Donegal, Ireland
Wet plate collodion tintype: James Doherty
Mary Harvey Breslin—Granny
“Nannie Mac: She would carry an old silver flask, maybe 9” long, in the front pocket of her apron and every once in a while you would see her taking nips off of it while she worked in the garden..
Jennifer: What was it? Poteen?
Nannie Mac: Nettle tea.”
-Mary Ellen on watching her mother tend the garden
Origins
Mary Ellen's mother, Mary Harvey Breslin--the "village healer"--passed her botanical knowledge down to her daughter Mary Ellen during the 1920s in Donegal, Ireland.
Through an oral tradition and many years of walking alongside her grandmother while gathering plants, Jennifer decided to dedicate herself to continuing the family tradition of using plants for wellness. Third Generation Herbal reflects an adaptation and the evolution of a bloodline where nature shares secrets with women.
Jennifer sitting alongside her Grandmother, Mary Ellen (Nannie Mac), on Jennifer’s Wedding Day.
Wet plate collodion tintype: Harry Taylor
MEET YOUR MAKER | ETHOS
The topic of choice was always all things field or garden. I convinced myself if my great grandmother had sustained her life by working with plants in Ireland at the turn of the century, then I could manage. So, I dedicated not only the time to listen to my grandmother’s stories, but I began the practice of working with the plants that we spoke about. …Nettles. Begin with nettles.
To be offered a lineage-based skill in life is beyond purpose. Nannie Mac offered her plant knowledge to me, her mother to her, and her mother probably to her as I have been told of late. But, it was the modern question that helped me prioritize learning the details of her life. Who would continue the story? It was a decision to either cut the thread that stitched us to our shared elders or continue living intertwined with those women who had long since passed. It echoed deeply to not turn my back on the old energies and I resonate with the fairy tale that some of my nuances are the shadow traits inherited from my family’s forgotten women.
Life is large and can be lonely—a moment in time often desperate and sometimes out of alignment, but when things fall apart I trust the whispers of bloodline guidance. Nannie Mac gifted me the lens to the natural world that her mother had given her, and as the modern world evolves—filling with more distractions, I feel it as my dharma to continue looking through this ancestral lens. The legacy comes with sustaining the story, following the path that they paved, listening to the messages as they arise, interacting with the natural world, making efforts to fulfill the same intentions they had, and then sharing the products mused from the blood memory.
My work is traditional knowledge, modern day science, artistic expression, service to others, and pure exploration.
It is my craft while knowing the elders are watching.
If something was to happen, my hope is that they know that I tried.
Be well. Be Love. So be it.