Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristi Fackel.
Hi Kristi, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I studied art from a history point of view, but it felt somehow hollow to only look and interpret. Just before I had my first child, my husband taught me to knit, and the fibers in my fingers awakened something. Around the same time, I had been struggling with my health and in an effort to heal myself and to be able to care for my children I had begin studying on my own traditional medicines, especially herbalism and Ayurveda. As my children grew up, and my interest in making art developed, I became a Waldorf handwork teacher. I naturally dyed all of my materials and taught a variety of fiber arts, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, cross stitch, and sewing. I began wrestling with questions of being a woman in our culture and what it meant to take up such traditionally “feminine” arts, of the false binary between art and craft, one high, one low and how skillfully we had all been played by a culture intent on keeping some people in power and leaving others to feel like weak victims, of what it meant to dress oneself in cloth and what codes were communicated by our choices in clothing. So much to think about! In 2012, I made the commitment to make everything I wear, to take back for myself the power I had given away to others to communicate who I am and to do my small part of resisting an economy bent on creating winners and losers. Within five years I had succeeded for the most part, and my uniform is made up of clothes that are simple and constantly changing through mending. I like that my clothes changing can be a reflection of the reality that I am changing. Around 2019, I began formally studying Ayurveda and became certified as an Ayurvedic Health Counselor. A year or so later, I started formally studying the herbalism that I had been using for years. Slowly but surely, the worlds of the healer and the artist converged, and today I use herbal remedies to naturally dye clothes that I either sew or upcycle, Ayurveda taught me that herbs can impart their healing through the skin, one of the gateways for medicine. It is a subtle yet powerful medicine, and I love working with clients to create garments that can be worn next to the skin to support their living and healing.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Nothing has been smooth. Thinking of myself as a healer has been much more natural, but it has taken me so much courage to even think of myself as artistic, let alone call myself an artist. I feel I am always swimming against a current, different from my family members, different from my friends, but not special, somehow out of place. The gift of aging is learning to see yourself with appreciation and to actually love yourself, mistakes and embarrassments all.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Maude Medicinal Clothing?
Maude Medicinal Clothing LLC is in the business of providing healing clothing and home goods for people who want herbal remedies next to their skin. The skin is a sponge that takes in medicine, in fact, transdermal medications are used in allopathic as well as traditional medical systems around the world. After much research into this idea, I learned that historically, clothing was a vehicle for medicine in ancient India, as well as in eastern Asia, especially Japan. I will continue this tradition with an emphasis on organic, locally grown herbal dyes on organic or upcycled fabric. I have dyed fibers for over twenty years, and I am also an Ayurvedic health counselor and herbalist. I am skilled at matching people with the remedies that will support their healing.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success has to be a very personal thing, otherwise I feel I will fall into the trap of being judged against values I don’t share. So to me success is living each day in touch with my deepest sense of self, being who I truly want to be for myself, my family and my friends, not losing myself to this relentless, grinding, soul-crushing capitalist culture we live in.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: maudemedicinalclothing
