We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Makena Horn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Makena below.
Makena , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
When I was small and wild I would look upon the forest with such bewilderment and curiosity. I knew the trees, flowers, leaves and branches held a magic that laid just beyond my fingertips. Somehow, inherently, I always knew that nature was a place I could go to heal, to find reprieve, a place could go and feel found when I was lost, even if I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. I wanted to learn how to unravel these mysteries, listen to the old wisdom of the herbs and stories on the wind.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Most people may be familiar with things like, holistic healer, herbalist, shaman, witch doctor or naturalist. I will use the term herbalist from time to time for simplicity and framing but at times I think these can give an underestimation to the scope of practice we embrace and move through. There are many layers of healing that an individual may need, and as a “healer” or guide, we continue to learn and grow, ourselves and expand our own consciousness to meet the needs of healing ourselves and others. My own healing journey began as a development of mind and body connection, a centering of spirit, I began with a yoga practice and got my yoga teacher training. Through this I was also able to attain a spiritual relationship with the universe and returned to the natural world for certain needs. I have carried illness with me since childhood, I had been in allopathic environments and treatments for roughly 18 years and experienced many traumas, including substance abuse. At the age of 29 with my health in decline I made a decision to find empowerment in wellness. In 2022 I began to formally study natural medicine and learn to blend the two worlds. In August of 2024 I launched The Copper Wolf Apothecary, where I make many small batch herbal offerings. My products are also made with the recovering persons in mind so all products are alcohol and CBD/THC free. Currently I set up as a vendor at markets around the Cincinnati area, I occasionally participate in workshops and in the future hope to run retreats and hold small nature-based events for holistic wellness.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
My best advice to anyone early on the journey may sound cliche or cheesy, but truthfully it was just trusting “the call” at first, I felt it in my bones that this was the right direction, my path, my dharma. There was a moment when I was speaking to a doctor again and it felt like I was looking down the barrel of a gun, I went home and said to myself “no, there has to be another way”, so instead of walking through their door, I went out the window and over the garden gate, and began looking for something else that made sense to me and the light came on, that feeling I had as a little wild girl in the forest came back and I knew I was heading in the right direction. I refused to let go of that. The first years are difficult, so discipline was also just as important as faith and determination, the journey takes an investment, not only of finance, but of self. Many days felt like the bolder being pushed up the hill, but I found my niche, my brand, my style, learned how to make quality of product, and simply showed up with love, education, strength and determination and that will be seen, even if we don’t see it ourselves; I spent many days pushing through imposter syndrome. I was terrible at social media, didn’t know how to make trendy clips and got very little likes, but I built a website and then for personal reasons deleted all of the social media and panicked. It didn’t matter, I sign up for events, show up consistently, pour the same amount of love into what I do, and I have repeat customers and people that expect my booth to be there. People talk to people, and when I apply to different events, I hear things that I’ve never heard before like “Oh I’ve heard of you”, all without social media. When you hear the call, just keep following the voice, you’ll get there.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
I love this question because I torture myself with it all of the time. The best advice I can give myself and others is to put it down…….. isn’t that crazy?! I have a tendency to over complicate everything and procrastinate, which means “to make things much harder on myself than they need to be”. So when I find myself in situations that I feel pressured, overwhelmed, or simply do not know what do to, the best thing for me is to step away for a moment, go make a cup of tea, take a forest bath, sit in a hammock, take some deep breaths and the revisit, lather rinse repeat until I’ve made some progress. We must give ourselves grace, yes, we can also look for areas of improvement in the future, where we can refine and prevent these situations from occurring again. We will continue to find methods that work and those that don’t, and what used to work suddenly won’t, we learn to move with the process and give ourselves a break.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thecopperwolfapothecary.square.site
- Other: Blue Sky @thecopperwolf: https://bsky.app/profile/thecopperwolf.bsky.social
Substack: thecopperwolfapothecary.substack.com
Tik Tok: @the.copper.wolf
