I've had a lifelong love of tea. This began in childhood with casual afternoon teas. My mom always called this "tea time" and she served it to us on a tray with chocolate chip cookies, fresh-baked out of the oven. This is one of the positive things I remember about her mothering my siblings and me, growing up. There's something about being raised southern that naturally connects you to a culture of tea. Tea service is a love language. 

In college, I inherited my Grandmother’s silver tea service set. I remember being so honored to have it. I couldn’t wait to have guests come over to my house for afternoon tea. I’d dreamed of having a home my whole life, mostly to be able to host loved ones who were passing through. I hand polished the silver myself and kept it proudly displayed in an antique cabinet I’d purchased from Craigslist. The first tea I ever hosted was in the living room of the house I lived in in Savannah, Georgia with my sister. I was 19, the house was super haunted, and I loved it with my whole heart.

That tells you a lot about me: the spiritual, the metaphysical, and the romantic—those have been my steady favorites since day one. Everything has a spirit. Everything.

Part of my family is English so I’ve spent a lot of time there. When I was visiting, I always wanted to go to daily afternoon tea. The smell of the old tea rooms, the stories, the energy, the culture—I loved it. English and Irish are my strongest bloodlines, so it makes sense why my special relationship with tea always felt like a connection to my bone land. I hadn’t considered the connection could be even cooler than this yet. I still thought it was just an ancestral thing back then.

Everywhere I traveled in the world, I’d seek out tea rooms. I didn’t think about it much—it was just a natural thing I did. When I lived in New York City, I had a favorite tea room where I did a lot of my early writing you may have read on instagram. During this time in my life, I had a tea that I drank nearly every day. It was an organic peach oolong and I loved it so much that I had it shipped to my apartment in bulk. I remember it was very heavy for me to carry up four flights of stairs, that it took up half the space in my undersized fridge, but I positively could not live without it. That was the first time I consciously realized I might have a “thing” for tea. I was 24.

Flash forward to 2020, when I began a formal tea practice. It was the week of my 30th birthday. Through the deepening of my relationship to tea in this way, I transitioned from a casual drinker of tea to someone devoted to learning from tea as a teacher. I learned that tea had always been holding me and meeting me where I was all those years before. Even though I hadn’t realized it, she had been with me in some of my biggest moments in life, sitting with me like an old friend. And sometimes like a mother. A sister. A wise grandmother. A playmate. A mystical being. She comes through in many forms, depending on what you need when you sit with her. Once I dove into my tea practice, it all started to make sense. The deeper you go, the more she reveals to you.

Tea has this feeling of home, coming home—to myself, to my people, to my purpose, to my connection with nature, to my intuitive powers, to my relationship with God. I have learned that the lineage of tea goes back way further than my early days growing up in the south, or my ancestral lineage in the UK and Ireland. Tea came to humans thousands of years ago—legend says as early as 2700 BC—that’s how long we’ve been allies. I find this to be incredible, that we have been sitting together for comfort and community over shared cups of tea that long…how could something like that not be sacred?

When I was a young girl, I had a vision of myself serving medicine to people. I did not have any context for understanding it then, but it was clear as day. I knew it would be a part of my path at some point in my life, with no understanding of how it would come. (How does anyone get the life experience to become qualified to serve an ancient medicine? The answer is you don’t—you just learn how to get more and more out of the way so the ancient medicine can speak through you. You learn how to walk in two worlds at once—the human and the spirit—so you can meet both more fully. You learn how to hold space to help others open to what they are seeking too). I thought maybe this vision was about me serving communion, that I would perhaps be led to become a priest. It turned out that sitting in plant medicine ceremonies, with various plant spirits, would be the thing that showed me the way. It turned out, it was tea asking me to work with her all along. I’d always felt it. I just didn’t know until it was time to know. When I learned the steps of the ceremony for the first time, it’s like I’d been there before. It’s like a part of me was returning home.

Through my years of near daily ceremony with tea, I become a tea ceremonialist. My original intention wasn’t to learn the ceremony to become someone who would guide others in this way. I actually did not know at first my why for being there—I just knew it’s where I was meant to be in that moment of my life. It was just a feeling. My offering to initiate you into the ritual of tea ceremony came because tea asked me to show up and allow her medicine to move through me. Tea asked me to share her, so here I am, listening. Serving tea ceremony isn’t about me—it’s about tea. I am just the vessel of love she’s speaking to you through. One of many.

I am human, just like you. We are on this journey together. Tea practice is not a journey on the self improvement hamster wheel. Tea ceremony is a practice of becoming more present with life, love, and all that it means to be human.

Tea is medicine for the heart, one I am eternally grateful to have found.

If you’re feeling called to tea too, even if you can’t explain why, you’re in the right place.

This is my tea story. What will yours be…