AACE INTERVIEW: Natalie Mei Watters
healing with plants
“I make an awakening blend with lemon verbena, lemon balm, Meyer lemon zest, fir tips, mint and my favorite green tea - Ti Quan Yin. I have a mellow blend with lavender, rose, and foraged pineapple chamomile. “ - Natalie Mei Watters
Cynthia Boedihardjo and Jessica Sharp of Nouera introduced me to the most inspirational woman, Natalie Mei Watters as part of EAZE’s ongoing campaign for diversity that has been a large part of their outreach in communities of color. Natalie is on the front lines for plant medicine for all and is also a teacher of Vinyasa yoga. She is a muse to those who seek a better mind and body. She has a spiritual aura that is apparent in exchanged emails and zoom calls, in person she is a force to reckon. We are inspired by those that are featured here on AACE, and how family factors in our success and how we spread acceptance of plant medicine back into our communities, communities that historically honor that medicine going back thousands of years. Natalie is one of the ones keeping the flame alive with her teachings and healthy recipes based on her mantra of health, mind, plants and body. We are honored to have her on AACE and to celebrate Chinese New Year’s with other Asian women of cannabis.
Your (distant aka High school) past: getting weed from your brother and his friends, your first experience, how was it?
I was first introduced to cannabis as weed in the mid-’90s. My first time was smoking from a bong provided by a friend’s older brother and that experience involved listening to the mind-expanding rock music of Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd. From then on I liked getting high and being with friends and music. We would go to the all-ages venues in Berkeley as teenagers like Ashkenaz or La Pena and listen to African High Life or Salsa music and just be ecstatic.
Around that time, hip hop groups, like Souls of Mischief/Hieroglyphics, the Pharcyde, and Blackalicious were still playing underground venues in Oakland, and the scene was lit. But, the people I was getting products from mostly were considered dealers and often were the first generation of Asian descent, so they were very cautious. It was around this time that the “three strikes” law went into effect in California, so they definitely taught me to code words to use on the phone for fear of our activities being illegal. The Bay Area is blessed for having progressive views and although California passed the legalization of medicinal marijuana in 1996 and recreational use in 2006, there are many complications from the 1994 “three strikes” law that went hard on offenders. The application of the law saw many non-violent repeat offenders being imprisoned for life without parole. We have seen BIPOC communities greatly impacted with that reflecting minority being the majority in correctional facilities.
Currently, there are elected officials who are pushing for the implementation of an excise tax on cannabis sales that would direct money back to communities adversely affected by the so-called war on drugs. Just this last election we witnessed the House of Representatives pass for federally decriminalizing marijuana with the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, or MORE Act, a bill that would remove cannabis from the list of federally controlled substances and facilitate canceling low-level federal convictions and arrests related to marijuana as reported by NPR. Plus, more and more states are trending towards decriminalization and legalization. I believe the majority of Americans live in states where it’s legal. 2020 also reported a shift in the “minority-majority” population.
As stated by a recent article in Forbes, “the majority of all Americans under seventeen years old will be from a minority background.” I feel blessed to be a witness to these historical shifts, yet I recognize that we still have much work ahead for we have many wounds to heal and trauma is still being created as a collective. I feel hope as Toni Morrison did when a friend told her, “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Most recent past: How you added it to your work and life. Travel to Amsterdam, and then the decision to take a break, why?
For a period in the early 2000s using cannabis was my lifestyle. It was the period following movies like “Half Baked” and “Friday” and I did everything high. In this time I got my first kitchen job. At first, I was delivering pizzas, but eventually, I learned to toss dough in the air and created specialty items for the menu. I felt encouraged in culinary arts and this carried over to using homegrown cannabis in food. Since flowers were saved for smoking enjoyment, I learned to use all leaf matter for ingesting as tasty treats. I followed many recipes from my personal hero at the time, “Watermelon” (Mary Jean Dunsdon), a cannabis culinary pioneer. She was well known in Vancouver BC, at Wreck Beach and many festivals for providing brownies and cookies to loyal customers, but has also been an advocate in policy change for the last two decades. She introduced me to the concept of savory dishes infused with cannabis and cooking beyond space cakes. For a few years while living in Colorado I added cannabis into many meals. At Thanksgiving, I basted my turkey in marijuana herbed ghee or added some to mashed potatoes. A favorite recipe of mine was an Italian herb mix that had ground leaves to use in the pasta sauce for the employee “family” meals at the pizza shop. I loved being the provider of food that made people feel so good. The only issue is I did not know how to make or enjoy an even-paced or mellow high. We grew high-grade product with a scientific approach in the likes of what we learned from gurus like Ed Rosenthal and from visiting Amsterdam’s Cannabis College. In cultivating such glorious flowers, the leaves were actually quite strong and I did not have a method of knowing the strength of my products except by testing on myself, but, unlike a proper research study, I did not have a placebo or even a less high control group. I got too high and worn out, and the industry was still seen as underground so I could not send a sample to a lab and get back results of the potency of my products. I needed to move on to other projects and need a cognitive shift. So, I moved back to California to enroll in a Chinese heritage research program called In Search of Roots, hosted by the San Francisco Chinese Cultural Center and visited China for a second time. I did see some small plants growing wild in China, but I think it was hemp (I still have a leaf saved in my journal from that time). This experience led to me to study Chinese Environmental Policy leading to the 2008 Olympics and getting a BS in International Relations from SF State.
