by Thistle Pettersen

I am on a constant personal quest to find women’s cultural and safe spaces outside of patriarchy. The Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference is one of those places. There is no remedy more effective for a woman’s healing than combining the lost language of plants with the healing wisdom of women gathered together.

WLRN had a table in the marketplace of this year’s conference held in the woods of Wisconsin at a camp usually occupied by kids enjoying the sun and fun of their summer vacation from school.

I went with WLRN listener sponsor and radfem friend, Elizabeth, from Chicago. She volunteered with me at the WLRN table, meeting and greeting with all the women at the conference who came by to say “hi” and learn about our radical feminist collective and work at the station.

I am happy to report that we did not experience a single incident of someone calling us names or complaining about our presence! When women gather apart from men — when we are allowed to do so — radical feminism just naturally emerges, whether the women participating consider themselves to be political or not.

Not only that, radical feminism is cultural and artistic, in addition to being political, so there is that aspect of it too.

We got 22 new subscribers to our newsletter that alerts you when our podcasts come out, and we moved a lot of WLRN magnets! This means that refrigerators across the Midwest now have a daily reminder of our podcasts!

Emotional Safety 

Part of breaking down emotionally is feeling safe enough to do it. Women often do not have safe social spaces to express our emotions, so we bottle them up. A lifetime of bottled emotion can cause dis-ease that an individual may not even be aware she is carrying, until she is invited to lay her burden down and she notices her lightness again.

The first night of the conference, after the opening ceremony wherein women put “seeds” onto this beautiful altar we built together pictured below, I heard a woman sobbing in the dark behind me on the trail back to my cabin. I felt conflicted because I could clearly hear her and wondered if she wanted me to go up to her and ask her if I could help her, but I also felt tired and emotional myself,  and didn’t really have it in me in that moment to approach her.

Then I remembered “She is surrounded by healers. She will be alright. Let it go.”

At a women’s gathering emphasizing self-care and an abundance of healing structure and actual plant medicine, there is room to cry, strain, panic, scream and let go.

I saw that woman who had been sobbing the night before the next day in the morning. I thanked her, in my head, for establishing our safe space to heal with each other because something in me knew it would be my turn in the next coming days.

The Show

I had the pleasure of working with Tracy Shringarpure, a radfem from Indianapolis with years of theater experience and a hard line when it comes to directing her performers. She was the director of the camp talent show that happened on Saturday night from the main stage in Artemesia’s Lodge.

Tracy put me second in the line-up of 27 acts because she said she knew I could get the crowd goin’ and kick-off the show with a strong, confident performance.

Was I shaking in my boots! I was about to perform in front of 300 people after years of hiatus due to transactivist attacks on my public personhood in Madison.

I pulled it off and got lots of positive feedback after the show, but whoa, was my stomach hurting. Little did I know what would come later on that evening and then even into the morning of the next day. Stay tuned.

I wandered to a camp fire after the show and sat with some lovely women from Madison area who complimented me on my performance. I thanked them and they encouraged me to go get my guitar to play around the fire. I came back with my guitar and just began strumming in the background of their conversation. I like to do that — to add background music that responds in subtle ways to the others around me — it is a form of co-creation, the subject of the song I sang at the talent show that night. 

But then they asked me if I ever play out in Madison and that’s when the bitterness, pain and outrage came out of me in a calm, cool voice dispassionately describing what has happened to me in Madison as a singer/songwriter because of my associations with feminism and feminists.

I told them about DefendFeminists.net where you can hear every sad story of major public institutions in Madison such as WORT 89.9 FM, Wisconsin Network for Peace, Justice & Sustainability, the Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center, Crystal Corner Bar and others colluding with a local set of trans-activist extremists to ban and harm me politically, socially and emotionally.

The women around the fire couldn’t believe the stories I was telling them and honestly, I cannot believe them myself. They are surreal.

I went to bed that night feeling wounded and run down by this large, horrible part of my personal story as a singer/songwriter and a person wishing to plant seeds, heal and grow gardens in her neighborhood.

I woke up wanting to do Ayo’s African dance workshop, but ended up in my own emotional breakdown space surrounded by healers.

The pain of the humiliation and ostracizing I have suffered under the reign of misogyny that rains down on Madison and me every day is overwhelming.

I want to thank every woman who encountered me on her path this past weekend and who heard me express the shock and hurt of it all.

When I got home, the journey continued and I still felt unwell. I remembered Linda Conroy saying at our closing ceremony that we might want to stay in and nurture ourselves after this weekend of activities, so I stayed in instead of venturing out to an open-mic in town that has a friendly bartender who welcomes me and will kick out anyone who harasses me.

I am not ready to play open mics again. Maybe I will be next time. But this last time, I stayed home, only the second evening back in Madison after the conference, and I soaked my feet in a hot foot bath of herbs from Alice’s Garden in Milwaukee, run by Venice Williams pictured below at her keynote address.

I approached her, the last day of the conference when my stomach was still upset and the trauma of telling the stories of what it can be like for me in Madison was still very present with me.

I asked her if she would do a little ritual with me and proposed I tell her a bit about myself and by listening to my story, she would tell me which medicines on her table she recommended for me. She agreed to hear me out.

I did not show my emotion, but I did tell her a little bit about myself and WLRN and my history of being publicly shunned as an individual.

Venice lit up and looked into my eyes and said, “Ah-huh. You need to soak your feet. Thieves Bath Salts followed by Lavender & Fennel Wound Cream is what I am putting in this bag for you.” She then talked with me about the importance of the feet symbolically as far as the path I am on in my community. The last thing she gave me was her very last bag of a calming tea blend with herbs many herbalists over the weekend recommended to me personally, for my healing.

A Final Sister Salute!

Hats off and a salute to my sister Laurie Quisinberry at the Bear Alchemy booth in the marketplace right next to mine. I told her about my sore shoulder and she recommended black cohosh and solomon’s seal, two herbs she works extensively with and has many stories about from her life in the Appalachian mountains.

Walking on this path

I want to give a BIG SHOUT-OUT to all of our WLRN listeners and listener sponsors. I could not do this work without knowing you are there, listening, supporting, participating and getting active in co-creation of women’s safe spaces and female-centered culture. I think I am speaking on behalf of the whole WLRN collective when I say that the full loop of listening, writing and speaking, getting into a rhythm of exploring a topic every month, knowing other women besides us are exploring that topic as well, makes everything we do that much sweeter. Thank you my feminist community!

Women heal and we especially do when we are all clumped together like that in the woods surrounded by our wild darkness and softest dreams.