Longview: Dyo you feel like this is your off-season?

Suanny: Yes. And what I like to do in my off-season is to take a lot of sun and a lot of ocean. The quietness of the ocean gives me a moment to not overthink with my ego. I feel like in moments of creation when we are overthinking or wanting to overproduce is when we are creating through the ego. But when one has those moments of quietness it can be like a lightbulb comes on, or a thought strikes that is really powerful and nourishing for your body. Those are moments when I am like - Oh, I need to do that the next season!.

It has been really nice to have that privilege to take off and go away to have this quiet time. Because I am a healer, - I consider that we all carry medicine, and I have been gifted the wisdom of knowing the medicine that I carry, - I need to have the moments of separation from that work so that I can replenish and also so my creative energy can come from a place not of lack but of abundance. In general I think that the off-season for me is to be able to give my relationships more love when I show up, because I am coming from this place of sun energy and not from a place of need.

L: Absolutely! With so much of your attention often turned outwards, teaching, sharing and caring for the earth and for others, how do you nourish yourself in the process?  

S: I have noticed in myself that the older I get, intentional rest is becoming a big part of it. Because we have been so programmed to just do, do do, produce and be on the go, and I have so much fire in me that I just want to be doing something all the time - either physical movement or be a part of the movement or, like, create the potion. Intentional rest is important for me to replenish and to be able to come from a place of abundance. And the waters! The water and the sun, the fire, those are the elements that replenish who I am and what I am here to offer. And not to say that the other elements are important too, I connect deeply with the earth and winds. Surfing to me is all the elements. - A wave is better when the winds are going the right way. 

Also making sure that I am making time for my own rituals and ceremonies. I love sunrise and sunset [surf] sessions. There is so much romance in both. If you are alone or with someone. And getting in touch with my ancestors, getting in touch with my elders. - Part of my ritual is working with tobacco, being in prayer, in song, tending to a fire, waking up in the sunrise. Similarly, with the moon, watching the moon rise and set, connecting to my femininity and the creative energy that the moon can bring. Having these moment with the sun, the moon and the elements and understanding how the cosmos works helps to replenish my energy. 

L: So in other words, doing the rituals for yourself before you do them for others. - That sounds like a familiar universal truth! 

Longview: In relation to all this, how do you relate to the seasonal cycles? 

Suanny: I think they are important to understand where our consciousness is. But, personally, growing up in a place where it felt like spring all the time, with nice weather or rainy season, it is hard to relate to the seasons. But it is nice to have the equinoxes and solstices to better understand the energies we are going through, the light and darkness. When it comes to hot and cold, I have a hard time. I would rather have the warm sun hahah!

L: Growing and tending to so many plants today, do you have an early memory of being in a garden or around plants? 

S: Yes. I come from a lineage of medicine women. Although my grandma did not want to talk about it, due to its taboo nature for indigenous and black people, I found it out later as I got older. Linked to colonialism, the archetype of the curandero in our country was the person who was selling lies. I want to do more research on this, but I remember when growing up that the curandera was seen more like a show, more of a performance, so people did not take it seriously. So I think there was a shame for my grandmother to talk about her mom as one of them. That to say, I grew up around nature, in the mountains of Medellin, Colombia. My cousins and I used to play in the bushes of coffee plants and we used to eat the coffee berries. So our experience with plants was more of this curiosity. My mom has been using plants since I was very little, like chamomile was such a staple of our household for so many things. 

My grandpa was also a farmer and a really hard working person. I remember he used to garden in the back of our house, grow veggies and fruit trees. He was also very outspoken politically and had to leave where he was from because of it. As I get older I have realized that all of these passions I have for activism and freedom, they also come from my family. Picking up on what they could not do, because it was a lot harder back then. 

In the town where my grandma lived, they would trade - she would come with a bunch of tomatoes from the neighborhood and we would give them cabbage, kale or collards, or anything we had. It was a really cool system, not as a thing, but something that we just did because. It was like ‘we have abundance, let’s trade with it!’. So I grew up learning these other concepts of economy, but also later having to understand capitalism. Seeing these two financial worlds existing in the same space together was really cool, and I think it informs a lot how I see the world now.

L: Do you think having that experience and access to different models of economy, do you think that has anything to do with the fact that you lived several generations together? Fostering that possibility of exchange and learning this way from your elders? 

S: Yes, I think growing up as an immigrant kid in this country, obviously in my head I got to become more into the capitalist mindset because it was a way of fitting in and surviving. But my entire life my concept of money has been that if you have it, you share it. I think that comes from the place of sharing your food and produce. In our home, if we had food on the table the entire neighborhood could come and have a plate, it was not the sense of ownership that I feel is very present in the United States. I do know that Colombia has become more individualistic because of war and suffering, but growing up I felt more freedom around the sharing and access that was in our town. What was local always felt like enough. Looking at the stars every night, and feel that all is well.

