Roots, Remedies, and Holy Hands

In the hills, heal­ing was nev­er some­thing you went look­ing for some­where else: it was already there.

Growing wild along fence lines. Pushing up through stub­born soil. Hanging in bunch­es from porch rafters, dry­ing slow­ly in the sum­mer heat. It lived in mason jars lined up on kitchen shelves, in salves stirred low and steady, in hands that knew what to reach for with­out need­ing to be told.

Long before phar­ma­cies sat on every cor­ner, peo­ple here learned to lis­ten to the land as if it were speak­ing direct­ly to them.

And in many ways, it was.

My Great Gran didn’t call her­self a heal­er. She wouldn’t have used a word that grand. But she knew what to do when some­one was hurt­ing. She knew which leaves to gath­er, which roots to dig, which teas to steep. She knew how to cool a fever, how to set­tle a stom­ach, how to sit beside a bed and tend to some­one until the worst of it passed.

And she nev­er sep­a­rat­ed that work from her faith.

She’d say things like, “The Lord put it here for a rea­son,” as she crushed pur­ple dead net­tle between her fin­gers or stirred some­thing slow on the stove. Scripture and soil lived side by side in her world. A prayer might be spo­ken while hands worked. A verse might be whis­pered over a jar before it was sealed.

There was no line between the sacred and the prac­ti­cal.
Healing was both.

In Appalachia, much of this knowl­edge was car­ried qui­et­ly — passed from woman to woman, fold­ed into dai­ly life. It wasn’t writ­ten down in text­books. It didn’t need to be. It was remem­bered in the body.

You learned by watch­ing.
By help­ing.
By pay­ing atten­tion when some­one old­er said, “Go gath­er me some of that grow­ing by the fence.”

There were reme­dies for every­thing — or at least, for what could be helped. Onion poul­tices, gar­lic steeped in hon­ey, sas­safras tea in the spring, com­frey for aches, plan­tain for stings. Some of it we under­stand now through sci­ence. Some of it we don’t. But all of it came from the same place.

Care.

Because when you lived far from doc­tors, when mon­ey was scarce, when help wasn’t always com­ing — you learned to tend to each oth­er with what you had.

And what they had was the land. And their hands.

That kind of heal­ing required more than knowl­edge. It required pres­ence. You didn’t rush it. You stayed. You checked on peo­ple. You brought broth. You sat at bed­sides. You paid atten­tion to the small shifts — the way someone’s col­or changed, the way their breath­ing eased, the way their spir­it lift­ed or didn’t.

It was relational.

And it was sacred, whether any­one used that word or not.

When Christianity took deep­er root in the moun­tains, these prac­tices didn’t dis­ap­pear. They adapt­ed. Scripture was woven in, not laid over. A rem­e­dy might be giv­en along­side a prayer. A heal­ing might be attrib­uted as much to God’s mer­cy as to the plant itself.

Not because peo­ple were con­fused — but because they under­stood some­thing we are still try­ing to relearn: that care is not divided.

The same hands that turned Bible pages also worked the earth. The same voic­es that sang hymns also spoke qui­et instruc­tions over boil­ing pots and aching bod­ies. There was no con­tra­dic­tion in that. Only continuity.

Over time, though, some of these ways were pushed aside. Labeled as back­ward. Dismissed as super­sti­tion. The knowl­edge that once kept peo­ple alive became some­thing to ques­tion, to cor­rect, to replace.

And some of it was lost.

But not all.

Pieces of it are still here — car­ried in mem­o­ry, in habit, in the way some­one still reach­es for a cer­tain tea when they’re sick, or rubs some­thing into a sore mus­cle because “that’s what we always used.”

And maybe that’s worth pay­ing atten­tion to.

Not to roman­ti­cize the past. Not to reject mod­ern med­i­cine or pre­tend we don’t need it. But to remem­ber that heal­ing has always been more than clin­i­cal. It has always involved care, con­nec­tion, and a will­ing­ness to sit with some­one in their suffering.

That part didn’t come from a phar­ma­cy.
It came from people.

From hands that didn’t rush.
From knowl­edge that was earned slow­ly.
From a belief — qui­et but steady — that the world itself held what we need­ed, if we learned how to listen.

My Great Gran believed that.

She believed heal­ing wasn’t some­thing you per­formed. It was some­thing you tend­ed. Something you showed up for again and again, with what­ev­er you had.

A root.
A rem­e­dy.
A prayer.
A pair of steady hands.

And in a world that moves faster than the body knows how to fol­low, I find myself won­der­ing if that kind of heal­ing is what we’re still hun­gry for.

Not instead of what we have now —
but along­side it.

Because even today, when every­thing else feels uncer­tain, one thing remains true:

Care still heals.