Inspiring Conversations with Corinne Denomme of White Pine Rising

Today we’d like to introduce you to Corinne Denomme.

Hi Corinne, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I would say my origin story into herbalism truly started organically from birth. My mother pursued a midwifery career right after I was born which wove the approach to “alternative” natural healing into my life forever after. She would often have us kids gargle goldenseal and drink fire cider to remedy our cold ailments, among using other herbs known by the common kitchen herbalist. This foundation of herbal healing being normalized in our family absolutely inspired my life’s trajectory toward a deeper relationship with plants, though I also do not exclude modern pharmaceutical medicine and believe there is a place for both. My adolescent years were spent playing in the woodlands behind our little blue rental home just on the edge of a small country town in SE Michigan. We didn’t have much and were pretty isolated back there, but this rich land was where my deep reverence for the more-than-human world began. My regular engagement with the outdoors as a child, and then as an adult, set a foundational desire for ecological activism, collective liberation, and weaving reciprocal relationships within my community and green spaces. I always like to say that spending significant time in the woods and observing all the symbiotic threads between life there, taught me how to be in community.

My father’s profession as a rough carpenter inspired the joy of working with my hands, so naturally I found the crafting of remedies to be my primary calling within herbalism. It began in my oldest sister’s kitchen when I was around 22 years old where she taught me how to blend an infused oil with beeswax for the first time. We made a calendula balm, and it felt so simple yet beautifully complex in all that it could offer a person. I started to practice making salves for friends before I moved from my city home in Detroit to the northern woods 3 hours away. That was where I had the opportunity to homestead for a year on a friend’s large wooded acreage, completely enriched in self-study of the natural world around me. I taught myself plant identification for food and medicine. I learned how to tend to the plants and mushrooms I harvested in respect to their ecosystems. I grew my first large and highly prolific garden. I strengthened the craft of my herbal extractions while continuing studies on ailments, constitutions, and supporting the body systems. My herbal business was born there in a little stone house heated by a wood stove. That was back in 2015 and I’ve been providing quality small-batch herbal remedies ever since. I continued studies through herbalism classes and courses such as Jim McDonald’s Lindera course, the School of Evolutionary Herbalism, and many other knowledgeable teachers. My growing ambitions to have community and herbalism all under one roof eventually led me to become the co-founder and owner/operator of a brick-and-mortar called Bloodroot Herb Shop in Ypsilanti, MI. For two years I ran this space to house my products along with many other wonderful makers, facilitate gatherings, host mutual aid days, teach classes, organize vendor markets, and more. While I am now no longer there, it’s an amazing feeling to live out your dream and then watch as it evolve into new ones!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My struggles in the first few years of business always had to do with checking in with my ethics – and continues to be. Am I exploiting the plants, the people, or my labor? Am I being authentic to my creative expression, convictions, and values? I often had internal conflict on whether or not it was ethical to be harvesting plants for profit at all (especially from wild spaces) and I wanted to make sure my work was being carried out with reciprocity and reverence. After many hiatuses and heartfelt conversations over the years, I came to understand that if I wasn’t making these products then my community wasn’t benefiting from something they otherwise expressed a need for. I continuously make adjustments and changes within this business journey to make sure I’m keeping in alignment to my principles. As for “wild” harvesting, for instance, it is my understanding that humans need to re-learn how to participate in nature in a reciprocal way rather than exclude themselves from it or grossly exploit our common resources. Gardening the majority of my product herbs or sourcing from small farmers has been an important step toward respecting this delicate relationship. If anyone’s confused about that or doesn’t know where to start, I recommend seeking Indigenous leaders and teachers to learn from as they are by far the biggest land advocates, protectors, and stewards for ecological wellness. As white European settlers of this land, we cannot afford to ignore their guidance.

It can be quite challenging to make a living as an herbalist medicine maker all on its own. I think a lot of community based workers, healers, and alternative professions can empathize that this line of heart-work often doesn’t equate to a living wage. I’ve never had a loan or any financial backing for my business so everything I built had to be from the ground up. And like any entrepreneur there’s always the common obstacles of having enough time, space, materials, sales, or clientele outreach to sustain. Additionally, for the herbal mutual aid efforts, it’s a challenge to receive funding that will cover costs of materials for dozens of hundreds of people. I periodically work with a holistic co-op called Motor City Mobile Wellness (look them up!) providing free herbal care to locals during crisis and emergency, and funding for supplies is always our biggest challenge.

Over the course of a decade I steadily grew a dedicated customer base that I feel has brought me immense success and opportunity for new ventures, reaching far beyond just monetary revenue. My herbal product business is micro, but with many opportunities for adjacent fulfillment. For instance I also teach natural dye and herbal medicine making workshops, have facilitated nature connection programs and retreats, am collaborating with friends in the death care scene, and so much more. I like to look at obstacles and challenges as gifts that allow space for getting creative and working with others toward collective goals. When collective needs are met, this is where I find my personal success.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I am a folk community herbalist who specializes in crafting remedies made primarily with bioregional plants of the Great Lakes basin. I own and operate White Pine Rising (est. 2015) where I make a variety of formulas for many common ailments plus custom blends for more specific needs, and I also teach people how to make their own. I work with garden grown, foraged, or small American farmed herbs as well as other organic certified ingredients. Most of my products are entirely whole-herb infused and natural with no additives. I seldomly work with essential oils because of ecological concerns, which also means you’re receiving the full range of potent, intelligent properties that a whole herb can offer rather than just its isolated parts.

I see my business more like an evolving project than just a seller of handmade goods. The practice of herbalism, to me, is when people feel empowered to effectively work with herbs and have accessibility to the remedies they need. This especially involves community-based approaches to healthcare that draw upon the long lineage of herbal knowledge – which belongs to everyone. With that notion I layer my business with options such as sliding-scale pricing, teaching and providing herbal mutual aid, and redistributing profit sales into local organizations. When someone purchases a product at full or contributor price, it not only supports me as the laborer, but also grants the opportunity to distribute some of that wealth toward assisting others. This is what is meant by “herbalism is the people’s medicine” and it’s the very basis of my work. Under an oppressive, exploitative, hyper individualistic capitalist society, I am most proud of not veering from these foundational values. I certainly love a well curated and effective product any day but it’s truly the community-care of getting the right formula in the hands of whoever needs it that is at the center of what I do. I’m a huge collaborator at heart and genuinely do not care for competition in business. My own financial wellbeing and the wellbeing of others does not need to be exclusive from one another – there is always room for both.

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
For networking, talk to every and anybody! I know small talk gets a bad rap these days as boring, but I find it to be the most effective and joyful way to networking and building business collaborators. You never know, the person next to you in the checkout line might be that product photographer or grant writer you’ve been looking for. I love to do this especially at vendor markets because it’s already focused around business in a casual, fun way – just strike up any simple conversation at a booth and see where it goes. Finding a mentor can look a lot like the same. Whatever subject you’re interested in, seek out teachers in that field who resonate with your core values. And then learn who your teacher’s teacher was, too. See if you could be their shadow at work, intern with them, or offer to trade work for hands-on knowledge. It might take some time to find the right person, but I do believe there’s someone for everyone (sometimes more than one!).

Pricing:

• Sliding-scale options
• $5-40 for most products
• $35-65 workshops
• Free/donation based mutual aid medicine making days

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.whitepinerising.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whitepinerising
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whitepinerising