"I cannot remember where or how my awareness of nature started. I cannot tell you if for some, these unique relationships with Mother Nature's plants, animals, rocks and water starts with a long tale long ago written in the stars, or out of necessity, we grow into these roles, thereby discovering that we all can read the DNA of nature within on our blood. 

My reasons for these writings are not to establish myself as a writer of plants, whether medicinal or not. In a way it is not even about recognition, something I've always craved, and yet now to brush off.

This book is about plans,This book is about plants, but more so the people that she is the spirit and properties of these plants. It was the burning need to convey how, through working with plant as medicine, in both physical and spiritual realms, I started to observe how certain plant properties were also lodged into the people I am writing about. Undoubtedly, all of us carry certain properties, and so it is with gratitude that I will continue this journey of discovering more of my plant and human companions.

Within the African Traditional medicinal system it is said that knowledge of the traditional way of healing, whether through plants, spirits or animals, can only be passed down to initiates.

Well, I am not an initiate in the traditional sense. I do not prescribe to call myself a healer or herbalist. I am a person and who in her thirties was so down and out, that the opportunity of working with herbs this was my only way to survive. In this world of plants that I find myself now, I do however believe that I was called upon by the spirit of plant: and if that makes me a herbalist, a healer, a shaman .... you be the judge of that. I like to think of myself as a connector, whose purpose it is to bring about healing through connecting your spirit with that on the plant.

It took me awhile to claim those words, purely because it sounds vain.

In my writings, I've decided to honour the medicinal value of certain plants, but also convey how these plans have aided me in my spiritual and emotional cycles. I paired these characteristics with people who embodies such properties in my life. Your journey will be different. Your companions and the plants they represent will be different. I thus only ask that you view my musings as an example on your journey of deeper observation.

This is my story; there are many these are my people, my plants and my guides.

And so it is."

From When Plant Spirit Speaks: An infinite journey of observing and allowing (2022) by Anneline Mohammedt