The other woman, who asked for anonymity to tell her story, and whom we’ll call Jane, had a nearly opposite experience, saying she was worked to the bone, not given enough to eat, and verbally abused. Her six days on Weed’s land ended with her fleeing on foot, she said, only to end up in the hospital, delirious and severely dehydrated. She believes she was drugged on Susun’s land—a charge Weed adamantly denies—and says she now struggles with “mild cognitive dysfunction” due to the trauma of the experience. Of the six days she spent apprenticing, she remembers only three, she said. “I want her stopped,” Jane told Motherboard. “I do. I want her to not be allowed to be able to hurt people anymore. She’s hurt so many people.” Weed acknowledges that she’s an intense person, but she denies being emotionally or physically abusive to anyone. She is autistic, and said that her blunt communication style is a result of how her brain works. “I’m going to be clear,” she told me. “But that’s not abusive. You have to have power over someone to be abusive. I have enough power of my own.” In the end, the discussion in the herbalism community is about both Weed herself and a much larger set of concerns about how to create safety and accountability in a community outside the mainstream. Herbalists tend to be a self-reliant group of people, who believe in literally healing themselves, and that philosophy is echoed in how they approach problems within their community. “This is the way of the forest,” herbalist and teacher Sarah Wu told me. “Organisms keep each other in check.”Do you know anything we should know? We would love to hear from you. Contact the reporter at anna.merlan@vice.com, or on Signal at 267-713-9832.
Weed is not an entirely linear narrator when it comes to outlining the previous charges against her. She does not, for instance, recall precisely how many people have taken her to court (“maybe two,” she told me, at one point). But she was clear that apprentices have filed restraining orders against her in the past and made other criminal complaints, none of which have resulted in her being convicted of a criminal offense. She’s had no problem agreeing to the restraining orders, she told me, even from “people I had no connection with,” she said.In 2020, another apprentice accused Weed of threatening to kill her, telling her, “I’m going to kill you.”
Several women also said they’d been promised by Weed that they could earn back a portion of the money they paid for their apprenticeship program—usually $2,500—through chores, caring for the goats, and other work. But the women who didn’t formally graduate were never paid back; two said that when they decided to leave, Weed tore up their time sheets in a rage and screamed at them. The woman who was there at 18 said that Weed had sent her a packet of papers in the mail before the apprenticeship began, with a carefully outlined rate of how much in refunds an apprentice could get, week by week, if they left early. (The refund system as it previously existed is outlined in a 2003 version of Weed’s apprenticeship webpage.)“I believe in women’s anger,” said Weed. “I think women’s anger is an untapped resource.”
Weed says 322 women have graduated her apprenticeship; many more leave early, she says, but they often come back, after months or even years, to finish. And when women leave without completing the program, she says, “It’s not a failure for me. It’s not my work. It’s their work.” But it’s also not just failed apprentices who are left with a sour taste around Weed’s methods. “There's nothing shamanic about the apprenticeship,'' said Shannon Berke, the apprentice who was there in 2008 and graduated from the program, staying for a full six weeks. “I don’t know what shamanic means to her. I think she thinks it means she’s trying to teach you valuable lessons and to become a more powerful female by experiencing her fucked-up mind games.”That said, Berke added, “I still have a soft spot for her.” Berke worked as Weed’s personal assistant for several months after her apprenticeship ended, before recognizing that it wasn’t a healthy environment for her and quitting. “I think for a long time I didn’t see what she was doing as abusive. I really kind of believe that she was trying to help women become more powerful and strong. But her methods are not—that’s not how you help women and uplift women, by screaming and yelling at them and demoralizing them all the time.”“I am a mirror to everything they’re in denial of,” Weed told me.
As a struggling single mom, Weed started teaching community college classes about whole wheat bread baking and homesteading. When a friend teaching herbalism moved her family into a van and went on the road, Weed took over that class too, learning as she went. She didn’t actively choose to start taking apprentices, she told me: “I didn’t decide. No one decides.” In the early 1980s, a friend announced she needed to live with an herbalist to graduate from an herbalism course, and informed Weed she would be acting as her live-in teacher. Weed told me she’s been a disciple of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss psychiatrist best known for conceptualizing the five stages of grief, and the author Jean Houston, a pioneer of the human potential movement. (Kubler-Ross died in 2004, and Houston’s office did not respond to a request for comment.) She also derives inspiration from the works of Carlos Castaneda, a writer who, in a series of influential books, claimed to have undergone training from a Yaqui shaman in Mexico. Castaneda’s books are now widely considered to be fabricated. Weed says she is part of the Sisterhood of the Shields, a purported secret society whose members reportedly have included women who were former disciples of Castaneda. Weed is unbothered by the notion that Castaneda’s work may be fabricated. “They’re all stories,” she told me. “Does it live where you live? If it does, maybe it has something of value for you. If it doesn't, keep looking.”She didn’t actively choose to start taking apprentices, she told me: “I didn’t decide. No one decides.”
