ember (11:28)
Yeah, for sure. It has changed over the years. Every time we do it, we do it a little bit differently. So this time we're going to be doing an 18 week version of this program. So it starts at the end of October and runs through March with a two week winter break. It's once a week live on Zoom. So it does require people to actually be present because most of the classes as we're going to talk about are participatory. So we sort of split it up into a couple of different modules. One is ethics. So we talk a lot about our values and how we can bring those values into our practice, and we'll get more into that later today. We do a kind of module on what we call holistic protocol development. But really it's just like more of the okay, we do materia medica. We talk about blood work in labs. We do case studies. Right. We're really kind of getting into how do we develop a formula and protocol for somebody? And then we have a clinical skills section, which is really the largest portion of the program, and the part that I think we're maybe the most proud of in terms of how we've developed that.

Ember (12:41)
And a lot of that is role playing of clinical scenarios and discussing our relationships with clients, how we run clinical practice, all of that kind of stuff. So that's sort of the broad overview of what this program is. There's also clinical observation included where the students sit in with us with clients and get to talk with us about our protocols with them. I think that's it anything I missed.

Stascha (13:11)
Talk about the OSCE here if wanted. Yeah. Does that sound?

Vilde (13:17)
Oh, yeah, definitely.

Stascha (13:19)
Well, one of the things that's participatory that I think I feel happy about is I used to do a lot of work as a standardized patient. I still do sometimes. And so I think that's a really big part of being prepared. And so I wrote roles for me, Vilde and Ember, and we play patients that are like sticky situations or difficult or something that we see often in practice. And then the students each practice with us, and then we give direct feedback about what it felt like to be the patient ways that we would have worded it, like this kind of thing. And so it's pretty fun.

Vilde (14:04)
Yeah. I think that some of the pieces that really feel particularly kind of like signature in terms of how we try to our approach with this program is that we really try to bring everything from our direct experience as herbalists, as organizers and herbalist. So whether that means in our conversations about how do you build and manage a practice or how do you make your clinical work accessible, how do you build a free clinic, and what are the intricacies or complications that we've experienced personally in doing that work and what's been successful for us. And that's also what shows up in our conversations about interpersonally, like the kind of sticky situations, as Stascha was saying, so folks, that we might feel some difficulty in our interpersonal interactions with clients, and how have we directly approached that. So we're not really coming from a place of theory or a place of abstraction. We're coming from a place of really like, this is what we've done, this is what we've seen, and making space for a lot of our students who also have experience to also share and really build up that generative energy together. And that also shows up in like, Stascha and Ember teach a materia medica unit, which is sort of universally beloved by our students.

Vilde (15:41)
And what I love about it, I listen to it every year, and it's just so dense with information because they're really just talking directly about when I use this plant that I actually use in my clinical practice, this is what I've seen. This is how I've dosed this plant. This is what I've learned about working with this plant's medicine and be just very applicable. And because a lot of our students are also in this place of like, well, I've been setting up this practice, or I've been doing this work in this way, and it's not quite feeling right. There's a lot of room for people to really when you're in a clinical training program, that you're not working in a clinic, you don't know what questions to ask yet. You don't know what kind of challenges are going to come up. And a lot of our students really can come from a place of being like, well, I've been having a really hard time with this part of the work, or I saw this client and this came up. What's your all approach to that? And we talk about that in class. We also have usually very active slack, or maybe we use discord sometimes, but like an offline mode of communication.

Vilde (16:57)
And usually there's a lot of really fertile, exciting conversation between students about, again, just like, the most practical aspects of being an herbalist.

Camille (17:12)
Yeah, I love that word generative here, because I think there's different ways to teach. And one of them is like, I will tell you what I know, and you will listen to it. And then there's what you all are talking about, which is basically what's showing up for people, and how are the experiences and understandings and things like that of the people participating? How are those shaping the course? And I love that it's like a collaborative environment. That's really cool. Awesome. Thank you. Well, I know you've mentioned several times so far that values are a really big part of this. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the role of anti oppression, antiracism accessibility, trans, inclusivity, some of these concepts and topics that maybe people have seen in writing, but don't know what that looks like in terms of an expressed value in a course. I'm wondering if you could maybe give us some examples or talk a little bit about how these actually show up in the program or in your teaching.

