We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brittany Ciboski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Brittany, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I come from a long line of people who have survived just about everything. On my father’s side, my great-great-grandparents fled Russia (now western Ukraine) to escape political persecution of ethnic Germans, leaving behind their homeland of 130+ years to become farmers in North Dakota. My maternal great-great-grandfather came to the United States by himself at age 18 on a ship from Turkish-occupied Greece, leaving only just a few years before the Smyrna massacre of 1922. He eventually became a successful owner of a confectionary shop in Houston, Texas.
Eighty or so years later I was born- the eldest daughter of two eldest children from a Polish-German enclave in southern Wisconsin. Where I come from, people work hard and drink even harder. All of the men in my family would spend 12 hours a day outside pouring cement all spring and summer before work dried up in the long winters. Both of my grandmothers and my mother worked multiple minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet. I remember as a child wincing as I ran my small, soft hands over my dad’s which were covered in deep cuts and hard calluses. He made me promise that I would go to college so that my hands never had to look like his.
Eventually, my mom divorced my dad and moved us to Chicago for better job opportunities, raising my sister and me on her own with little support. I walked home from school hungry because I had no lunch money and fended off bullies in my rough neighborhood. Yet, I still was fortunate to be able to go to college and broaden my horizons, meeting people from all over the world and experiencing things my ancestors could have never even dreamt of. I spend 8 hours a day inside typing on a laptop with hands that look nothing like my father’s. I have the free time my grandmothers did not have to spend in the woods hunting for mushrooms or growing herbs to make medicines for my apothecary business. Life may be better now- perhaps easier- but getting to this point meant that being strong was the only option.
I was forged from resilience and compelled forward by those before me who dared to hope for better.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I have a day job in the health and biotech industry, but my passion is running my ancestrally-rooted herbal business, Sibylla’s Apothecary. I am mostly a one-woman show with lots of support from my family (blood and chosen). Sibylla was born during the fall of 2020 in the throes of the pandemic when I was numb from binging old shows on Netflix and watching the death toll rise on the news. Leaning into my heritage and a childhood obsession with mythology, I was inspired by the ancient Greek priestess and prophetess for the god Apollo. I often think about how in another Greek myth Athena, the goddess of wisdom sprung from the head of her father Zeus- a literal brainchild. There is in my opinion no better explanation for the birth of Sibylla’s.
The first products I made were a series of herbal bath salts named after female figures and goddesses from Greek mythology that I eagerly shipped off to curious friends and colleagues to try. Not long after, I started developing sugar scrubs and teas using traditional Greek herbs and spices. Focusing my energy on creating things kept me from slowly losing my sanity during a time of intense uncertainty- not an easy feat for an anxious, overthinking Virgo moon like me.
Two months after I started my business, my beloved family dog Remus (who I also named after mythology) was diagnosed with lymphoma. We rode the worst roller coaster of emotions before we decided to do chemotherapy for him due to his young age. My mom and I spent hours in the car to and from the university hospital oncologist when one day we decided to take a break and go for a walk with my dog in a state park on the way home. It was an unusually warm spring day, but my dog seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, so we pressed on deeper into the woods. Even though we initially had no plan, my mom stopped periodically to show me flowers and wild herbs that she had picked as a child with my dog and I leading as scouts in front. I had never heard my mom talk about those things before, but I felt inspired to read more. In typical me fashion, we got home and I began to dig deeper into researching native plants. We made it a point thereafter to take my dog to as many forests and state parks as we could before he passed away that fall since he loved being in nature so much. His death crushed me in particular, but the time I spent with him out in the woods searching for wild herbs inspired me to add to the repertoire of my apothecary. I began making tinctures and CBD-infused honey since I had forged a working relationship with a local CBD manufacturer while researching natural remedies to ease my dog’s chemotherapy side effects.
Everything about Sibylla’s is thoroughly researched and made with the highest respect to the earth which provides me everything I need to make medicine for people (and animals) I care about. The products I make are also in many ways offerings to my ancestors to whom I owe everything and that in itself makes them sacred, so compromising on quality is not an option. I do not use artificial scents or plastic bottles and I ship all products in recycled boxes.
Despite my current aims to scale and expand my business into a full-time venture, I have no intention of compromising the quality of my offerings. I have recently launched blood sugar, hormone, and sinus support teas, functional mushroom tinctures, elderberry syrup, and salt scrubs. I plan on offering herbal consultations beginning in the first quarter of 2024.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think what has helped me most on my journey is being in the natural health field and being exposed to the knowledge of all of the most brilliant minds in the business- naturopaths, holistic doctors, research scientists, dieticians, etc. Before working in health, I worked in higher education where I had initially developed my now well-honed research skills. Those skills in particular have proved to be invaluable to the success of my traditionally rooted but still scientifically backed herbal business. Most importantly, I think that my journey was most impacted by my resilience. It has been a rough few years and I have experienced a lot of intense losses, but all of those experiences have shaped the way my business has evolved.
To anyone who is currently standing at the beginning feeling immensely overwhelmed or out of place, I would say to constantly make connections by listening more than you speak. I would not be where I am without the support of the community I have forged by simply letting others talk to me about what they need and what motivates them. You will be surprised at what you find out often.
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
My ideal client is anyone who has found themselves asking why about pretty much everything. I say this because I am also that client myself and always have at least 2-3 questions (on the low end) for a doctor, job interviewer, or new connection. For me, there must be a reason for why I do anything whether that’s in my personal life or business.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: sibyllasapothecary