Lisa Fazio is an herbalist in the Northeast, one of many who have written statements critical of Weed’s approach. “I know Susun compares herself to Baba Yaga,” she wrote on Facebook earlier this year. “But Baba Yaga is a mythical being in a very specific cultural context whereby everyone knows she is dangerous. Baba Yaga doesn't hide herself behind the guise of ‘healing’ and ‘nourishing infusions.’ Baba Yaga has human skulls staked right at the entrance of her property and her house spins on chicken legs. There's no lure about learning herbal medicine, whole foods, and yoga classes or books that make it sound like she's well when in fact she is deeply disturbed.” After the 2018 lettuce incident became public, Weed also issued a lengthy statement on Facebook, again likening herself to Baba Yaga. “I am a scary person,” she wrote. “Please stay at a distance if you are frightened of me. That is the best way to deal with Baba Yaga. There is a reason the witch lives alone. Her friends are few, but they are real friends.”“I am a scary person,” she wrote. “There is a reason the witch lives alone.”
Katie also said she didn’t find any issues with the Nettles Patch, the house Jane found filthy. Other former apprentices told me that the house was run-down, and some found it not particularly clean. Elizabeth Dieleman, who was there in 2008, told me that it was “disgusting,” adding, “The room I was given was full of dead bugs. Rat traps or mouse traps. And, like, you’re sleeping on like—a straw mattress? A mattress on the floor. Very, very crude. Very little furniture or anything like that.” Weed says apprentices are responsible for the condition of the Nettles Patch: “If they don’t like the way it is, they need to clean it up. It’s their space, not mine. I’m not running a bed and breakfast… They need to be prepared to take care of themselves.”In response to the Ripoff Report allegations, the activists from 2018 who’d organized against Weed revived their efforts, creating an Instagram account called Weed Out Abuse, meant to be “an organizing hub and story collection” for those with allegations of abuse. (They have not made contact with Jane, J told me, and don’t know her name or where she lives; in other words, they’re not coordinating with her.) Jane’s allegations, and those of other past apprentices and conference attendees, were also picked up by a podcast called Love and Light Confessionals, hosted by Katya Weiss-Andersson, a holistic wellness practitioner. Weiss-Andersson has been interested in how a desire for an influential, all-powerful teacher is a breeding ground for abuse across all kinds of New Age spaces.“The room I was given was full of dead bugs. Rat traps or mouse traps. And, like, you’re sleeping on like—a straw mattress?”
Gladstar has a nuanced relationship with Weed herself, who was for years a regular speaker at the conferences she organized. “In spite of what people may say, she’s made important contributions and has introduced thousands of people to herbalism over the past several decades,” Gladstar told me.But Weed had a habit of blowing up at conference organizers and support staff like kitchen workers, Gladstar said, and in the past few years that Gladstar was organizing the conference, it began to require too much of her time and attention to mediate those conflicts. “I felt very burdened and sad and had to say to her, ‘It’s gotten too hard, Susun.’” Though Weed was no longer invited to teach at the conference, Gladstar said, she still stayed with the teachers in their lodging, out of respect for her. (Weed denies she was ever asked to stop teaching at one of Gladstar’s conferences. Gladstar doesn’t recall whether it was the International Herb Symposium and the New England Women’s Herbal Conference, specifically.) Linda Conroy, Weed’s former apprentice and the founder of the Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference, thinks the focus on Weed is misplaced. “Susun is a very easy target. She’s a fierce woman. I think she is very assertive and speaks—her style can be off-putting for some people,” Conroy told me. Even “valid concerns,” she added, aren’t well-handled on social media. “I think the concerns should be handled quite differently than they are. I don’t think social media is the place for the herbal world to have these dialogues.” “This is bigger than Susun Weed,” Conroy said, adding she thinks it’s more about the ways a lack of compassion and a zest for punishment has overtaken herbalism. She referred to another senior herbalist, Stephen Buhner, who’s been critical of what he calls the “woke mob” in herbalism (and who penned an impassioned essay on the subject, entitled “The Day the Woke Mob Came for the Herbalists”). In response, an herbalist in Toronto burned books of Buhner’s in a show of displeasure, an incident Conroy and others found disturbing.“She’s made important contributions and has introduced thousands of people to herbalism over the past several decades.”
