At age 29, Abby left her family and home in NYC and landed in the Bavarian Alps in a small, international, intentional community. There she met a local midwife, who was also an herbalist and introduced her to all the plants around them.   BINGO!  Life's path discovered.....

She learned everything she could about those herbs, as well as plant medicine-making, and before long she was selling her heilkrauter/healing herbs and products at a famous Munich marketplace and inviting customers to the farm for Herbal Weekend trainings.  They were a big hit and soon folks were coming from all over Europe. That was probably the first  modern herb school in Europe!

During that that she lived for a bit in Amsterdam and had her first experience with Flower Essences and started a 'New Age Women's Study’ group.

Eventually she moved on to India and joined an ashram, lived in a raised Thai-style bamboo hut, and an Indian village.

There she befriended and became the apprentice & assistant of Dr. Vasant Lad, who at the time was the Ayurvedic physician of the town and head of the local Ayurvedic College. For him she ground herbs & roots to powders to give out to the local people for free.

She then moved on to California and has lived in Marin ever since. She was a founding member of the Marin County Farmers' Markets, Ferry Plaza SF and Oakland's Grand Lake Market and did those markets, rain or shine, for 25 YEARS, until she got stage 4 cancer.  After surviving that, she has continued teaching herb studies to all ages, including at NCWHS.

Catherine Abby is now 80 years old, and is happy to keep going, doing what she loves, sharing the wisdom of the natural world with the dearest folks who also love the herbs. Why stop now? It is a blessed, lucky life. And she is still here.