Origin Story
How it all began…from my “love at first site” moment with flower essences, to how I knew I needed to share them. The Beginning of the Love
It all began in New York City. The year was 2016. The place, MNDFL Brooklyn - the meditation studio I used to frequent and work-study at for years. I believe it was Winter, it was dark outside. We had just come out of an evening sit, and a group of women who I began to call community were gathered around the kitchen island of the studio. My teacher, Megan, pulled out a small vial from her purse, and Susan next to her smiled. They knew. Something in my eyes sparkled. What could this magic BE? A woman with a tiny vial in her purse? I must know more! This must be something vibrantly important to me!” - my inner dialogue.
What is this?
This is a flower essence - Star of Bethlehem. It’s good for depression and sadness. Susan nodded.
I must know more.
And that, my friends, is how it all began :’)
The glee and excitement that follows is a love that has never left me. Insert: What’s This from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
From there, Megan started telling me more about flower essences and her beloved teacher, Julia Graves. The first flower essence I took - Lily of the Valley. This might have been my first conscious introduction to subtle medicine. I hadn’t yet started studying Reiki, and my beautiful obsession with meditation was focused on Zen and Meta practices.
Throughout living in NYC, I would read here and there, I took one-off herbalism classes at Flower Power, and I began working with Alexis Smart Flower Remedies, Flower Essence Society, and Bach Remedies. I learned that I had even taken flower remedies as a child, with Rescue Remedy, when I had anxiety - mixing the dropper bottle into orange juice.
From that time until now, I can’t think of more than a month passing in which I was not working with a dosing bottle of some kind.
Sidenote: In the book Journey of Souls and other past life regression research - many folks report being shown a screen of their life before they incarnate. The souls choose what they will look like, who their parents will be, the karma we sign up for, etc. One of the concepts shared in these reports, is that the souls are shown specific moments in life to remember, so that when incarnated, the glimmer reminds us we are on the right path. For example, a soul can be shown a specific scene of a watch in the sun, on the wrist of a person at a cafe counter. And that particular moment, will trigger the soul (once human) to Knowing that the wearer of the watch, is their soulmate. It’s like a sparkle of a breadcrumb, that might not make any common or logical sense to us, but pings a remembering deep within.
I believe, when Megan pulled that vial out of her purse, it was a “watch moment” for me. I remember specifically thinking, “I have no idea what this is, but this will be important in my life. Later in my life.” I was 22, considering myself a novice herbalist for myself, friends, and family - preparing teapots of oatstraw for myself and my roommate after long days of New York livin’. Three years later I move from my Brooklyn to Hollywood.
The Middle
Two years further down, I begin studying folk herbalism with Marysia Miernowska at The School of the Sacred Wild. Through the School of the Sacred Wild syllabus and community and teachers, and diving into essences in my spare time even more, I start learning about SO MANY MORE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ESSENCES. AND WOW, WHAT A DELICIOUS RABBIT HOLE TO FALL INTO.
As I spiral into the green witch ways deeper and deeper…I begin to make my own flower essences. I start hearing plant spirits the same way I hear the spirit guides of my clients, or like when I was a child playing outside. Working for other herbalists, reading as much as I could, continuing to build and nurture my healing practice, all in my studio apartment.
Once I started making my own essences, I had to share them with my clients. At this point, I had been seeing clients in my Reiki healing practice for about three years, and they started sharing with me how the essences were supporting them in their healing. One way of healing helping us shine our light, our true essences, shedding the onion layers of wounding and ways of being; the other way of healing, raising our vibration to meet the flowers, dispelling anxiety, increasing the feelings of love and safety in the body. One essence medicine meets another essence medicine. Two puzzle pieces click together.
The Summer after my first year of herbalism school, I attended Spirit Weavers for the first time. There I take Essence Making & Taking with Stargazer Li, a class that I feel the threads of still impact me to this day…with so much love and exploration and fluidity. Li shared words and teachings about essences that I hadn’t ever considered - the impact of our vocabulary, the mystery of the dance of life, the presence, the magic, the science…it informed how I now teach “getting high on the subtle” in my workshops. And greatly expanded me in many other ways, one of my most beloved teachers.
