On the Land in Our Bones

Tying cultural survival to earth-based knowledge, Lebanese ethnobotanist, sovereignty steward, and cultural worker Layla K. Feghali offers a layered history of the healing plants of Cana’an (the Levant) and the Crossroads (“Middle East”) and asks into the ways we become free from the wounds of colonization and displacement. Layla remaps Cana’an and its crossroads, exploring the complexities, systemic impacts, and yearnings of diaspora. She shows how ancestral healing practices connect land and kin—calling back and forth across geographies and generations and providing an embodied lifeline for regenerative healing and repair. 

Anchored in a praxis she calls Plantcestral Re-Membrance, Layla asks how we find our way home amid displacement: How do we embody what binds us together while holding the ways we’ve been wrested apart? What does it mean to be of a place when extraction and empire destroy its geographies? What can we restore when we reach beyond what’s been lost and tend to what remains? How do we cultivate kinship with the lands where we live, especially when migration has led us to other colonized territories? 

Layla’s latest book, The Land in Our Bones, recounts vivid stories of people and places across Cana’an, sharing lineages of folk healing and eco-cultural stewardship: those passed down by matriarchs; plants and practices of prenatal and postpartum care; mystical traditions for spiritual healing; earth-based practices for emotional wellness; plant tending for bioregional regeneration; medicinal plants and herbal protocols; cultural remedies and recipes; and more. 

Join Layla and initiated Priestess, Energy Worker, Medicine Woman, and Flower Practitioner Maryam Hasnaa for a profound conversation that invites us to re-member our roots, to deepen our relationship with the lands where we live in diaspora, and is a beckoning call towards belonging, healing, and freedom through tending the land in your own bones.
 

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Layla K. Feghali is a cultural worker and folk herbalist who lives between her ancestral village in Lebanon, and California, where she was raised. Feghali’s work is about restoring relationships to earth-based ancestral wisdom as an avenue towards eco-cultural stewardship, healing, and liberation. Feghali’s methods emphasize plants of place and lineage. Her company, River Rose Re-membrance, features a line of plantcestral medicine, education, and other culturally-rooted offerings. It also hosts the Ancestral HUB, an online space for the cross-pollination of ancestral knowledge across diasporic and home communities from Southwest Asia and North Africa.
 

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Maryam Hasnaa is an initiated Priestess, Energy Worker, Medicine Woman and Flower Practitioner, she has found her calling in offering training and mentorship for those with the trait of high sensitivity. She is highly intuitive and a lover of all things that create a feeling of being connected to something bigger than ourselves. Maryam uses her own highly sensitive gifts to remind other beings of the energetic nature of this universe. She has learned the importance of living in alignment with one’s intuition and most authentic self. Maryam has synthesized ancient teachings along with cutting edge information to create a unique system of healing for those on the path of Liberation. Through shining her light so brightly her intention is that others will see themselves reflected and do the same. 
 

We are grateful to our Bookstore Partner

Marcus Books is the nation’s oldest Black-owned independent bookstore celebrating its 60th year. Marcus Books’ mission is to provide opportunities for Black folks and their allies to celebrate and learn about Black people everywhere. Learn more about Marcus Books.

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