Today we’d like to introduce you to Danielle Hobbs
Hi Danielle, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My story begins with unlocking my family legacy because God and community building is in my blood. My paternal grandfather and his brother and my maternal great grandmother three times removed set the stage for me.
Amos Hobbs and his brothers, fled the terror of the Klu Klux Klan in Ty Ty Georgia. Amos, my great uncle, became a construction worker in Brooklyn, NY. He heard a couple acres of land was selling in NJ and decided it was the place he and his brothers would settle. They set out to build a few houses for their families, working during the day and sleeping in a trailer at night. Hobbstown wouldn’t be a plot of land with a few family houses. Hobbstown would be lauded and commemorated 100 years later a safe haven town including a church, gas station, convenience store and baseball field.
My maternal great-great-great grandmother, Rebecca, owned so much land after slavery all of her children would own houses on the land. In fact my great-aunt lives on Rebecca Lane today. This was unheard of in the late 1800s and yet the story lives on a street I visit often named for and by her.
Facing Insurmountable odds is a bloodline legacy and so is building in-spite of them.
So in June 2021, I was told I had an abnormal tumor and I had no insurance to have it removed. I was scared because I’d had 13 fibroids removed in 2018 and almost didn’t make it off the table of a “routine” surgery. In Sept 2021, I barely survived Hurricane Ida by mere minutes in a car swimming in water on a flooded bridge coming from my first Biochemistry class. In Dec 2021, I was hit with a terrible bout with COVID. By February 2022 I’d reached an end of prayers and hope. I wept. A lot. A friend said to me, “Danielle, there will be years where you feel like everything you do fails. Decades, where you jump and hit a ceiling every time. There are long stretches where it feels like God is holding you back. Then there comes a day where God says “Go!”
In Jan 2022, God flooded me with a vision so big it took up 2 notebooks. He said “Go!” God didn’t tell me “Go!” when I was in the best financial position, when I had resources, great health, a fine man. Nope. It was when I was absolutely depleted, mouth dry, crusty, tired, jobless, car-less, living in my childhood bedroom.
I stalled.
When it feels like the elements have conspired to take you out, it’s natural not want to deplete what little energy you have left.
I went for the familiar and got a job. In fact, I had 3! Anatomist. Adjunct Professor. Policy Writer. It was safe, non-threatening and easy. I lost them all within a week of each other in 2024. I sat at the kitchen table, I’d just finished sobbing. I went over recent events and said “Well, if a routine surgery where I almost bled out didn’t kill me, if the tumor isn’t killing me, if being nearly trapped in a floating car couldn’t kill me, if people words didn’t kill me, then maybe God you’re right and it’s time to hit the ‘Go!’ Button.” So I got up an hour later and pulled out an old notebook with the family medicinal recipes I remembered from my grandmother and started mixing up my first batch of a Burn, Bite & Eczema Balm on the stovetop.
I thought maybe instead of waiting for the next calamity to hit, I’d hit back with a solution for it. God smiled. He let my hands remember things I was never taught. Oddly enough, it started healing minor cuts and bruises on my family members and before I knew it, it was Go Time and the Salt & Savor Apothecary was born. So here I am…a Jersey Girl mixing medicine in a kitchen and reviving what my hands know but our family has forgotten.
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?
Being an entrepreneur is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and believe me being an ‘essential worker’ for the majority of my life, surviving 2 Master’s programs and a litany of dead end jobs that landed me at bus stops counting change, I’ve seen tough times. This entrepreneur life is a faith walk. You literally can only eat what you kill from day to day. What’s even more interesting is people are more receptive to purchases like anti-aging creams and aromatherapy than anything that claims to heal bruises, wounds, sleep deprivation, inflammation or pain. As someone who made questioning everything a lifetime achievement as a student, I understand. I make it my mission to attract the skeptics. Skeptical people strengthen my craft, formulations and ultimately the brand. But this baby brand is always hungry and it’s dependent on what I make to feed it, day after day and week after week. It’s thankless and always hungry. My main struggle recently is to make sure that I do not get sick trying to make medicine. Mad Scientist syndrome is real and all-consuming. I can go hours studying clinical research articles for particular herbs, their application, contraindications, side effects and effectiveness. I would go without eating, sleeping or even leaving my table for hours and hours testing, researching, formulating. This is a surefire way to loose steam and burn out. My sister, a successful podcast producer with a number of NAACP awards, Wall-Street Journal nods and other admirable accolades under her belt, draws me away for an obligatory ‘sister walk’ around the park or an errand run to Target. Trying to alleviate other people’s health concerns when you aren’t sure your own can ever be fixed is the strangest paradox but one I am so grateful to have.
