Healing Justice, Belonging, and the Land Within Us

Apapacho — Embrace from the Heart

I met her 10 years ago, in the spring when we were just starting to organize the Botanical Bus mobile clinic, in a garden where we offer services in community today. Her father had recently passed away from type two diabetes on the land where she is from. Because of unjust immigration laws, she could not travel home to be present at his passing. 

In her grief, she founded Presente para Nutrirnos (Present to Nourish Us) with Botanical Bus, a program that centers Indigenous foodways as prevention and care for those living with type two diabetes. Almost every Saturday at the Botanical Bus mobile clinic we serve a community meal made from culturally centered, whole foods: Sopa de Milpa* with fava beans in April, Ensalada de Nopales* in May, and Caldito de Frijoles con Quelites* in June. She makes sure to share that nopales are a traditional remedy for lowering blood sugar for type two diabetics. 

Through her cultural wealth and relationship with the plants, she contributes to a flourishing ecosystem of community care. This year, Botanical Bus will organize 30 mobile clinics and 84 wellness workshops, reaching 2,000 community members with over 3,000 place-based, culturally-centered, collaborative care services—including herbalism, nutrition, massage, acupuncture, foot care, limpias*, mindfulness, art therapy, community circles, and shared meals.

When we came together to define our Mission Vision and Values, we crossed out the Mission aligned word Values, and declare our care as Apapacho, an Embrace from the Heart:

Our work is rooted in Apapacho — from the Nahuatl word papachoa, meaning to embrace with the heart. In our care circles, we center culture, connection, and belonging as essential to wellbeing. We honor traditional ecological knowledge and nurture safety, trust and joy through ceremony, convivencia*, and trauma-responsive care. We practice healing justice through shared leadership and reciprocity, grounded in the belief that “if you heal, I heal —we are all medicine. Si sanas tu, sano yo. Todxs somos medicina”.

In the fall, her family returns to the milpa to harvest. She moves over the dry earth in the shade of tall corn. After harvesting the mazorca de maiz*, they cut, bundle and dry the zacate de milpa* stalks, storing them for animal feed in a tree’s high branches. These zacate bundles formed a nest where she would sit for hours— present in her own power and freedom. 

In addition to her cofounding of Presente para Nutrirnos (Present to Nourish Us), she currently leads the Botanical Bus Healing Harvest program in which she tends 1-acre of land cultivated with medicinal herbs for distribution at our clinics. She shares: “I have infinite gratitude for being born of the dry, wise earth of my homeland. And my work and the land here continues to transform my pain into learning and strength. The land here has adopted me. At first I was afraid, but she recognizes me, here and in the place I am from, as her child.”

This spring we came together to tell our story, to embody our Raiz de Ser (Mission), to See from the Heart (Vision), and to Embrace with the Heart (Values). She joined us in that bright room a week after the passing of her abuelo at 97 years old in the place she was born. She sat across from me, her loss on the surface of her skin, black beans clutched in her memory, nopales alive in her heart. 

Soy nopales, I am nopales, she declares. Somos la tierra, we are the earth, we declare. Her story is alive in our community care.  Join us in seeing from the heart, n’sa ñadaní desde el corazón, and in our living commitments to healing justice.  

*Words that meanings extend beyond direct English translation:

Aguamiel — sweet water harvested as a beverage from the heart of the maguey cactus that is often fermented into an alcoholic beverage known as pulque

Caldito de Frijoles con Quelites — bean soup with wild edible greens 

Convivencia — gathering, communal time together, nourishing coexistence

Ensalada de Nopales — a salad made from the pads of the prickly pear cactus

Epazote — a fragrant herb used in cooking and medicine

Limpias — spiritual cleansings or purification ceremony

Mazorca de Maíz — ear of corn / corn cob

Milpa — Indigenous intercropping system centered on maize, beans, squash, and reciprocal relationship to land

Nopales — prickly pear cactus

Sopa de Milpa — a soup made with the harvest of the milpa 

Zacate de Milpa — corn stalks from the milpa