Vilde (18:20)
Yeah, definitely. I'm glad that you're asking about that, because I feel like we haven't actually really emphasized the degree to which that is a very core part of this program, and something that we've tried to really put at the center of the program. And I know it's something that a lot of us who are trans or who are living with disabilities or are black or brown or otherwise don't fit the kind of stereotype of what an herbalist looks like in the way that it's presented, as in the kind of wellness mode that kind of permeates a lot of what western, clinical herbalism looks like. It's just really hard for us at a lot of the herbal training programs that we do. It's hard to be at conferences. We have really awful experience, a lot of schools, or we have an okay experience, but we always have to leave a part of ourselves at the you know, I think, as amber said before, we tried to build a program that we would want. And the result, I think one of the things that we've heard a lot from people participating in the program is like, this is the first place I've actually felt at home.

Vilde (19:43)
Like I can bring my full self. And I think part of that is that when we are talking about our politics, we're not coming from a place of or our values. We're not coming from a place of like, oh, well, it's good to be antiracist or something like, this is like, I'm just trying to be a good ally or something like that. For me, personally, essential aspect of my connection with plants and my work as an herbalist comes from my revulsion with living in a capitalist system, like living under capitalism and the patriarchy. And that seeing the ways that the queer community that I am a part of and the unhoused folks in my community were being harmed by medical their experiences in the medical world, not just like unmet needs, but actively experiencing harm and just needing something different. And that that has been really central in why I'm an herbalist, why I work with plant medicine, and in the ways that we talk about what plant medicine means. And I know that that's really true for ember and stascha as well, and for so many of our students. And so the antiopression politics are really about what happens when we build a program around our experiences as trans folks, our experiences as black and brown folks, or as folks with disabilities.

Vilde (21:26)
And it just ends up looking more spacious and more real. People can really bring a lot of honesty to our conversations about what's impacting.

Camille (21:39)
Our health.

Vilde (21:42)
What it means to be supporting our communities that are oftentimes really struggling and under siege, and to also bring our criticisms and frustrations that we experience in the medical world and also in the herbal world. So I think that that's maybe at least a little bit of an overview. And I don't know, ember, stascha, is there more you want to add about.

Ember (22:13)
Like, our thank you for sharing, Vilde. That was very beautiful to just hear you talking about. You know, each of our herbal practices are completely tied with how we want to be in the world and how we are committed to dismantling these systems of oppression. And so as the sort of mentors or teachers in this program, we get to share how we try to bring that more and more into our practice, but we also get to talk about the challenges in that, and that none of us are perfect. No one's coming into this being perfect or having figured it all out. Right? And I think that is something maybe also that is, in a sense, one of the things that sets our program apart from some other programs. Like you kind of mentioned too Camille is like, we're really not trying to present ourselves as knowing everything or as being perfect, but rather as being committed to learning and committed to doing that together. Right. And that doing that together and having those hard conversations together helps to bring us all kind of perhaps a little tiny bit closer to the world we want to see or yeah.

Ember (23:29)
Yeah.

Camille (23:29)
Love it. Stascha, did you want to add to.

Stascha (23:36)
Some I agree with everything said and hope know, I know that we want to embody that. And I think part of that is like harm reduction, which I know you also I feel like something I really valued in the herbal training that I got was a lot about what can you do to improve someone's life? And that's great, that is a success. And I think a lot of programs maybe cursorily talk about that, but the cases they share are all about like and then they were better and then their digestive problems went away completely and then they were fixed. And everyone's kind of making a nod to like, we don't fix, we don't treat diseases except when we cure this person's cancer or whatever. Right. And they're only showing successes all the time. And I think that that's really discouraging for people who are starting practice because that's not reflected in my experience as like, people have a lot of complicated things going on there's larger, as we've just discussed societal oppressions that affect people's lives. And we're here to support people and figuring out what does success feel like to your client, what does success feel like to you and how do you bridge that gap and do the best that you can.