Another challenge is the weight of what I am being asked by God to build. The mission is a community of people, led by women who are building defense strategies in their homes against crisis that includes first aid not dumbed down to mere bandaids and alcohol pads but provide an arsenal of preventative and prescriptive herbs, over-the-counter medicine, manual equipment and family crisis plans that revamp the way we think about preparedness. It’s a tall order for one 5’ foot nothing woman to take on but I am built for this. It’s been 20 years in the making and 2024 is my coming out party. It’s my hope to revive the idea of the ‘Medicine Woman’ in homes across the globe.
Before medicine became marketable and a regulated profession, it was unglamorous and abhorrent to care for the sick. It was a thankless job assigned to lowest ranking populations. So the ‘dirty work’ was assigned to women and with the industrialization of slavery – the craftwork fell to women of color who came with a reverence and understanding of the land and what grows from it. Women have repeatedly been found in marketing statistics to be the health-care decision makers in their homes. Yes! Even in the year of our Lord 2024. So, I will go out on a limb here and say while men have historically taken on the role of offensive protector against immediate and imminent danger, women are the defensive and preventative shield in the home against it’s very threat. I heard a quote recently that profoundly sums up the importance of having a defensive plan of action in our homes and communities, “He who goes to war and she who stays in guard of the supply are equal,” Lisa Bevere. Revamping our medicine cabinets is part of that supply. It’s my desire to remind us of a skill set long forgotten but I also understand that it will be met with skepticism and critique as it always has been. My hope is that there are people who undergird the mission of Village Medicine, LLC and the intent of my heart. I hope they find the craft of medicine as vitally important as collaboration and instruction from health providers.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
It’s my firm belief that the cure to crisis is found in the kitchens and communities we hold dear. I will say that until I draw my last breath. After studying the human body for 20 years, I am convinced that there is so much about preventative medicine we’ve forgotten or have never utilized to its fullest capacity. I founded the Village Medicine, LLC as an answer to crisis and the way to test theories I’d researched for my Masters’ theses. Under Village Medicine’s massive vision, the Salt and Savor Apothecary was born. Salt & Savor is my focus in reviving my family tradition of medicinal crafting long forgotten, highlighting the power of herbal medicine in preventative & prescriptive care and preparing people for ‘when life happens’ ahead of the next crisis with personalized medicine that is clinically-backed and not flippantly dismissed as ‘wive-tale quackery’.
The mission is two-fold: Make the Medicine & Revise the way we see First-Aide.
1. Make The Medicine: What sets us apart from other herbalists and homeopathic experts is our specialized focus on musculoskeletal pain, minor injury and first aid which most wouldn’t dare take on so boldly. With each formulation, the results are black and white. It either helps symptoms or it doesn’t. This is a dangerous territory for a new brand because pain relief depends on a variety of variables. Most companies err on the side of caution and choose a more dubious mission like “decreasing fine lines” which takes a commitment of multiple weeks if it works at all. We set our mission on customer-reported measurable results. It is beyond scary as a new business owner and requires arduous amounts of study. As the woman I called grandmother and a lauded midwife in the rural parts of North Carolina taught me, “God gave us medicine that grows right from the ground. If we use it right, it has no choice but to heal.” I intend to test her belief with her recipes and my own to the fullest extent.
2. Revise the Way We See First Aide: Village Medicine intends to take a group of multigenerational, multicultural adults to the Dominican Republic to learn Rural Crisis Medicine – Basic Skills from renowned practitioners in pop-up clinics throughout the DR. Preventative medicine isn’t assigned only to health professionals. If COVID taught us nothing else, it is that we MUST have the basic skills of crisis management within the walls of our homes and communities.
What matters most to you?
My first job in healthcare included carting the deceased into the morgues of hospitals to await the arrival of undertakers. Caring for the sick and the dying changes you. Then, having near death experiences over and over yourself imprints a resolve to alleviate as much suffering as you possibly can before leaving the earth. Doing what God placed me on the earth to do to the fullest so I can say honestly that I had a great life and I left no stone unturned is what matters to me now. I used to have big dreams of being the ‘IT” girl in the city and live in the suburbs with a hot husband and a couple of cute kids. But the journey God has taken me on has given me a sobriety that leaves me grateful, spent most days, and excited to serve strangers turned my community.
Traveling the world to learn medicine from marginalized communities with a connection to the land has been invaluable, breaking bread with clinicians from around the globe who are steeped in crisis management from experience and not merely textbooks will always be a goal and honor of mine, teaching is my lifeline and while classrooms and lecture halls will ALWAYS be my first love, being able to do it on a larger scale is an exciting venture for me. I love educating customers and seeing them light up with excitement because medicine doesn’t seem so elusive anymore. SPEAKING is nerve-wrecking and for years I hid behind my pen but it’s past time to step into the light and TALK. Finally, meeting other amazing people who care about community building matters to me. No one can do this work in siloes successfully so I am excited about leaving the confines of the kitchen to meet other likeminded people!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thesaltandsavor.com
- Other: https://www.daniellehobbs.com
