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 It’s rare to find Rissa without tea. No matter where she is or what she’s doing, she usually has a steamy cup of green tea right beside her. She even takes tea in her bottle on runs! She has been practicing tasseography, ie tea leaf reading, since she first had loose tea fill her cup as a teenager. Over the decades, she honed her methods and refined her language to tell the story of each teacup she reads. Tea is one part of her love of plants. She also dries herbs and flowers to create handmade smoke cleansing herb bundles and handcrafted incense. Rissa currently studies (online) at Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine where she is learning more about the medicinal quality of plants. She holds a deep reverence for plants and the answers they offer, whether as tasseographs in a teacup, smoke in the air, a healing salve for the skin, a houseplant on the windowsill, or nourishment for the body. Rissa finds deep peace in plant souls, and believes that their whispers are available for all who choose to listen.

Rissa is a published author and poetess, has had several plays produced in the mid-Atlantic area, and works a day job as a food editor. She’s worked for five publications in her career and studied writing at  New York University/Tisch School of the Arts and photojournalism at Western Kentucky University. Her sun sign is Pisces; moon sign is Capricorn; rising sign is Scorpio; and Rissa was born in the year of the Wood Rabbit.