As the light softens and the air turns earthy, we sit down for a Mini Moment with journalist and Editor-in-Chief of DoubleBlind, Mary Carreón. She’s a Los Angeles-based storyteller, tea alchemist, and plant whisperer whose work explores how culture, ritual, and nature intertwine. In this conversation, Mary reflects on the turning of the seasons, the medicine of roots and mushrooms, and how ancestral connection continues to shape her creative path.
1. How are you honoring the shift in seasons this year?
I’m working with a variety of herbs and creating different types of tea blends to honor the shift from summer to fall. Right now, I’m leaning heavily on sage, lemon balm, rosemary, licorice root, holy basil, echinacea root, and elderberries for a few reasons. Aside from their immune-boosting properties, they’re autumnal and grounding. They energetically remind my body to slow down and feel the shift in colors, tones, textures, and general vibes of fall.
2. What rituals or practices help you stay grounded as the days get shorter?
My natural state is geared towards multitasking and doing a zillion things at once, which lends itself to being easily scattered. Lately, I’ve been taking my tea set up to the park near my house and sitting under the pines. I’ve been leaving my phone in the car, taking off my shoes and putting the soles of my feet on the Earth, and sipping tea (sometimes with cannabis tincture in it) to help me reconnect to my body, the trees and plants around me, and thus, the Earth and its axial rotation. I literally speak incantations into my tea before drinking it to
3. As someone deeply connected to plant medicine, how does this time of year change your relationship to it?
During the summer, I find myself naturally more attracted to consuming cannabis and other flowers that mirror the season's brightness. But as the days become increasingly shorter, I am more drawn to subterranean plant life, like roots and mycelium / mushrooms — both the functional and psychedelic varieties. Fall sits in a liminal space between light (summer) and dark (winter). It’s no wonder that historically this season has been considered a mystical threshold tied to death, decay, the ancestors, and the spirit world. Mushrooms embody that mystical energy perfectly, considering they’re born from decay, yet also deeply alive. So I incorporate them into my teas this time of year as earthy reminders that even in darkness, there’s growth and a lot of life.
4. What does ancestral connection mean to you and how does it show up in your daily life or creative work?
I keep an altar for my ancestors all year. It holds dried plants, old photos, a few of my grandparents’ things, candles, and handwritten notes of love. I think about them often, and find myself drawn deeper into my Mexican lineage. My great-grandmother, I’m told, had serious bruja plantita energy. She worked with herbs from her garden, mixing everything together in a big pot — my dad basically described a woman stirring plants in a cauldron type of vibe.
What’s funny is that I didn’t know anything about her until I started working with plants myself. I was brewing tea (loose leaf, always) and realizing how intensely I could connect with nature through it. Then my dad told me about her, how she was a really mystical woman, and suddenly things in my life started to make so much sense. My Big Witch Energy (BWE) finally had context. And really, there’s always context. Always history. Learning about her helped me understand myself better and why I’m so drawn to plants and the mystical arts in the way I am. But for me, plants breathe life into everything I do, including my work, how I show love to others, care for myself, celebrate, relax, create, etc. Plants are literally everything.
5. Do you think ritual and modern wellness can coexist? What does that balance look like for you?
I can’t help but smirk at this question. Part of me can’t help but scoff at capitalism and what it’s done to ritual. Just look at what’s happened to white sage, palo santo, cacao, and even cannabis. These plants have been stripped from their original contexts and sterilized for mass consumption—turned into goods instead of living traditions. Most people don’t buy sage, palo santo, cacao, or cannabis for ritual use anymore. They buy them because they smell good, look good, or carry a certain spiritual clout. To be clear, I’m not exempt from capitalism’s spell when it comes to any of these plants. I don’t think ritual can withstand “Goop-ification” and the journey of becoming a wellness trend. Tradition and intentional practices aren’t exactly core values in America, and you also can’t buy a ritual. It’s intangible, which makes it hard to understand through a consumer lens or to measure its “ROI.”
More optimistically, however, there are A TON of brilliant educators in the plant medicine spaces — which is a subculture within the greater, multi-billion-dollar wellness industry — teaching, and thus, bringing meaning back to the rituals that give these plants depth and context. Whether it’s cacao, ayahuasca, sage, or mushrooms, many people in the plant medicine space are helping others reconnect with the ritualistic meanings that have been stripped away by consumerism.
That, to me, feels like the necessary balance required for ritual to simply exist within the structure of the wellness industrial complex. Not everyone will want to go deeper or learn how to connect with plants respectfully, but many will. And when they do, they’ll find a growing community of educators showing them how to ritualize their relationship with these plants in ways that feel rooted, intentional, and real!
6. How has your understanding of “medicine” evolved through your work at DoubleBlind?
When I first started at DoubleBlind, my understanding of “plant medicine” started and ended with cannabis and plant-based psychedelics, like ayahuasca, mushrooms, or San Pedro, for instance. But as I’ve deepened my understanding of what “medicine” means and explored herbalism, my definition of “plant medicine” has expanded exponentially. Now, I define it as encompassing all botanicals that support healing in some way, whether that be physically, emotionally, or spiritually. The plant world is so vast and there are so many types of plant allies that can really assist with us feeling and being our best.
7. What role does cannabis play in your creative or spiritual process?
I have a really powerful streak of rigidity that exists within me. Cannabis has pretty much always helped me unravel the tightly wound rope that upholds the structures keeping my thought processes stuck in a box. It helps me get out of my own way and actually feel again, instead of overthinking everything to death.
8. What scents, sounds, or sensations instantly bring you home to self or to place?
I feel deeply connected to rose, tobacco, and sandalwood. Lately, I’ve been sitting with their scents and noticing how each one stirs something different inside me. It’s almost like they’re showing me where I feel hollow, or where I need softness and love, like my heart or my sacrum. These scents help me tune in to those parts of myself. They help me come back into my body, focus, and feel less like I’m floating somewhere outside of it. Scent deeply impacts my mood and shifts my energy; a single whiff can sometimes open portals to memory, emotion, and spirit for me, so I’m always playing around with scents.
9. What do you hope readers and community members remember most during this time of reflection and remembrance?
I hope people know that their ancestors want to be remembered. I also hope people know that no one’s ancestors are perfect and that, sometimes, our deceased relatives are complicated and complex. I think we tend to romanticize “connecting with our ancestors,” but that can become complicated when we learn that some form of harm occurred in our lineage at the hands of those we’re related to. Still, I think there is a tremendous opportunity for reflection, healing, and real-world benefits that come from examining the not-so-pretty actions of our ancestors. I also think it’s an ideal starting place to “break cycles.” Even if your ancestors struggled or caused harm, there’s value in remembering them, if only to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.
10. If you could leave one offering — literal or metaphorical — on your altar this season, what would it be?
I’d offer a cup of café de olla for my ancestors, which is basically a warm, spiced coffee, to thank them for the resilience that runs in my blood and the lessons I’m still learning.
