4 Facts Friday: The Fierce, Feminine Side of Independence 🇺🇸

They didn’t fight with muskets or draft declarations, but they changed the world all the same.

The true alchemists of the Revolution weren’t turning lead into gold. They were turning scarcity into sustenance, fear into faith, and hardship into resilience.

While history often celebrates the Founding Fathers, we’re taking a moment to honor the Founding Mothers. The midwives, herbalists, farmers, and fire-hearted wives who spun their own cloth, brewed their own teas, and kept both body and spirit alive through the darkest hours.

They were the original healers of the land. Their legacy lives on every time we choose what’s natural and rooted in truth.

“I desire you would remember the ladies. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion.” –Abigail Adams, 1776

In this week’s 4 Facts Friday, we’re looking at the fierce, feminine side of independence and what its legacy means for us today.

Healthy Living Tip

One of the most historically used battlefield herbs during the Revolutionary War era was Yarrow (Achillea millefolium).

Yarrow, also known as Soldier’s Woundwort, was prized for its ability to stop bleeding, prevent infection, and speed wound healing. Women herbalists, midwives, and field medics would have gathered this feathery, white-blossomed plant from fields and roadsides, using it as both a poultice and a tea.

How It Was Used:

• Crushed leaves or flowers were applied directly to wounds to slow bleeding

• Infused in hot water for a tea to help reduce fever or calm internal bleeding

• Mixed with other herbs (like comfrey or calendula) for salves or washes

Yarrow is the perfect metaphor for the women of the Revolution: wild, resilient, and deeply healing. Just like them, it doesn’t ask for attention. But when called upon, it shows up in full strength.

Recipe I’m Loving

What would the women of 1776 have served to nourish their families?

While the men marched to battle, women were brewing fortitude into every meal.
This Blackberry Herbal Shrub is inspired by the healing drinks they created with wild berries, apple cider vinegar, and skin-loving herbs.

A gut-friendly, collagen-supporting sip of history you can make at home. Perfect for toasting the women who helped behind the scenes and on the front lines to gain our independence. 

Herbal Berry Shrub

Ingredients:

• 1 cup fresh or frozen blackberries, currants, or raspberries (colonial favorites!)

• 1 cup raw apple cider vinegar (with the mother)

• ½–¾ cup raw honey (or to taste)

• 1–2 Tbsp dried lemon balm, mint, or thyme

• Optional: splash of rose water or a sprig of lavender for extra skin-soothing magic

Instructions:

1. Infuse the herbs:
   In a small saucepan, warm the vinegar gently (do not boil). Add dried herbs and let steep for 10–15 minutes, covered.

2. Macerate the berries:
   In a glass jar, mash the berries with a wooden spoon or muddler. Pour the warm herb-infused vinegar over the berries.

3. Sweeten it:
   Stir in raw honey while the mixture is still warm. Adjust to taste.

4. Let it steep:
   Cover and refrigerate for 3–7 days, shaking gently once a day. Strain and store in a sealed bottle.

5. Serve:
   Mix 1–2 Tbsp with still or sparkling water, over ice, or even added to herbal tea.

Natural Living DIY

In the 1700s, women relied on dried herbs, beeswax, and foraged materials to light fires for cooking, warmth, and gathering. Fire wasn’t just function; it was ritual.  It was how they fed their families, preserved food, heated herbal infusions, and created space for connection.

This DIY is inspired by those resourceful, earth-wise, and practical women in the most poetic way.

 Ingredients:

• Dried herbs: rosemary, sage, thyme, lavender, or pine needles (what they had access to)

• Dried flower petals: rose, calendula, chamomile (optional, for beauty & scent)

• Beeswax (melted)

• Cotton wicks or twine

• Paper muffin cups or pinecones

• A pinch of powdered charcoal (optional, traditional for quick lighting)

 Instructions:

1. Fill your base: In muffin cups or small molds, layer dried herbs, flowers, and a wick or twine. If using pinecones, simply stuff the herbs into the scales.

2. Pour melted beeswax: Slowly pour over the herbal mixture until mostly coated and solidified.

3. Let cool: Once hardened, remove from cups if desired and store in a tin or basket.

4. To use: Place in kindling when lighting a fire. Perfect for bonfires, hearths, or wood stoves.

Something I’m Pondering

I have been thinking about these women whose names didn’t make it into the history books, but whose fingerprints are still on everything. Being here in Tennessee, sometimes as I’m driving by historical homes and old battlefields, I imagine the women, in their beautiful handmade dresses, living their hard lives the best they knew how. What were they like? What did they talk about? How were they feeling? What thoughts were on repeat in their minds?

Most of these women didn’t fight with swords, but instead fought with stillness. With pure resilience. With the bold kind of courage that keeps life going while the world is falling apart.

I wonder about the ones who stood at their hearths, infusing vinegars and drying herbs, keeping babies alive while their husbands were at war. The ones who spun their own thread in protest, who whispered prayers over wounded men, who tended both the body and the spirit.

I think about how many of them weren’t just keeping a home, they were keeping a nation from falling apart.

And I can’t help but see the thread between them and us.

We may not be in wartime, but we are still in a battle for truth, for wellness, for the right to live in harmony.

And just like those fierce women, we have tools. Not muskets or cannons, but the wisdom of plants. The strength of choosing what’s good and pure. The fire that comes from doing what’s right even when no one sees… and might I add, the force that is at work when women are in community, working together for a common cause.

Maybe that’s what real alchemy is. Turning chaos into clarity. Scarcity into nourishment. A busy world into something that makes sense.

We come from women who knew how to turn what they had into solutions.

We are still those women. Let freedom ring!