Herbal Rising is an herbal healing and transformative justice platform where people can reconnect to ancestral traditions rooted in the intelligence of earth based practices and spirituality. Through the offering of herbal remedies and products, herbal education, alternative healing modalities, and one-on-one and institutional level coaching, Herbal Rising is committed to support communities become empowered in their self-healing, and break the chains of dependency in oppressive practices and institutions that want us sick and living in trauma.
Herbal Rising was founded in response to the big need for communities to return to living in harmony with Mother Earth and her elements. At the root of Herbal Rising’s work is being able to heal and liberate ourselves from the impact that white supremacy, capitalism and cis-hetero-patriarchy has on our minds, bodies and spirits.
About the founder
tania romero
Tania Romero is the dreamer and creator of Herbal Rising. She is a mother, educator, social worker, healer, and spiritual herbalist or Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian descent. Tania has more than 17 years of combined experience providing socio-emotional support and healing services to youth, families, and communities both in the United States and internationally. Tania’s work is grounded in the healing powers of her intuitive grandmother, and in the teachings of her parents, who have used food, plants and herbs as medicine.
In order to provide an integrative model of healing, Tania draws from her clinical social work training as well as her training in different alternative healing modalities. These include herbalism, emotional release and trauma work, healing and restorative justice circles, and popular education. She believes in the intelligence of ancestral medicine, and in the importance of promoting traditional methods of healing that treat and support communities on physical, emotional and spiritual levels.
Tania’s healing journey began as a participant at Casa Atabex Ache, The House of Womyn’s Power, in the South Bronx. At Casa, she began to unpeel the layers of pain and trauma she had experienced as a Queer person and immigrant in the United States. As she healed and reclaimed her power, she became inspired to create the same for others. This led her to train as an Emotional Release Healing Circle Facilitator, and thereby run healing circles for different communities for more than 12 years now.
In her path as an herbalist, Tania’s first connection to plants began in her childhood growing up in the tropical coast of Ecuador with parents who used herbs to make all types of healing remedies and preventive concoctions. This original connection eventually led her to study with master herbalist Karen Rose, and complete the Sacred Vibes “Art of Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship.” Since then, Tania has been deepening her practice of spiritual herbalism and using plants to seek support and guidance for the healing of herself, her family, and the larger community.
Tania has facilitated many herbal healing circles, and workshops in various community-based organizations, educational institutions and other centers across New York City, San Francisco, and South America. Tania has also developed her own herbal line with herbal medicines for the healing of the mind, body and spirit.
Furthermore, as an educator and bilingual (Spanish and English) licensed social worker in the New York City public school system, Tania has also dedicated over 15 years to spearheading anti-racist, restorative justice, and trauma informed efforts in schools.
Whether it is at the individual, institutional or community level at the core, Tania’s work is reclaiming the true origin of our ancestral ways of healing and transforming communities. She sees healing and transformative justice work as a political act of reclaiming earth-based practices, and harmonious and just ways of living that have been repressed through a long history of colonialism.