Berenice Dimas, a doula and herbalist from East Los Angeles, is full of wisdom from her ancestors. Here are some examples:
Dandelion essence for restorative powers during pregnancy.
To supplement with iron and minerals in preparation for labor, take alfalfa, Mexican honeysuckle, and moringa.
Blue Corn Atole helps with milk production and nutrition after birth.
When we harvest a plant we give thanks: prayer, blood, water, compost, song.
These aren't your typical pre- or post-natal prescriptions. But Dimas isn't your typical herbalist. As founder of HoodHerbalism, which provides community-based herbal education to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, Dimas travels the state teaching thousands of people to connect with the plants around them. On her Instagram channel, she shares recipes, plant-inspired art and quotes with her nearly 60,000 followers, and gives them a glimpse into her herbal medicine practice with groups of all ages.
These days, she's been blending her in-depth knowledge of herbal medicines with her training as a midwife, a commitment she says was born out of witnessing time and again in hospital rooms the racist treatment that leads to higher infant and maternal mortality rates for people of color.
Now, Dimas is virtually mentoring a growing network of BIPOC birth workers to make plants their allies by digging into the soil and their own families’ ancestral traditions.
Dimas' own herbal medicine roots come from her mother, but she formalized her practice after learning from traditional herbalists in Mexico and Western herbalists in the U.S. Since hosting her first class in a friend's East Los Angeles backyard six years ago, the 36-year-old has focused on providing accessible plant remedies to address the health concerns that most affect BIPOC communities.
Black, Indigenous and some Latinx communities suffer disproportionate deaths from childbirth-related causes, and the country already ranks among the worst for maternal and child health among other wealthy nations. Expanding the range of birth settings where doulas and midwives are available is one way advocates hope to close the gap, and birth workers are reaching for as many tools as they can to address the crisis, including accessible, culturally appropriate plant medicines.
Dimas says her love of plants began before she started her business, before she even knew the names of the medicines that cured fevers and infections as a child: It started with her great-grandmother, who taught her indigenous plant remedies in Mexico, and trickled down to her container gardens in El Monte, a predominantly Latino city in the San Gabriel Valley.
Born in Mexico City, Dimas moved with her family to Los Angeles when she was 3. Her mother loved to use potted plants to cure the ailments of her family and neighbors, and the practice was not only natural but also safer and more efficient than struggling with a new language and an unfamiliar hospital system.
Then, as a high school teacher in the Bay Area, Dimas came across a class that labeled the wisdom she'd grown up with: herbal medicine. She fell in love with what she calls spirit work, using herbal cleansing techniques called lympias to help heal patients from shock and trauma. She returned to Los Angeles to uplift the city that raised her, and her business name pays homage to the resourceful thinking of the region she calls home.
“Even though there's a lot of concrete, there's always greenery growing,” she says. “Even though my area doesn't have much access to green space, there are a lot of people on my block who grow all kinds of things.”
While herbalists often follow family traditions in plant healing, Dimas's motivation for going into childbirth was inspired by a dream she had of her grandmother, who appeared to her about three months after her death and told her granddaughter to learn about childbirth. Dimas wasn't quite sure what that meant, but soon after, she received an email about a doula training program for people of color.
She completed her doula training in 2014 after a year of learning from nurses and midwives and conducting a free birth with a doula mentor.
While the services that doulas provide vary, their primary role is to provide emotional support, resources, and advocacy before, during, and after birth. Though the work was rewarding, she witnessed microaggressions, bias, and criminalization of clients at the hospital. On one occasion, she felt helpless and was reduced to tears when a woman of color was threatened with a court order because she wanted to postpone her C-section during labor.
Structural and interpersonal racism make hospital births unsafe for people of color. Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native birthing women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, and the rate increases with age. Black babies are twice as likely to die as non-Hispanic white babies.
“These figures are unacceptable to me. I cannot ignore them after seeing how many people in my community have lost their lives at the hands of people whose rights to legitimate childbirth procedures in hospitals have been violated,” she said.
Dimas is enrolled in midwifery school so she can act as a qualified medical provider during the birth process — while doulas aren't allowed to make medical decisions, midwives can provide medical care and have more independence.
One reason plant therapy is appealing for dramatic changes like pregnancy and childbirth is because it incorporates physical, emotional and spiritual health. But at the time, Dimas's doula program and others didn't center conversations about plant therapy. Even now, as doula services have become more institutionalized, Dimas says some hospital contracts still specifically prohibit recommending plant therapy.
“I was interested in learning about the uses of plants to support birth, which led me to now go to midwifery school and share what I know,” she said.
Despite thousands of years of history, herbal medicine for pregnant women has been stigmatized in Western medicine, which is based on medical interventions: surgery and drugs. That's why Dimas started teaching herbal medicine classes to birth workers.
One of Dimas' students, Prashante Bailey Lewis, a natural hair care professional in Sacramento who is 25 weeks pregnant, said her doctor prescribed medication for preeclampsia and gestational diabetes based on general statistics but didn't take into account her current blood tests or lifestyle habits, nor did she get encouraged to use the natural remedies she'd been familiar with since her youth.
Plant therapy can be preventative, helping the body adapt to the changes that come with a growing baby. It also works gently for pregnant women who have strong reactions to certain tastes or can't take other medications. Dimas also uses remedies like flower essences to help restore emotional balance when feeling anxious or when her clients are facing traumatic events in their lives.
Maria Lozano was one of Dimas's earliest students, whose mother died shortly after she gave birth to her child, and other herbalists came to her side, offering her remedies to help with her grief and her body.
“Whether it's dealing with grief, having a baby, having breastfeeding issues, we know which plants can energetically respond and support those needs,” she said.
Lozano herself is a doula and clinically licensed social worker in Ventura County who began studying plant therapy as a way to reconnect with her Mexican roots and affirm the lifestyle of the families she met as a community mental health provider. After her mother's death, she inherited her mother's garden, where she tends lush spearmint, avocado, orange trees, and roses for her clients' postpartum baths. Dimas encourages her students to plant and use what grows in their own climate, so plant therapy can be accessible to everyone.
Developing these long-term relationships with plants is important to Dimas, especially given the rapid rise in popularity of herbal medicines in the United States, where habitat loss and overharvesting put some species at risk, alarming people who rely solely on herbal medicines. For Dimas, growing his own plants rather than using store-bought plants or essential oils of unknown origin is a political decision.
“Plants aren't just there for us, they're there for many other ecosystems as well,” she said.
She wants students to think about plant migration patterns, the use of plant medicines and ways to extend the lifespan of certain plants.
The relationship with plants should also be reciprocal, according to Dimas, and she asks her students to think about what they can give back to plants.
“I always tell my students that plants have living souls,” she says, “and we need to think of plants not as objects or things that can be commodified.”
Dimas dreams of eventually opening a birth center in Southeast Los Angeles that would offer reproductive health services, queer- and trans-inclusive family planning, a Chinese herbal garden and, if appropriate, a place to give birth.
