Adaptation 

Using what you have where you are… 

We spent Christmas away from home, not only in a strange house but in another country. The routines are different, the food is different and the climate is different.  

When you get to our age you suddenly realise that you have slipped into the gentle reassurance of your routines, and that change, while enjoyable, can also bring challenges. 

My packing had centred around Christmas presents and after the biscuits/crisps/humbug/ and Cadbury’s requests there was not much space left over after our clothes had been squeezed in.  

This meant that herbal supplies were squeezed out. 

At home, if my husband had trouble sleeping, a stiff neck or muscle spasms, I could just go to my well-stocked dispensary and concoct a mix of tinctures or teas. When we are away from home for any length of time it is tricky. What to take? What might I need? 

We had packed his usual Parkinson’s meds, both orthodox and herbal. After a few days away he had some very restless nights and an increasing stiff set of muscles, plus his neck was hurting. 

I could not go foraging as by this time there was 6” of snow surrounding the house and woodland. Then someone suggested a specialist tea shop in Lahti, and although my expectations were not that high, I imagined they may have chamomile and lavender. 

My friends, I walked into a herbal tea wonderland… 

Teekauppa Teeletti  http://teeletti.fi/ 

My question as to whether they may have had chamomile or lavender seemed rather irrelevant. When I saw those tins of loose herbal teas I was like a child in a sweet shop. They may not have had the Lemon Balm that was on my shopping list, but they had Valerian Root. They had all sorts of mixes and blends of herbal teas so that I was able to cover my herbal needs without that much trouble. I had to substitute, but that was sort of fun.  

As someone once said;  

“The craft lives in the hands, not the cupboard.” 

And that, perhaps, is the real lesson of adaptation. Not doing without but doing it differently. Letting go of the idea that things must be just so in order to work. Herbal medicine, at its heart, has always been about relationship rather than possession: knowing plants, knowing people, knowing how bodies respond, and then making sensible, grounded choices with what is available. 

Standing there in that Finnish tea shop, I was reminded that my knowledge did not evaporate simply because my familiar bottles were at home. I still knew which actions I was looking for: something to calm the nervous system, something to ease muscle tension, something to support sleep without flattening him the next day.  

There is a quiet confidence that comes with experience. Not the loud sort that insists on being right, but the steadier kind that says, I can work this out. That confidence is easy to forget when we are surrounded by abundance. Shelves full of tinctures can make us complacent. Scarcity sharpens the mind. 

It also reminded me why I teach students not to memorise recipes, but to understand principles. If you know why you are choosing a herb, you can usually find another way of meeting the same need. If you only know what you normally use, you are stuck the moment that thing is unavailable. 

And perhaps this applies more widely than herbal medicine. Ageing, illness, travel, unexpected turns of events all ask the same question of us: can you meet this moment as it is, rather than as you would like it to be? Can you soften, adjust, substitute, and still provide a workable solution? 

My husband slept better after that. The neck eased, the muscles softened, and I was quietly grateful. Not just for the herbs, but for the reminder that the work does not live in jars and bottles. It lives in attention, experience, and the willingness to adapt.