As I was living nomadically that Summer, one day I zoomed-into a workshop with the wonderful and mythopoetic Liz Migliorelli, shortly thereafter getting to welcome her onto my podcast(see episode #30 of Spiral Deeper). It all began to click more and more, but of course like the essences work, subtly.
When Fall began and so did year two of herbalism school, and at a moment of crossroads and in-between to the extreme, I was living with Hillary and becoming part of her family. I would record podcast episodes and send bottles of Starlight to my guests as thank-you’s, talk about them in client sessions, and in retrospect - I was falling deeper in love with making medicine. I was seeing the power of medicine made in ceremony with love and intention, and how it felt different than medicine made other ways.
December 4, 2024, I quietly announce what I have been up to. I continue to gift the essences to everyone I know and clients, and receive love-note after love-note for the remedy.
That same week, I move to a small town in the mountains. Through Winter, I followed the depths of the void of creativity and liminal meditations. Sleep, hibernation. I settled into my new home. That whole Winter, I kept hearing the word Essence. It began to follow me in every waking moment and dream, slipping into thoughts and conversations and signs. Just like Winter does.
Essence, pearl-essence, essential nature.
It was all I could think about.
In March 2025, Connor and I traveled for three weeks to New Mexico and to an ancestral skill share gathering. We were gone, out of cell-reception and wifi zones, deep in connection with land and food and good people. And then something happened.
When we returned home one week after the Spring Equinox, everything was in bloom.
My heart sang. My hands reached for every petal, my ears buzzed with the whispers of the flowers on their tongues. Circe never felt more true to how I felt that Spring. Walking on every trail, every breeze, every flower, spoke to me. They each called me to make them an essence. And it was pure romance, pure channeling, pure truth in connection.
I could do nothing for two weeks but make flower essences, think of them, be with them.
It was like when you first fall in love, the colors of the world are brighter and each song is about the one you love.
The flowers had spoken.
I had to share their medicine.
It was just like the Wheel of the Year moving through me, living through me. The meditation and quiet of Winter, and the sudden sprouting of Spring, breathing through me.I was in awe, as I had become the process.
I walked with my dear friend Camille on one of the trails that I grew to know well, asking her “Are you sure I know enough to share this medicine publicly?” All the questions we have when we are unsure. But it was clear, to both of us, that the flowers were wanting to be shared through me. And not only that, I was having pregnancy and birth dreams, seeing rabbits everywhere, the call of creation was moving through me.
If you would like to listen to me speak this story, I recommend episode #50 of Spiral Deeper - THE FLOWERS HAVE SPOKEN.
The process of creating the labels, Spring/Summer 2025.
The Present
So that’s how it happened. 10 years ago I met my first flower essence, and today I sit in my apothecary next to the jars of mothers and daughters of bottles. 1 year after deciding to share this medicine publicly.
What a great love story. And what an honor to be a vessel for this true healing.
I’m currently taking Whale Song - an essence blend of White Rose with pink-tipped petals from Ojai, homeopathic drop of Ocean from California, Selenite, and Pearl. As I enter a new chapter of life, this remedy is for Rebirth. I made it for when you have emerged from the molting cocoon and chrysalis of life, from the womb of the Earth when you emerge into the waters of your new life, powerfully, gently.
As Zora Neale Hurston writes, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer," Whale Song meets you in your answer. There is a transition period when we go from contraction to expansion, when we have shed so many layers of self again and again, Whale Song supports us here, too. Enjoy this refreshment as you land and soar through the mysteries of life, embodied and inspired.
I pray to land into my new chapter gently, embodied, and inspired.
Thank you ~
The Future
“Gaby Azorsky lives on a farm with her family, chickens, dogs, cats, flower farm, orchard, and community on shared (insert native people’s land where we live) land. They have a small bed-and-breakfast and cafe and host healing retreats and workshops of all kinds. She spends her time in healing sessions with clients, making medicine, painting, laughing, drinking tea, shoveling animal shit into compost, and making love. She has long hair that is brown and white and grey, and wrinkly tattooed arms.”
For more writing and reflections, subscribe to Gaby’s substack. 