Advance Praise

Fertile Roots is a love letter to women’s wisdom, intuition, and the profound connection between our bodies and the natural world. A celebration of the healing power of plants and the earth’s innate ability to nourish, nurture, and restore, this book invites women to reconnect with the rhythms of their bodies, the wisdom of generations past, and the gentle, transformative medicine of herbs. It is a beautiful reminder that nature holds so much of what we need to care for ourselves and cultivate our reproductive health.

— Susan Magsamen, bestselling author of Your Brain On Art

Fertile Roots shows how herbal medicine has very ancient roots, is now having a renaissance, and is particularly important for women. I congratulate Emily Donaldson for giving us this pioneering work about an important trend toward partnership!

— Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations

Fertile Roots weaves accounts of women who work with plant medicines navigating the blessings and challenges of fertility across time and cultures. Emily explores the lost art of herbal medicine in bringing health, comfort, and life-giving care to all stages of a women's reproductive journey: she invites us to consider traditional knowledge alongside contemporary understanding to provide the best care to women in their reproductive years. Beautifully written and deeply respectful, this book offers a meaningful and expansive contribution to the field of fertility education.

— Mischa Schuler, clinical herbalist and author

Around the world, roughly eight in ten people rely on plant medicines for primary care. In the United States, where herbal knowledge was pushed out of mainstream medicine and access to reproductive care is shrinking, most women are left to find that knowledge on their own. In Fertile Roots, anthropologist Emily Donaldson argues that the answer isn't a choice between Western medicine and traditional practice, but an integration of the two. Drawing on stories from India, where a woman facing a hysterectomy found relief through Ayurveda, to a kitchen in the Marquesas and a doula's home in Louisiana, she shows how herbs already support fertility, pregnancy, loss and postpartum health. With the World Health Organization calling for traditional medicine to be woven into health systems, Fertile Roots is a clear-eyed, practical case for collaboration among patients, researchers, clinicians and herbalists, and for care that is safer, more personal and within reach.

— Frida Polli, MIT neuroscientist and women’s health innovator

Donaldson brings the curiosity and care of an anthropologist to the rich world of medicinal herbs, and takes you along for the ride. Buzzing with passion like the hum of bees in mint flowers, her work inspires and uplifts women and herbs across the globe and through history. Blending academic and on-the-gound wisdom, Fertile Roots builds an essential path to women's health, a path both ancestral and informed, and deliciously fragrant with the aromas of healing plants.

— Marie White, herbalist and author of The Intimate Herbal and The Herbal Doula