I think as we get exposed to capitalism that it contaminates our own imagination of playing with what we have in the moment. We just want to go somewhere else rather than being in the present moment with what we have. Capitalism has made us believe that happiness is found in consumerism rather than in experiences and in relating to each other.

L: How long have you been in New York state?

S: I think it has been 15-16 years maybe. When I flew into the United States I flew into New York actually, JFK. I remember it really well, looking at the city from the sky it looked like a Christmas tree, there were more lights than I had ever seen in my life! I was 12 years old. My mom was living in New Jersey at the time, so I went to school there for a little bit. Then we moved to Florida, and later on I came to New York. It has now been the place I have been for the longest time in my life. New York state is what I consider my home. 

L: Perhaps this differs depending on where you are, but in what ways does the natural world shape your work or the way you work? Or shape how you get inspired?

S: That is such a big question. I think the natural world is my main teacher, and so I think that every time I learn something about how to tend to a plant, how to trim it, make a medicine or utilize an ingredient, it teaches me so much about myself and how I should treat the world. So I think that is how it has shaped me. The relational work that I do now is connected to all the things I have learned from nature. Like, if I need to water that plant more - maybe I need to water my human relationships more! Or I need to give them a little bit of compost - and what does that mean for the interactions that I have, what do we need to let go of and alchemize together? All these things that nature is showing us. Another example is the water, when I am surfing and I get knocked down by a wave and I am probably out of breath for what feels like forever - it has taught be the real embodiment of surrendering. All the lessons of how I am now and how I show up in my life has been shaped by nature.

I am a bit skeptical when it comes to teachers or having a mentor. I think my mentorship goes through touching plants and also through the indigenous elders that I have been blessed to meet and fully trust through years of relationship. I think the most honest thing as a teacher is the nature we see around ourselves. If you compare all these things that are happening to nature you can learn so much about yourself.

L: That is super interesting! So you were even skeptical when you were in school for nutrition too? 

S: All the time! I was questioning everything. I am really smart, and I think because of that I feel that humans sometimes are complicating their learning process. I believe learning is done better through experience. I do not see myself being book smart - I hope rather to be a wise person rooted in love, honesty and compassion. That is really what I am here to be! I believe in wisdom, because that is what is activating my intuition, my heart center and collective stories of the world and myself. I think schooling to me was just to prove to myself that I could do it, and I felt I was learning things, but only to a point. After that I needed to search for the experience that was going to get me to where I could really feel and understand things. I am very visual and I can listen well, and I went to school for nutrition, anatomy and physiology, but it was more exciting to me to really see how the body moves. In real life. I think it’s been like that for everything. I tried to go to school for herbalism and I did not like it either. Our brains can only take in so much per school day!

Longview: Through your work with indigenous communities in such varied places as Ecuador, Colombia and the Hopi Nation, do you think there is a red thread in how you think of your plant community?

Suanny: Yes! Circling back to the tobacco; all the indigenous communities that I work with, one of their main medicine is tobacco. And they have an understanding of the power of tobacco, the power of land, and farming. In reality indigenous people are farmers, and although some have been detached from it, a lot of them are holding on to farming and bringing it back to their communities. The thread is that most are fighting for sovereignty over themselves and nature. And the other thread I see is that a lot of them have been corrupted by the western economy, and by tourists that impose their own belief of what is helping communities instead of asking. There is this beautiful radical thing happening in indigenous communities that I have visited and worked with, but there is also a lot of damage that the United States or Europeans have created. We need to make sure we don’t romanticize people, but we instead need to return to asking what are the teachings and principles of community and nature. There are so many amazing indigenous tribes and elders that are doing so much beautiful work and then there are also others that have been corrupted by greed. After all, assimilating to capitalism can be harmful, especially for those that have never been exposed to it before.

L: It seems to us that being guided by plants is the most natural thing for you. Do you feel like you mostly turn to plants for medicine, cooking or healing? Or for something else?

S: All of it yes, depending on what my need is - plants are all needed for all of the above! 

L: And they are also all very much intertwined right, like, how cooking is also healing.

S: Yes. The main way I work with plants is as my teachers and guides. They have a lot of messages and want to be acknowledged and listened to. That is the number one reason why I turn to them. To learn more about myself.

L: Describe your dream garden.(Or a garden from a dream?!)

S: My dream garden will be to be able to have a food forest. Filled with nut, fruit and native trees, as well as medicinal plants, perennials and other edibles. It would be like an experience of taking a walk into a forest that coexists with our daily life instead of being just a designated plot. To be able to just throw seeds and for them to grow and everyone can have abundance. To have healthy soil all around so that we can let the plants grow the way they want to instead of creating barriers for them. It is a bit like in the jungle, but we would still have to be intentional about sowing and tending to this forest and what is there. Growing wild, but loved. Kind of like us - like just let us do what we need to do and in the place where we need to be. To able to learn what kind of support is needed instead of us imposing it.