Where you are now: Combining your passions into a multi-faceted business that flows together in your own unique way. How you educate the public on living simply and better (and most important to be present with nature and with others)?
Currently, I have learned to better dose myself and others. At home, I still have some plants and still enjoy the leaf matter for flavor and a subtle high in tea with other herbs from my garden. I make an awakening blend with lemon verbena, lemon balm, Meyer lemon zest, fir tips, mint, and my favorite green tea - Ti Quan Yin. I have a mellow blend with lavender, rose, and foraged pineapple chamomile. I also mix the teas with bentonite clay and seaweed for a nice face mask. In previous summers, I would make festival fudge pots with energizing medicinal mushrooms like Lions Mane, plus grounding herbs like ginger and turmeric, plus the brightness of Schisandra (Chinese Five Flavor Fruit) and Goji berries. I have also been working with Nouera, a SF Bay Area Cannabis Company founded by Cynthia Boedijero and Jessica Sharp. Nouera is “a conscious entertainment company that curates premium experiences paired with premium cannabis”. I appreciate how Nouera events are an opportunity to learn, engage with others and enjoy cannabis with a full body and mind awareness that heightens all the senses. They have also included me in events as a wellness practitioner. I teach yoga and other mindfulness practices like acupressure, Qi Gong, and the art of subtle eating. I also study meditation in the Tibetan traditions and am learning about Traditional Chinese Medicine and Meridian Therapy from a school called Science of Self - that empowers an individual to learn healing methods that are very approachable.
4. Past Present with your mother. Her views have changed, what was the impetus and how has it changed?
There was a war on drugs in my youth, we were told the classic tale that weed would lead to addiction or criminal behavior. Mainstream America was being fed the propaganda from an outdated “Reefer Madness” era that was used as a guise of moral guideline for youth in the 1940s-50s. My mother not only came from this era of misinformation but she emigrated from China in her early teen years and entered the US illegally. She remembers at the time, importation of even hemp was illegal in the US, and some clothing had to be left in Hong Kong. While in the US, she said that her family avoided “no good things,” even alcohol was consumed teaspoon at a time and was medicinal. They had a fear of being deported so she knew that she must obey all laws in order to remain unnoticed by ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Once she was granted US citizenship in the late ’70s, she wanted to be as American as possible and that meant obeying the law and having her kids do the same. She classified marijuana with cigarettes as something that was bad. She felt that “people use narcotics as an excuse for misbehaving, and it’s a (white) privilege to overindulge or to seek solutions based on immediate gratification. As Chinese immigrants, we were so insecure that we did not want to draw attention to ourselves by taking risks.” My mom really struggled with some of my behaviors when I was young, so I feel some remorse thinking back, especially since knowing how hard my family worked to be here. It wasn’t until after her retirement that her perspective shifted for around that time my aunt got cancer and when none of her “Western Medicine” doctors could help her, my aunt started using medicinal cannabis but in secret. It was years later that my mom found out and accepted the news quite casually and was pleased that my aunt could live more comfortably. These days My mom’s friends at the senior center and in her Zumba classes talk about what they like to use for pain or as a sleep aid, and it seems that the use of cannabis is more and more common among elder Asians. At one point my mom tried a quarter dose of my Auntie’s cannabis medicine, she says that for two days she couldn’t sleep and was awake with psychedelic images and was unable to function around her family. Since I have helped her understand that there are different potency and strains and that some have no psychoactive effects. She likes topical CBD creams and says she will stick to Qi Gong and my restorative yoga class for calming her energy.
Links:
Chef Natalie Mei Watters IG
