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Sister Kate is a rebel with a cause.

The 59-year-old self-described “nun” embraced a life of activism and service to the planet following a difficult divorce and dramatic career change in 2009. Sister Kate, whose former name is Catherine Meeusen, left the corporate consulting firm she founded and moved to California to enter the emerging marijuana industry as the owner of a nonprofit collective delivering cannabis to the seriously ill.

“The business came out of necessity” following her divorce, she said. “Then the business became a calling.”

In 2011, Sister Kate was emerging as an activist outside of the progressive cannabis industry. That year, she began referring to herself as a nun in protest of new nutrition standards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that allowed pizza sauce to be considered a vegetable, which were later adopted into a House agriculture appropriations bill despite objections from then-first lady Michelle Obama.

“That year, Michelle Obama tried to talk to Congress about how unhealthy our children are,” she recalled. “The Congress intentionally decided to show contempt for an intelligent black woman. They convened to declare pizza sauce a vegetable. When Congress declared pizza a vegetable, I declared myself a nun.”
When Congress declared pizza a vegetable, I declared myself a nun.” Sister Kate
Others took notice of her flair for activism and encouraged her to participate in the Occupy Wall Street movement as “Sister Occupy,” which she did, attending protests in a habit and long black dress.

Sister Kate told HuffPost that assuming the “nun” identity was not simply a middle finger to a government falsely declaring one thing as another, but a nod to images she’d long associated sisterhood and radical activism.

“The last time we had an awakening in America, which was when I was a young girl, you could see the priests and the nuns and the clergy and the monks walking with Martin Luther King Jr.,” she said.

Sister Kate transitioned her nonprofit collective into a business in 2014. The company allowed her to blend her cannabis industry expertise, deep personal commitment to sustainability and herbal medicine, and reverence for sisterhood and women’s connection to the earth.

“Sisters of the Valley” was born when Sister Kate began to employ “sisters” in 2015 ― women who, like her, believe in the healing powers of the plant and share a desire to live and work communally.

The Sisters of the Valley work on Sister Kate’s farm Merced County, California, where they create a variety of cannabis and herb-infused products. Members wear habits they fashion themselves and long dresses or skirts. Nine are currently working on the farm, and four live there. There are additional members in New Zealand and Toronto.

None are ordained in any official religious sense or part of any religious order, though Sister Kate said a former Catholic nun had recently joined the group.

The Sisters of the Valley see themselves as a contemporary reimagining of the Beguines, an ancient order of female healers from around 600 A.D. who lived communally and created herbal medicine, for which some of them were burned at the stake.

The Beguine’s herbal medicine was stigmatized during the dark ages and eschewed for more aggressive methods, such as leeches, that history would remember as crude and needlessly violent, Sister Kate said.

In 2018, the Sisters of the Valley work with cannabis medicine, the stigmatization and criminalization of which, they believe, has oppressed its healing power.

Unlike their Beguine ancestors, the Sisters of the Valley do take vows. “Not a vow to an order or a God, but vows of lifestyle,” Sister Kate said.

“We don’t believe in a vow of poverty, but we do believe in living simply. We take a vow of chastity, but that just means privatizing our sexuality. We have a vow of obedience to the moon cycles, we have a vow of service to the people,” she said, adding that such service includes “our medicine-making and educating our communities on CBD and the non-psychoactive elements of cannabis.”

The Sisters of the Valley make products such as balms, tinctures, oils and soaps. They’re sold on the website “Sisters of CBD” and shipped nationwide.

They once sold their products on Etsy, but were shut down for violating the company’s drug policy.