Pamela Boyce Simms: Building Resilience in Delaware County

Pamela Boyce Simms. Photo: Jim Peppler

Pamela Boyce Simms opens the cabinets in her kitchen on Dartmouth Avenue in Swarthmore to show her apothecary. Rows of bottles and bags are neatly labeled: rosemary, jewelweed, lemon balm, motherwort. These herbs are among the many varieties Boyce Simms and her colleagues grow and gather at local sites. “We have three grow sites in Chester,” she says. “We have a grow site in Wallingford — at Pendle Hill — and we have a grow site at the University of Delaware, just over the border.”

The we she speaks of is a diverse network of environmentalists, Quakers, Buddhists, herbalists, and interns from local colleges and universities, including Swarthmore College, engaged in what she calls Community Supported Enlightenment (CSE). Boyce Simms, an environmentalist, activist, herbalist, leadership coach, and neurolinguist who recently moved to Swarthmore, envisions CSE as preparing people for the problems that will inevitably come with climate change. For example, the network urges communities to look for local sources of food and potable water, rather than depending on supplies that need to be trucked or flown in from thousands of miles away.

Herbs, for Boyce Simms, are a crucial part of this mission. Among her many intertwined ventures is offering herbs under the label Singularity Botanicals. Another is an herbal education project that teaches residents of Chester to use locally grown plants to treat the diabetes, hypertension, depression, and chronic stress found at high rates among city residents. The city’s Shiloh Baptist Church, the Chester Senior Center, and Chester Friends Meeting are all partners in this effort.

A Larger Mission

Boyce Simms sees plant medicine as a portal to a larger mission of self-transformation. Intrepid, adaptable readiness is at the core of what she believes is necessary in a time of rapidly accelerating climate change, so the self-transformational work of CSE is what she is most focused on now. She has organized a network of groups across the country and around the world that meet monthly online, and local groups occasionally meet for dinner in her Swarthmore apartment. An upcoming retreat at Pendle Hill in February will be an opportunity to bring her approach to a new audience.

Boyce Simms is a vibrant, sharp, elegant woman from whom words spill in complex, heady sentences. She is always bringing things together that don’t quite seem as though they should fit, but somehow in her hands they do: gardens and neurolinguistics, quantum science and Chester’s Shiloh Baptist Church. She seems to thrive as much on apparent contradictions and subverting expectations as she does on helping vulnerable communities become more self-sufficient and resilient. 

Valuing Community

Kitchen cabinet apothecary.

Like her work, Boyce Simms’ background is multifarious. She has studied neurolinguistics, foreign affairs, Buddhism, French and African civilization, and theosophy, among other disciplines. After raising four children, she retreated from the world of householders to the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD) monastery in Woodstock, New York, where she was asked to be the point person for KTD’s environmental work, which drew her back out into the world. A fellowship at Pendle Hill in Wallingford allowed her to pursue her interest in the intersections of Quakerism and Buddhism, and of social activism and contemplative practice. It was during that time that Community Supported Enlightenment crystalized.

When her years at Pendle Hill came to an end, Boyce Simms moved across Crum Creek to Swarthmore. “I decided that Delaware County was going to be the next act, if not the final act,” she says. She rents her minimal home-cum-workplace from longtime Swarthmoreans Beth and Don Carruthers. Don’s mother lives in the apartment downstairs, with more extended family close by. “This is a family space,” Boyce Simms says. “That’s why I chose it.”  

Asked what she likes about Swarthmore, she mentions living a short walk from Bamboo Bistro. Also, “I like the fact that the woman who sits on the Judiciary Committee — [Congresswoman] Mary Gay Scanlon — you see her at Hobbs, you see her at the Co-op. That speaks volumes about Swarthmore,” Boyce Simms says. 

Boyce Simms also chose the town for its proximity to Swarthmore College, where she works with interns, and to the train station, which allows easy access for other student interns from around the city. Many of the students she works with are international, most from refugee and immigrant families from countries including Senegal, Liberia, and Trinidad. “They know community,” Boyce Simms says. 

Ultimately her goal is to help individuals and communities not just survive, but thrive. “Swelling the ranks of a robust, joyous, resilient remnant,” she calls it. 

“Robust, resilient remnant,” she amends, savoring the phrase (and saving “joyous” for a separate conversation). “The three r’s are wonderful together.” 

Pamela Boyce Simms will be offering a weekend immersion in Community Supported Enlightenment at Pendle Hill on the weekend of February 7 - 9. For more information: Robust.Resilient.Remnant@gmail.com.