“Why are we focusing on Susun? This is what I'm saying,” Conroy told me. She’s far more concerned with what she sees as bigger, more pernicious issues in the world of herbalism than one difficult woman: male herbalists preying on female students, the growing commercialization of the herbal world, and people trying to trademark herbal products that have been available for thousands of years. “There are so many things to talk about,” Conroy told me. “This is a distraction, ultimately.” Some of Weed’s former apprentices don’t agree; they think the discussion about Weed is long overdue. But that doesn’t make it any easier to figure out what to do next. “The best resolution and the one we’ve been calling for after talking to survivors is that she retires from apprenticeship and stops bringing people to her property,” said J, the activist who began organizing against Weed in 2018 and who administrates the Weed Out Abuse account. “Because she can’t create a safe environment for everyone.” The idea of bringing Weed into some kind of frank dialogue or restorative justice conversation about the abuse allegations has come up before. But as Lisa Fazio, the herbalist in the Northeast, pointed out, those take time, money, and willingness not everyone is going to have. “Restorative justice processes are difficult,” she told me. “They take a lot of conversation, which is a huge time commitment, usually unpaid. How do you keep up with your bills, especially if you're an entrepreneur? Herbalists don’t get paid a lot usually. Most of us aren’t raking in the bucks here.” Real accountability, she added, “falls not just on the individual but on the whole community. To have that happen, we’d have to dismantle everything” and rebuild a different world. On a more practical level, Weed’s critics also don’t think she’s likely to be swayed by polite requests to stop teaching. “I think—a strongly worded letter with 1,000 signatures on it, Susun is going to burn it in a bonfire,” one of the herbalists who’s spoken out against Weed’s behavior in the past told me. “Anyone trying to tell someone like that what to do—who’s been rebellious against all forms of authority, for the history of her teaching—I don't know what the path is.” This seems true; in February, as the allegations began to circulate again, Weed issued a statement equating them to blackmail, seeming to refer mainly to Jane. “No to blame, no to shame,” she wrote. “No to bullying, no to blackmail. Stand with me or stand with those who lie. Trust me or trust people with grudges who live to destroy others.” Sarah Wu, the herbalist and teacher, is an admirer of Weed’s work and has hosted her in the past at conferences. She told Motherboard in an email that Weed has been a “kind and active participant” in the events they’ve participated in together if, as she put it, “a little dominant” in discussions. Wu also publicly called for Weed to stop taking in-person students after the 2018 choking allegations. This was ultimately, she told me in an email, “a plea for adaptation,” and for Weed to continue writing and sharing her work that way. Personally, she added, “I would not be able to recommend a student taking her in-person courses because of the potential risk. But I would suggest they read her material and listen to her talks.” “I hope Susun can reflect on the nature of harm,” Wu added. “And while the forest has no mercy, human beings do.” At some point, I began to wonder if Weed was talking to me so extensively because she was concerned about her legacy, or the effects these allegations might have on it. (She assured me that was not the case: “I've spent enormous amounts of time talking to journalists and other people.”) She told me that she doesn’t think the abuse allegations ultimately figure into a larger discussion about her work. The Wise Woman tradition, Weed said, “That’s my legacy. I have defined an entire tradition and now they can't take it away from us—even if I’m the biggest piece of shit on the planet, and I’m not.”“What is real,” she told me, in another conversation, “is my success at taking herbalism out of the hands of the elite and restoring it to the hands of the common person. My goal of making herbal medicine people’s medicine is accomplished. Everyone benefits.” Throughout, Weed told me, she’s been comfortable with the concept of power, hers and that of others: “My power is mine. I have no need of anyone else’s power. The cultural norm is to be powerful over others,” she wrote (emphasis Weed’s). “The Wise Woman way is to be powerful with others. We live at a time when any woman who dares to be powerful is a target. I dare.”“This is bigger than Susun Weed.”