Just as nature is built on connections, so are we.

My intention is to sell mushroom products that not only taste delicious and enhance health, but also lead us into healthy conversations about eco-awareness, the interconnectedness of plants and fungi and the importance of creating similar connections between ourselves and our extended communities.

For years as an acupuncturist, I've been prescribing functional mushrooms for my patients. Whether it’s lion’s mane for calming the nervous system, reishi for boosting immunity, cordyceps for fatigue or turkey tail for gut health and cancer prevention, I’ve seen the difference that mushrooms can make. As a Chicago Latina, born and raised in the city, I’ve also seen up close that these types of alternatives in healthcare aren’t always available to everyone.

It’s a fact that people who need help and healing the most are trying to survive at the worst end of our broken healthcare system. For this reason, I’ve made it my mission to make evidence-based plant medicine and supplements available to all. I want to see education about alternative medicine to find its way into the common consciousness of all communities, and into everyone’s hands.

Midwest Mycelium was created to help fix this disparity and heal communities, body and soul, through mushrooms. I believe that mushrooms can heal, that mushrooms can teach, and that mushrooms can strengthen our bonds to each other and to the planet. For this reason, a portion of all profits from Midwest Mycelium products go towards our mission of providing Complementary and Alternative Medicine to underserved Chicago neighborhoods.

Mushrooms are strong medicine, but they are also a potent metaphor for the power of community. Nature thrives because of the unseen fungal networks (mycelium) below the soil transporting nutrients, warning of predators, and nurturing new plants by converting dying plants into nutrient-rich resources. Held together in this way, forests look less like collections of individuals, and more like giant superorganisms. This is how healthy communities operate. This is what our resource-starved human communities need more than ever.

I believe there is a better, healthier version of the future -- a future where all people are lifted up through a collective effort to make it so. My goal is to move us in that direction.