Lavender Soap and Other Lessons on Self-Care: How Curanderismo Roots my Practice

Dream Weaver
Sep 16
4 min read

Updated: Sep 18

Curanderismo is a spiritual medicine with Catholic, Indigenous, and African roots in Mexican and Mexican-American culture. My family has practiced curanderismo for generations. My great-grandmother and grandmother would have most closely been a "partera", a curandera whose role is in midwifery, including pre- and post-natal care (Avila, 2000). My mother is on her own journey learning as an "hierbero"- an herbalist (Avila, 2000). My own calling lends towards a path similar to my academic and professional training, as a "consejera"- a counselor. I work in the space of relationships, with self and others. I go with people into their bodies, hearts, minds, and spirits to root out their source of suffering and help them transmute it.

This isn't work I imagined myself doing until I attended a retreat by a curandera in 2023. The grant I was working on sunset, and I found myself unemployed. Again. I explored self-employment and non-traditional approaches to healing, community building, and advocacy but couldn't find something that was the right fit at the right time. As we listened to Robyn and accepted the invitation to learn from my ancestors and the Mexica underworld, my stepmom opened the idea of a new path for me. What if I took the unique skillset I have and apply them to an intimacy-based approach to curanderismo. The group we shared this space with tossed questions and ideas around, with the general consensus being that if this is a path my ancestors and community are calling me to do, it would become known in its own time. I left with the encouragement to explore, learn, and listen.

Now as I face a similar set of circumstances, the same employment and income questions are coming up that circled me in 2023.

I'm leaning into the questions my stepmom raised two years ago- is there an untapped pathway to healing that curanderismo and intimacy-based work can bridge?

I don't bring curanderismo directly into my work with clients, but it is the foundation of how I care for myself so I can provide connection, body, energy, and intimacy-based work. My background in domestic and sexual violence advocacy taught me the importance of self-care, but I struggled to practice it with the capitalist and colonial focus we often talk about it with. Even simple things like a soak in the tub become luxuries when you don't have a tub to soak in, or a plumbing system to manage the draining, or the time between multiple kids and jobs for a few minutes alone. This is not the foundation my self-care is built on.

My care practice was shaped while surviving the trenches of depression, divorce and c-PTSD, unemployment and the institutional decimation of my profession, financial instability and uncertainty, single-parnting, community loss, and advocacy work in some of the most challenging systems for survivors to navigate. When Robyn guided us through the layers of the Mexica underworld in a meditation, I recognized the world immediately. It was one I had traveled in my own trauma, mental health, relationship, and professional experiences.

In the years I've studied and practiced curanderismo, I've developed a deep sense of connection to something more stable than myself. A lesson that stays with me is that the "world is slippery slick" - and my resume over the last ten years is a living example of what that looks like in our modern world. Rooting into my ancestral and family practices reminds me of the resilience that's shaped me. It inspires my imagination for a different kind of future. It restores me to well of community love so deep that to care for myself is to care for others.

A Holistic-Approach to Care

"Wash with lavender first" reminds me to tend to my own needs first. This may be my physical, emotional, mental health, family or community, and energetic needs. I've created rituals and practices involving:

Feeding and nourishing my body when I have appointments
Dressing in ways that feel good to me
Physically and energetically cleansing my home
Creating sustainable and accessible home practices

In addition to the physical, emotional, and energetic, I also consider other "self-care" elements. These include my mental health needs, which are particularly important with my ADHD, c-PTSD, and other diagnosis. Prioritizing these needs ensures I can consistently show up for my children, community, and clients.

Rooting in my Ancestral Practice of Curanderismo

A poem I shared on my Substack, Words of Whimsy and Wonder, captures the relationship between my ancestral, spiritual, and intimacy-based work.

Final Thoughts

Self-care is deeper than spas and massages. It goes beyond meeting my superficial needs. It's about building a life where my basic care needs, from the physical to the spiritual, are at the core of everything I do. It's a practice in honoring my own value as a human. Of pouring the same love, care, and attention that I give to my work into myself.