History

In 2008, Mary Blue's best friend, Jessica Gill, lost her 4 year battle with cancer. She was 33. Jess and Mary had been close friends since high school. Jessica was a vibrant, beautiful, inspiring person. Her health struggles brought together friends and family to support her morally and financially. Jessica knew about Mary's dream to have an herbal shop and resource center for the community, and also had faith that she could pull it off. So, in her final days, she asked that her friends and family donate to building Farmacy Herbs, in lieu of flowers at her funeral. And they did! Jess' friends and family donated thousands of dollars to build the Farmacy Herbs Community Health and Education Center. The loss of a soul sister and the most kind, gentle, loving, generous, supportive person to a disease like cancer is maddening and preventable. Farmacy Herbs is Jessica's legacy, and because so much was lost when we lost her, Farmacy's mission is to honor her spirit and do everything we can to keep our community healthy through natural, life-giving medicinal herbs. Jessica is Farmacy Herb's silent partner.

A week after Jessica's death, Mary's sister-in-law, Suzy Hastings, died of cancer at age 36. These two tragic events changed the course of Mary's life forever.

After Jessica's funeral in February of 2008, the community donations to build the store came pouring in. It was enough to buy materials, but not enough to pay for the skilled labor. Dave Bailey, a skilled carpenter and Mary's close friend, came and volunteered for 3 months and led the build-out of the shop. Neighbors helped paint, and friends and family helped insulate and dry wall. Every event and every hand pushed Farmacy along its path to being successful. It was meant to be! Thanks to the community effort and Dave Bailey Farmacy's store was built!

The concept of an urban herbal resource center that focused on affordable herbs, education and consultations for anyone who desired it, inclusive of their race, age, gender, and ability status, was just a little seed when Farmacy Herbs founder Mary Blue went to volunteer in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in early 2005. Medical resources were extremely limited in post-Katrina New Orleans. Herbalists rose to the call and donated herbs and volunteered in the relief clinics. Folks who might not have been open to herbs before the disaster, were now open to them, because their options to feel better were so limited. Mary Blue packed up a bunch of herbs, collected donations on the way down, and worked in the clinics as an herbalist during her 3 months there. What she realized while there was that the community in New Orleans  could have benefited from an already existing herbal center before the disaster struck.  Now that they had no other resources, they had to start from scratch and learn how to heal their bodies with alternative methods.

Mary knew that it would take years to have that kind of an effect on a community, and she set her mind to it back home in Providence, one class at a time, one customer at a time. She developed her herbal product line, her herbal education and training program, and an accessibility plan, and started dreaming about what Farmacy Herbs Community Health and Education Center could be. Back then, there was no crowd funding, so she had to work to build up her herbal apothecary, and with the donations from the community to build the actual center and herb store, she was able to realize her dream on August 1, 2008, 6 months after she lost her best friend and sister-in-law to cancer.