Stascha (24:51)
And also really we spend a lot of time talking about the ways that we can push through sort of the oppressive idea of perfect health and how people are forever striving to live up to a standard that they will never achieve. That's the same as an herbalist.

Camille (25:09)
Right.

Stascha (25:10)
I think that we spend a lot of time talking about what we can do within the confines of these systems and how to do the best that we can. And we talk about the emotional process of that. And I think that really sets us apart. I think that we all have days where we're like, this is really hard and it's sad and I want to do more. And I think being able to talk about that and the grief that comes up with that has been really supportive to our students. And I think that that is something that I want to highlight always, like, take the ego out of it to the best of our ability and be there with the really hard feelings, I guess, that come up, and the really amazing feelings, right. All of them, but just like, showcasing and discussing the actual difficulties of what it means to practice Herbalism or to be involved with people's health and the challenges that they face.

Camille (26:13)
Yeah, that's amazing. And I know personally, some of the hardest times for me, or maybe not hardest, but the times when this comes up, it can be when the client has a different paradigm. Like, we can come in with sort of a liberatory framework that's outside of a traditional kind of, like, medical model, but then the client may not, and the expectations aren't always going in the same direction. And it's like another layer of things as a practitioner that we have to kind of hold and tend and care for on top of whatever else is shared in the visit and everything. And it does I find it's the kind of thing you have to just constantly call yourself back to, like, what am I doing? What does this mean? What's the bigger picture? And I don't think that's work we could do alone. So I love that you all are creating this space for that.

Vilde (27:13)
I love you sharing about that very relatable experience of, like, oh, I'm on this wavelength. My client's on this really different wavelength, and especially when it's things that feel really close to our heart and our values. And I think that there's also something really joyful in what we get to do as herbalists who get to witness people's experiences and get to spend that time that 2 hours, that hour 15 minutes, weeks and weeks, whatever it is, with our clients, sharing in their experience, sharing in how are they living in the world. Stascha, you talked about the grief in that and the way that that can feel really painful and sad. And also I just want to also share the way that it also feels like such a gift. And I think I really love sort of getting to get into that space of just knowing that I don't know what's up. I didn't know my experience. And I think that that's something a big piece of the harm reduction approach, and it's also a big piece of how we try to come as teachers and just really when people are sharing their experience in our class, we're not saying, like, oh, no, that's wrong, or something.

Vilde (28:38)
If people are giving us feedback about the program and that we try not to get defensive about that and just really welcome it. It was like, this is great. We're learning.

Camille (28:52)
Yeah, that's like, the work of teaching, letting go of that part of the ego. It's like, whoa, constant, constant. Okay. It's good feedback, but it does sting sometimes. Yeah, for sure.

Vilde (29:10)
Yeah.

Camille (29:13)
But good. I mean, you just learn the most, I think, from those things where you're like, oh, that one hit a nerve. The harm reduction has come up a few times, and I think there may be people listening here who aren't really as familiar with that term, and what does that mean? So I'm wondering if anybody wants to take a stab at either defining it or giving us an example or perhaps just fleshing it out a little bit of what are we talking about when we're talking about harm reduction?

Stascha (29:45)
I can try to start okay, well, it comes from work with people who use drugs, and it's talking about that people who maybe do things that aren't considered like normatively healthy still care about their health. And it has a lot to do with things like needle exchange comes directly from harm reduction, comes out of also it comes from the Act Up movement around AIDS work that people did. And so having education as a cornerstone of how health is affected and then making supplies available for people, and then also creating a non judgmental environment for things that people do that the Western model maybe doesn't include as, like, we can't treat you if you smoke cigarettes, right? Or like this kind of thing. And of course, we have like a whole class on harm reduction. We spend a lot of time talking about it, and it's weaved in everything that we talk about. And so it's hard to summarize it, I'm noticing, but I think it's a lot about meeting people where they're at and giving them options and discussing really what is happening with their health, with what's going on, but not denying them care based on their dietary choices as a way it can look at or substances that they utilize and being informed about, maybe societal reasons why people choose to do those things or why they're forced into those kinds of things.

