Arizona captivated folk herbalist and Wise Woman Traditionalist Margo Burdek from the moment she set foot on its welcoming landscape.
Finding refuge after a life-threatening illness and a grueling divorce, Burdek self-healed her shattered mind, body and spirit among Prescott friends. She regained strength by inhaling nature, being around children and reflecting on her life.
“I intuitively began this self-healing process for myself and noticed how deprived I was of nurturing,” Burdek said. “We women give so much to others, but do not allow this same nurturing for ourselves. We get so tapped into the masculine world, where everything is mechanical and in some kind of order, that we forget to care for ourselves.”
Exposed to plant therapies as a child through both grandmothers in her native Poland, she studied herbs in earnest as an adult. Formulating remedies to awaken the nurturing goddess in herself and others, she developed Herbal Goddess Organic Teas and Herbal Goddess Healing.
“Every woman has the ability to tap into her inner goddess, where she feels beautiful and in love with herself, tuned in to herself, and acting from the heart space that is the true goddess,” Burdek explained. “You don’t have to be six feet tall. You can be any size, any color, have many different responsibilities, but still take time to feel like a goddess.”
Asserting also that “you can’t just fix things with a pill,” she offers a holistic approach of taking care of oneself, giving with love, and keeping a positive attitude.
Diagnosed with a pituitary gland brain tumor in 2005, Burdek tried traditional medicine. Chicago doctors advised immediate surgery when the tumor grew over an optic nerve. A surgical complication brought severe infection. The wake-up call was a five-day hospital stay for adrenal failure. Despite chronic pain migrating through her shoulders, neck and head, she quit the doctors.
She ventured southwest “to see what Arizona would tell me… [and] I just fell in love. The day I left in April 2017, I never had the pain again. Something changed within me. I felt so welcome here. This land just welcomed me and healed me and pulled all my issues away.”
Once a decade-long preschool teacher, Burdek owned an apothecary in Chicago with her best friend, earned certifications in multiple healing modalities, and now also conducts remote energy work from Prescott with clients around the globe. In June, she graduated as a folk herbalist from the Gaia School of Healing and Earth Education California Branch. It is that practice on which she is most focused these days.
Folk herbalism is more than encapsulating herbs manufactured in a factory, she said. “It’s also known as a ‘Wise Woman Tradition’ going back to the traditions of our grandmothers, the old ways of healing and taking care of ourselves by creating relationships with plants and the world outside the house. It is yet another way to find healing, a spiritual experience. No matter your background, no matter where you come from, you are using God’s gift that was given to us. Just as you connect to God, you can connect to what God has given to us in the healing powers of nature.”
She further explained that “plants are live beings carrying a spirit just like every living thing on Earth. In Wise Women Tradition, we follow our intuition to connect to the plant spirit and find the medicine of healing properties of that particular plant. It is a grounded, holistic, intuitive approach that allows a person and me to create this relationship and space for healing with plants.
“It is a ritual. In creating a very special and sacred space using tools of connecting elements of intuition, shamanic practices and herbal knowledge, we can access places within us that need attention, acceptance, nurturing and ultimately, healing.”
Always learning, Burdek says she has found her purpose in life. “I am going to stay in this field of spiritual alternative healing. At 45, I am so happy with this journey. It has been difficult, beautiful. I love this town. I love this land.” QCBN
By Sue Marceau, QCBN
For more information, visit healinggoddesshealing.com.
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