Before I left Tassie for the Sunshine Coast last weekend, I drew a card. The Flower of Life.

I sat with it for a moment. That ancient symbol of overlapping circles, each one touching the next, radiating outward in perfect geometry. Connection. Creation. The invisible threads running between all living things.

I spent a weekend completely immersed in exactly that.

The NHAA Herbal Medicine Summit was themed Cultivating Connection, and it lived up to its name in ways I hadn't anticipated. I came home full. Not just nourished in the professional sense, but deeply grateful, for this profession, for the people in it, and for what feels like a very real movement sweeping through our community right now.

A profession I am proud to belong to

I want to say it plainly: I am so honoured to be part of this community.

The naturopathic and herbal medicine profession is filled with people who are not only intellectually rigorous and scientifically literate, but emotionally intelligent, deeply caring, and committed to each other's wellbeing. The conversations I had over that weekend, over rosemary crowns, over drinks, between sessions and on the beach, reminded me of this at every turn.

There is a movement rising in our profession. A quiet but unmistakable current of we all rise together. A recognition that the strength of what we offer the world is not diminished by sharing it, but multiplied. That lifting the person next to us lifts all of us. I felt that this weekend. I feel it increasingly in the broader naturopathic community, and I think it matters enormously, for us, and for the people we care for.

Thank you to the NHAA for holding this space so beautifully. The calibre of speakers, the depth of conversation, and the care woven through every aspect of the summit were exceptional. I walked away with plenty of clinical pearls too, insights I'll be weaving into practice over the coming months. But this theme, this thread of connection, was the message I needed most.

Roots, rings, and the redwoods

Kira Sutherland's closing keynote gave me a metaphor I've been sitting with ever since.

She spoke about the redwood trees. They don't grow from seed, but from the roots of the mother tree. She sends out rootlets, and new trees rise around her in a circle. If the mother tree falls, what remains is a perfect ring of redwoods. All of her, growing on.

That image landed deep for a profession built on lineage and living knowledge. Her history, her resilience, her hard-won wisdom. All of it passes unconditionally into the next generation. Not held back. Given freely.

I thought about my own mother trees. The teachers and mentors who shaped me, whose roots are in me whether I always see them or not. I thought, too, about the people I'm now helping to grow. The roots run in both directions. That is a good thing to remember.

The rings of community

One of the quiet joys of this weekend was seeing all of my communities in the same space at once.

There were the people I grew up with at Gould's Natural Medicine, some of my oldest friends in this profession. We shared accommodation, stayed up too late, and remembered where we all started. That bond is something I lean into every day without even knowing it, the support of growing up, and growing old, together, always there in the background.

Then there are the connections I've made since stepping out on my own. Through mentoring, through the NHAA, through the work I've been doing over the last few years. A broader ring of practitioners who see me, cheer for me, and love what I love.

What I felt clearly this weekend is that these connections are not optional. They are not a nice extra that happens around the edges of real work. They are the substrate. The root network beneath us. Without them, we are isolated trees in open ground, exposed and diminished. With them, we are a vast, diverse, resilient forest. And forests don't fall easily.

I’ve heard Tammy Guest call these our 'green threads', the lines running through our professional lineages and the communities we find ourselves in, past and present. I felt every one of them this weekend.

Rosemary: a herb of friendship

Our Herbal Medicine Sustainability SIG ran a session focused on herbs of abundance, a joyful pivot away from our many “herbs-at-risk” toward the plants we can celebrate freely. We chose three: Yarrow, Ribwort, and Rosemary.

Rosemary, I was reminded, is not just a herb of memory. She is a herb of friendship. Traditionally she was pressed into the hands of sailors heading out to sea, to draw them safely home. There is a holding-together energy in this plant that I'd somehow overlooked.

On the Saturday evening, I brought long sprigs of rosemary to the networking drinks and we started making crowns. A nod to the ancient Greeks, who wore them to sharpen memory and honour connection. People began to drift toward our table. Whether it was the fragrance, clean and warm and unmistakeable, or the simple sight of people working with living plant material (something many of us rarely do anymore), something opened up. New friendships formed around those sprigs.

Rosemary as herb of friendship. In practice.

The full circle

By the time Kira finished speaking on Sunday, I was sitting inside something whole. A weekend that had started with a single card draw and arrived somewhere much larger.

The Flower of Life was exactly the right card to draw.

To my naturopathic and herbal medicine family: thank you. For the knowledge you carry, the care you bring, and the generosity with which you show up for each other. I am so glad we are in this together.

We rise together. May we all rise like weeds.