Stascha (31:17)
And so making oneself available for meeting people where they're at and what they can do is maybe the most succinct way to say it, although it's kind of vague. So if anybody wants to blush that out more, I'm happy to hear.

Vilde (31:34)
Well, there's a lot about the stigma around the way that there's a lot of stigma around our choices, around what we're doing with our bodies. And a lot of that stigma really is amplified by in healthcare. And it's a movement against that. It's like the opposite. How do we use our role as healthcare practitioners to get rid of that stigma? Because the stigma causes all kinds of harm in itself. The stigma is what pushes people into the shadows, into unsafe circumstances. And so if we get rid of that and give people build a medical system that's built around people having freedom and support, what does that look like? What choices does that open up for people? And it's life saving for people.

Camille (32:43)
A parallel that I see that maybe folks in the nutrition world can relate to is just the whole concept of weight bias in the field of nutrition. And people who avoid medical care because they just don't want to have a lecture about their weight or that's not their primary concern. And again, it's a little bit different in some ways, but very similar in others, where it's like, how are we creating spaces that. Are safe for people at a whole range of sizes and conditions and choices and circumstances.

Vilde (33:21)
Yes.

Ember (33:22)
Right. And thinking tying it into kind of client centered care, I guess, as well. It's like we as practitioners can come being actually open to what that health journey looks like for each person, rather than coming with our own opinions and ideas about what we think people should do. Right. And so that sort of just kind of goes with what Stasha and Vilde is saying as well. But we tie it into the whole clinical approach. Right. Yeah.

Camille (34:01)
I think, too, that anytime you're doing this work, you are sort of like smacked in the face with all of your own biases and judgments and misperceptions. And again, for me, it just comes up like, oh, it's so much easier to do it with other people when you're suddenly realizing, oh, I'm judging my clients. Oh, I have this built in from growing up in the middle of Kentucky, which is what I did. There's a lot of things that I picked up doing that that I'm 44 years old and I'm still unthreading. Things like little teeny thread by thread. But it's so much easier when there's other people who can, again, in a non judgmental way, be like, oh, hey, have you noticed that you may be bringing your own perceptions into this?

Stascha (34:53)
Yeah, that's something that we talk about a lot, is like, we know that none of us are perfect, and so we try to talk about we just name things directly in a sort of supportive way, or not sort of in a supportive way, but we're trying to just take the teeth out of it. When we talk about values and ethics, we want to embody those, and so we just do corrections and keep it moving. That's kind of the thing that we talk about. And then sometimes people need more support to understand later. And so what am I trying to say? I think it's a dedication to the values. Right. What you just said is it's painful and it's hard to notice these things and understand where they come from. And it's a decision and commitment to do that. And I think it takes a lot of personal fortitude and strength to hear feedback and be committed to noticing those things in ourselves and just recommitting every time it happens.

Camille (36:07)
Right.

Stascha (36:07)
And so I think that that is something that we're trying to cultivate as well, is an environment wherein someone would choose to continually recommit to that analysis of themselves.

Camille (36:23)
Well, I also want to add that being the people that hold this space for that, because it is not easy to correct someone, there's a vulnerability in being like, actually, no, that's not how we do it. That's not acceptable, that's judgmental, that's whatever. That takes a lot on the level of a faculty or instructor to be able to do that and navigate that and hold space for the class or other people who are present and yourself and the person. And there's not that many people who have the skill and the nuance to do that. There's not that many spaces where people can come and do this work. And so I think that's one of the things I just wanted to highlight about the three of you, your many years of experience and your commitment to doing this makes it possible for other people. And I think that's perhaps one of the huge draws for this program is that otherwise people are either just not doing this work or they're trying to do it on their own, which is really hard. Not that it's not hard together, but a little bit easier when you're walking with somebody.

Vilde (37:37)
Yeah, go ahead, Ember.

Ember (37:40)
Sorry. Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to say I wonder if part of how it feels a little bit more possible is like yeah, we do bring a lot of our own vulnerability in terms of sharing our own mistakes. And perhaps that is also our own commitment to not buying into the kind of reaction sometimes the sometimes reaction to these systems of oppression where people really try and embody perfection when it comes to anti oppression. And that's something that we really are trying to not bring. Right. We're trying to really bring more of that real process and that we will make mistakes and that people can correct us, we can correct other people. This is a conversation rather than a black and white kind of right and wrong.

