From the Earth to My Skin: Making My Own Healing Balm
A Little Kitchen Magic
A few months ago, I shared how I made my own Florida Water — how that simple bottle of citrus, herbs, and spirit became a tool for clearing energy and marking ceremony. Since then, I’ve kept building out my little apothecary, jar by jar, learning that “medicine work” isn’t just something I study. It’s something I make with my hands and deep intention.
This time, I want to bring you into the kitchen with me for something more personal: a Healing Skin Balm.
Why I Made This
I’ve lived with skin allergies most of my life — hives that show up uninvited, patches of eczema that flare when my body is trying to tell me something. For a few years now, there’s been a stubborn rash on my right leg that hasn’t fully let go, no matter what I’ve tried.
I’ve been doing the inside work — tending to inflammation at its root, paying attention to what I eat, how I sleep, what I’m carrying emotionally that might be showing up on my skin. That work matters and I’m not abandoning it. But I also kept coming back to a simple truth: nothing I bought off a shelf was made for my skin, in my kitchen, with intention behind every ingredient.
So I decided to make my own. Not because I have it all figured out — I don’t. I’m still watching to see how this batch works on that rash. But there’s something powerful about refusing to wait for a product to save you, and instead asking the earth directly: what do you have for me?
The Wisdom We Already Carry
Long before dermatology aisles and ten-step skincare routines, healing was a craft passed hand to hand — usually between women.
Herbalist and historian Barbara Ehrenreich put it plainly: women have always been the healers. The unlicensed doctors. The pharmacists cultivating herbs and trading their secrets. The ones called “wise women” by their communities and, when it suited those in power, witches by the authorities.
My own grandmother was one of these women, though I never would have called her that at the time. If we had a sour tummy, she reached for chamomile tea. If our nerves were frayed, it was tilia (Linden) leaves, steeped slow and handed over with no explanation needed — just the quiet certainty that the plant knew what to do. She was my first medicine woman. I didn’t recognize it then, and now I wish more than anything I had sat with her longer, notebook in hand, and asked her to tell me everything. So many of her secrets went with her.
That lineage didn’t disappear. It went quiet. It waited in gardens and kitchen cabinets and grandmothers’ recipe boxes for someone to pick it back up.
I think about that every time I stand over a pot of oil and dried flowers, stirring slowly, in no rush. It’s a small act, but it connects me to every woman before me who looked at a plant and understood, instinctively, that it wanted to help her heal.
We are natural healers. Most of us have just been taught not to trust that instinct — to reach for the packaged version instead of the growing one. Making this balm was my way of reaching back toward that older knowing.
What’s In It, and Why
Every ingredient in this balm was chosen on purpose. No frills, no extras, nothing just for scent or shelf life.
Calendula is the heart of this recipe. This bright orange flower has been used for centuries to calm irritated, inflamed skin, and modern research backs up what herbalists have long known — its flavonoids and triterpenoids help soothe redness and swelling while actually supporting tissue repair. For skin that’s been reacting, flaring, and struggling to hold its own boundary, calendula helps rebuild that barrier from the outside in.
Marshmallow root is the plant its name-sake candy was originally made from — but its real gift is mucilage, a slippery, soothing substance that coats and protects irritated skin the way it soothes an irritated throat when taken as tea. It forms a gentle film that locks in moisture and calms inflammation, which is exactly what compromised, eczema-prone skin needs: protection without suffocation.
Olive oil is one of the oldest skin remedies we have, used across Mediterranean cultures for thousands of years. It’s rich in antioxidants and has anti-inflammatory properties, and here it acts as the base that carries the medicine of the calendula and marshmallow root into the balm.
Coconut oil brings lauric acid, which has natural antibacterial properties, along with a deeply moisturizing quality that helps the skin hold onto hydration. Some research even suggests it supports the skin’s own barrier function — which matters a lot when that barrier has been compromised by eczema or chronic irritation.
Beeswax is what brings it all together — literally. It gives the balm its structure, seals in the herbal oils, and adds its own gentle protective layer on the skin, courtesy of the bees who’ve been quietly making medicine of their own for millions of years.
The Recipe
You’ll need:
Small containers (amber glass is best, to protect the herbal oils from light)
1 cup olive oil
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp beeswax pellets
1 tbsp dried calendula flowers
1 tbsp dried marshmallow root
How to make it:
Warm the calendula and marshmallow root in the olive oil over low heat for about an hour, letting the herbs slowly infuse their properties into the oil.
Strain the oil, then combine it with the coconut oil and beeswax pellets.
Prepare a dutch oven and melt everything together gently, low and slow.
Pour the melted balm into your containers and let it sit undisturbed for 2–3 hours, until it cools and solidifies.
Use as often as you’d like — as a daily moisturizer, or as a targeted balm on areas that need extra care.
A quick note: if you’re dealing with a persistent skin condition like mine, it’s always worth doing a small patch test first and checking in with a dermatologist alongside anything you make at home. Plant medicine and modern medicine aren’t opposites — they can absolutely work together.
Where This Leaves Me
I don’t know yet if this balm will be the thing that finally quiets the rash on my leg. Healing isn’t usually that tidy. But I do know that making it — gathering the ingredients, understanding why each one belongs, standing over the pot and watching oil turn gold with calendula — was its own kind of medicine.
That’s the invitation I want to leave you with. You don’t need a perfect protocol or a finished product to start caring for yourself more deeply. You need attention, a little patience, and a willingness to trust that the plants — and your own hands — know more than you think.
Is your inner Medicine Woman calling you? I’d love to hear: have you ever made your own remedies? What did the earth teach you along the way?
With gratitude to the wise women who came before us, Mo.