About

The Full Story

I am Founder/CEO, Desdemona "Dez" Smith. I have a very complex recent history of illness(es) and hardships that led me to ensuring my dream of starting a wellness or medical practice. My story is way too long for this platform, but you may hear it at a future community event/program. In short, I was at my worse health, fearing I wouldn't survive to the next day everyday sometimes, managing a large community clinic/fqhc, single parenting my very hormonal preteen/teen daughter, trying to figure out why I was repeatedly getting a schmorgasboard of seemingly unrelated symptoms, managing the house, managing constant pain due to a car crash, and all with very little to no support....intense and heated issues at work with processes, employees and colleagues were ignored by upper management while more demands piled up; the care for the motor vehicle accident was extremely subpar and clearly more about what they could write down to bill for; mental health prescriptions to cope were not working and I made multiple changes trying to find something that worked; I had to self diagnose as wheat/gluten allergic and figure all of that out alone given the 7 prescriptions for the seemingly unrelated symptoms weren't preventing anything and causing other issues and apparently the providers had done everything they could to figure it out; did i mention I'm a single parent?, yes, sooo I was heavily stressed with little to no time to make new friends and people leaching my energy left and right. I had to make a decision, a very tough decision, but I did: I quit my job, became a fulltime entrepreneur with no solid plan because I could not predictably get to work everyday given the multiple sources of stress and anxiety stacked up on me. We became homeless and luckily had a very loving person in our network to allow us to stay with them while I sorted out my health for a few months, which allowed me the rest and peace to be able to start working a new contract within 6weeks of homelessness when I couldn't fathom sitting up for more than 20min at the time we moved in with my friend.

I had to turn from being a healing post for others and become that for myself: It has been a long intense training in learning and caring for myself, but I was up for the challenge, I wanted to be a doctor and Shaman anyway! Unfortunately, the injuries, compounding stress and wheat/gluten factors had more control over my mindspiritbody than I had and single parenting stress had to be shared so I sent my daughter to live with grandparents, first in state, then out of state to a larger village because she needed more support at that time as well. Though this saddened me, it relieved another major source of stress which allowed me to suddenly have more access to my own mindbodyspirit and I was able to really start working on my future wellness practice, as SolFlowers, July 2018. My main goal: give others the knowledge they need to heal through multiple modalities in a holistic approach to wellness, close the psychosocioeconominc gaps for Black, Indigenous and other people of color, and bring back the village concepts for community wellness.

Borne of passion for healing and helping others, and lived experiences of being  Black, LGBT, Female and maneuvering mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges, I present: SolFlowers Holistic Apothecarium and SolFlowers Social Health Movement...where we are meeting people where they are to enhance quality of life across the life spectrum and heal ourselves through holistic wellness promotion, community partnerships, social engagements, products/services. Learn more and shop at our store on Solflowers.org.

Social Health Movement - Social Health is the group of factors that effect and influence your social interactions and inclinations and how those interactions affect your overall health and well being. In a society that has encouraged the nuclear family, moving away from family in adulthood, and dwindling extended family and close knit community, social health over time has declined. For different age groups this can mean different things...for children, it means less people around help then navigate and understand life...for teens, this means less mentors available to help them make responsible decisions...for adults, this can mean less support for parenting or less emotional support through life in general often being difficulty in making friends as adults...for elderly, it often means isolation when the nuclear family has disbanded and moved on. At various points in life, we all need somebody. When we dont have that somebody to help us through, the outcomes can be horrible. It is known that love and having loved one around during illness helps improve health status. This is true way before someone is hospitalized. The Social Health Movement is about increasing social activity in the company of supportive people that are on the healing and wellness journey of life and will nurture new and evolving ways of health maintenance. You've heard the phrases birds of feather flock together….or monkey see monkey do….or guilty by association….those are all about ways we are socially impacted in life by the people we keep company with. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone rub off on you that leaves a healthful residue, and encourages your better you?!! That's what we are fostering in the SolFlowers community….a botanical garden growing and thriving together under the sun, in human form. 

The Social Health Movement not only aims to improve health factors but also to decrease stress factors. It is known that stress underlies 60% of illness. Stress management is not taught without a serious anger concern or documented need/diagnosis. Given the prevalence of stress related illness and illness severity, stress management needs to be at the forefront of health care practice to help reduce adverse health events and severity. The events and activities of the Social Health Movement focus on stress reduction and stress management in community settings in an effort to normalize everyday stress management and mindfulness of one's own being.

The Holistic Apothecarium is a member centered holistic wellness home network operating in an electronic health record based network media model platform environment, providing holistic resources, education, products, services, programs and primary & secondary research in community health frameworks. It's everywhere and nowhere: virtual and popup locations in the community. There are no competitors; we are friends in healing!  SolFlowers caters to the needs of black, indigenous and people of color; underrepresented and underserved health populations; marginalized communities.

SolFlowers seeks to reduce health disparities, especially those resulting from psychosocioeconominc determinants of health, in the most vulnerable populations of the world, namely those populations of the african or alkebulan diaspora.

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