Vilde (38:40)
Yeah. I just wanted to say also that it's like a very loving space. We love our students, and there's so much love between our students. And I think that really it makes these conversations that can feel really hard and upsetting. You know, we are also in a space, and and it's not just like, oh, like, I have stuff to learn. It's like, oh, other people in this space have stuff to learn. And sometimes there I'm gonna, like, you know, someone's gonna say something. I'm gonna be like, that hurts to hear. I feel injured by that kind of thing. But that love that really, I think, is so woven through the space makes that all a lot easier. Yeah.

Camille (39:29)
It'S that power of intentional spaces, because the work isn't possible if you don't have that love there. Like you said, that's what gets anyway makes it possible for more growth than otherwise would be available. So I love that you highlighted that.

Vilde (39:48)
And it's a learning process for us too. I feel like we made our fair share of mistakes just in the couple of years we've been doing this together.

Camille (39:57)
Oh, Lord, yes. So many mistakes always for any of these types of things. You're like, oh, do it again better next time. Anyway, I know we're getting towards the end of our time here. Does anybody have something else you want to add before we wrap up? Is there anything we didn't cover that you really want to make sure people hear about? Can you just remind folks when the program starts and what day? Is there a certain day of the week that it meets?

Ember (40:31)
Yeah, definitely. It's going to be on Wednesdays, wednesday morning Pacific time, afternoons in eastern or atlantic time. And you can find all of the info and the application on my website. That's wildcurrentherbalism.com. And the applications are due August 28th. And we have already gotten a bunch of applications and we're super excited. We'll be doing like once we get the applications, we'll be doing a process of review and then we'll be getting in touch with folks and doing kind of short conversational interviews just to kind of see who seems like the best fit.

Camille (41:12)
Yeah, awesome.

Vilde (41:14)
Just to clarify that wildcurrent is in like a river current and not like the fruit, not like the tart berry.

Camille (41:23)
Awesome.

Ember (41:24)
Or like the current moment.

Camille (41:26)
Also the current moment. Love it. Or like an electrical current. Yay. Okay. And I will put the links in the show notes so Ember we can connect with you at wildcurrent. Is there any other way that people can connect with you? Social media and then Vilde and Stascha, if you all want to share also how people might be able to connect if they wanted to reach out or stay in touch.

Ember (41:49)
Our email is wildcurrentschool@gmail.com and most of the info comes from my instagram, which is at wildcurrentherbs, or Stascha's instagram, which is @bay.Herbalist and Vilde's @vildechaya. So those are our three instagram accounts and yeah, anything else?

Vilde (42:22)
I'll just say that is my instagram Vildae Chaya V-I-L-D-E-C-H-A-Y-A but I don't really gram that much. But folks can get in touch with me at my email, which is vilde@wildcherries.org, another program that I run which is like an introductory plant connection and herbal medicine program in Pittsburgh. In of my herbal website is wildcherries.org and so people can get in touch with me there more than on. Yeah.

Ember (43:01)
Perfect.

Camille (43:02)
Awesome. Well put all those in the show notes too. Stascha, anything else you wanted to add or is that good for you?

Stascha (43:08)
Thanks for having us. Yeah, my website is bayherbalist.com but I never look at it or change it.

Camille (43:20)
There you go. It is.

Stascha (43:21)
I love it.

Camille (43:23)
Thank you all so much for being here and I can't wait to hear more about your program and encourage people to go check it out and see if you might want to apply here in the very near future. Right?

Vilde (43:35)
Thank you so much for having us. It was really a pleasure to get to talk a little bit.

Ember (43:40)
Thanks, Camille. Thanks for your support.

Camille (43:48)
Thanks for listening to in the clinic with Camille. Hey, did you know that I write.

Camille (43:53)
A weekly practitioner note for herbalists and nutrition is if you would like to.

Camille (43:57)
Get that in your inbox you can sign up at camillefreeman.com/newsletter. Love to have you join us there.