Founder’s Story: Journey from NYC Chaos to Jamaica’s Healing Forest

I spent my days pressing the weight of other people’s lives from their bodies—their burdens, their stress, their silence, all seeping into my hands.  Celebrities and tightly wound Wall Street hotshots, the ones who wear their power like armor but come to me needing something softer. I would guide their breath, teach them to let go, but it was me who clung tightest. Tighter to a dream I dared not speak too loudly, a dream that had nothing to do with the skyline, the penthouses, or the glittering circles I moved through.

Twelve long years, I held that dream in the quiet, secret spaces of my mind—a dream of mango trees and earth, of living where the stars feel closer, where even the roosters lose track of time. It wasn’t Manhattan’s lights I wanted anymore, but the slow, whispering rhythm of Jamaica. And while I planned, plotted, and saved, I couldn’t have known a pandemic would come, blowing away every illusion of control, and giving me the push I didn’t know I needed. Timing, they say, is a kind of magic, and this was mine.

The Escape
When the pandemic hit, I made a radical choice: to trade skyscrapers for sugarcane and subways for starfruit trees. With my family in tow, I fled to the misty hills of Jamaica, to a forgotten 15-acre food forest buried in the island’s green heart.  

The Awakening
The land was wild, lush, and demanding. There was no electricity, no piped water. Just the whispers of mango trees, the hum of crickets, and the knowing of elders who still remembered the old ways. I learned to build with what the earth gave: a cabin from mahoe and cedar and a ram pump that pushed water uphill from the freshwater spring. But the real magic? The forest and the plants within.

Guided by village herbalists and my mentor’s tattered notebooks, I discovered in this lush Caribbean rainforest, a pharmacy:  

Guava leaves for inflammation, steeped into sunset-gold tea.  
Cerasee vine, bitter but mighty, for blood sugar balance and skin conditions.
Noni, the “queen of detox,” fermenting in the shade.  
Dogblood for women's issues.

I am convinced that all plants, leaves and shrubs are ancestral prescriptions,  left in the soil for us to remember.

The Mission
As I revived the land, the land revived me. Digging up memories of childhood bush baths, of my great-aunt’s ginger-root remedies. Then when I began to share my journal on social media via @sovereignandoffgrid it skyrocketed and I noticed something else: The world was desperate for this wisdom. For connection. For slow medicine.

I founded INDIGITEA to bridge Jamaican tradition and modern wellness. Our teas are small-batch, wild-harvested and slow dried to preserve its' phytonutrient density. Each sip carries the story of our food forest: the chaney root sun-dried on volcanic rock, the cocoa (cacao) crushed between mortar and pestle, the hibiscus petals kissed by Caribbean rains.  

Why It Matters
This isn’t just tea. It’s a return—to the earth, to our bodies, to the rhythms that keep us alive.

🍵 Taste the Journey
Explore our blends, grown where wild things thrive. → Shop

🌿Sipping consciously,

J. Fastina, Founder