Shayne Case Apothecary | Flower Essences & Belonging

The online Shayne Case Flower Essence Shop is now officially reopened!

I spent part of my childhood in the long prairie grasses of South Dakota. I remember sitting in a field, concocting mud and seed potions. I was so small that only when the grass bent low in the wind could I see or be seen. When the tide of grass rose again, I was hidden. For hours, I mixed and made medicines for toads and big-lipped river fish. The tall, spike-headed plants with draping petals tutored me. I would ask, “Two drops of dandelion milk?” and she would nod her heavy head. Later, I learned her name: Ičahpe hú, Auntie Echinacea.

When I wasn’t among the prairie oceans, I was learning the language of home—one of silence and nodding. Belonging meant pleasing, and pleasing my mother was survival. I was tender, sensitive, porous. My mother, herself still a child, raised my brother and me as we moved from home to home, country to country. I was the feral one—tamed more by the wild rose thorns than by the house-playing of family.

Tending and being tended by the wild was how I survived those years. Later, during the desert years of academia, I traded the comfort of mallow leaves for what I thought was the key: knowledge. But I was lonelier than ever, impoverished in the language of human relationship. I carried others’ suffering as my currency of love. I became sick with undiagnosable conditions until the prairie called me back in dreams and returned me to my original apothecary. I threw out my books and began listening again.

For decades now, I have listened to the songs, poems, and stories of the plant people, stone people, and sacred places of my ancestors. They healed me. They taught me to value my own worth, to say no, and to trust that I am lovable—not because of what I do for others, but because I am a sentient being living in the arms of Earth. From them, I have learned the true meaning of belonging.

The flower essence formulas I offer are born from this listening. Each formula is a story, a song, a poem about community and love. Each one holds lifetimes of relationship. They are immersion experiences into the language of love. Every flower, stone, tree, and sacred place that shaped these essences lives in my blood as an Indigenous person of the prairie and the forest.

I am a medicine person, and my work is to let the songs of Earth vibrate through me, so I may bring you the story of your own well-being—your own belonging—your own way to love.

I invite you to explore these flower essences in my online shop. Please enjoy them, and if you feel called, I would love to hear how you experience these stories.

With love,

Shayne Case