Sometimes Healing Isn’t About What We Add – It’s About What We Take Away

I didn’t learn healing because I was healthy. I learned healing because I spent most of my life trying to become well…

I don’t consider myself an herbalist.  I AM a Medicine Woman.  And there is a reason for that distinction.  When somebody comes to me, I don’t look at them and immediately think, “What herb do you need?”  Nor do I entertain those questions without FIRST…..

– I want to know the whole person.

– What is your medical history?

– What medications are you taking?

– What are your allergies?

– What surgeries have you had?

– What are you eating?

– How are you sleeping?H

– What has changed?

– What happened before this began?

– What are you carrying?

– What have you been surviving?

Because sometimes the answer isn’t something we need to take…sometimes healing begins with something we need to take away.

A food that isn’t agreeing with us….A habit that is exhausting us…A relationship keeping our nervous system on high alert…A belief we learned when we were young…A life that requires us to live in survival mode every single day…A grief we never allowed ourselves to feel…A fear we became so accustomed to carrying that we forgot it was heavy…

That is where my work usually begins.  Not with a bottle.  Not with a capsule.  Not with a prescription.

WITH A CONVERSATION!

A Different Kind of Education

I should probably tell you something about where this philosophy came from.  I am not someone who floated through life in perfect health and decided one day that I wanted to teach other people about healing.  Quite the opposite.

I spent roughly 35 years of my life sick, with multiple so called incurable dis-eases.

I have lived through serious illness, disability, neurological injury, periods when my body simply would not cooperate with me, and moments when I genuinely did not know whether I was going to survive.  There was a time I didn’t even know my name, and wouldn’t have been able to pronounce it, even if I did remember…

I still live with the effects of brain damage today.  Sometimes words disappear.  Sometimes my fingers and my brain do not communicate as nicely as I would prefer. 😂  Sometimes walking is harder than other times.

And, sometimes my body still reminds me that healing and perfection are not the same thing.

So when I talk about healing, I am not speaking from some pedestal where everything worked perfectly for me.

I am speaking from the trenches.  I did not learn what I know while earning a PhD.  I did not learn it in one classroom…and I certainly did not learn it from a weekend seminar or a collection of YouTube videos. 😂

My education has been more than 20 years of dedicated study, layered on top of decades of actually having to live the questions.  While you wre working and earning a paycheck…I was cast out of society, unable to earn, walk or take care of my basic needs….which meant I had PLENTY of time to read, research and test.

I studied plants.  I studied food and nutrition.  I studied the human body.  I studied trauma.  I studied patterns.  I studied my own reactions.  I tried things that helped.  I tried things that did not.  I made mistakes.  I changed my mind.  I tried every diet or gimmick on the internet or health food stores.

And most importantly, I questioned what I had been taught.  It was impossible to ignore certain correlations………then there were the years of all nighters reading one of my favorite sources, pubmed, the National Library of Medicine where you can find hundreds of thousands of reports and peer reviewed studies about things you will NOT hear on the news!

I learned to pay attention to what happened before a symptom appeared, what made it worse, what made it better, and what changed when I changed something deeper than the symptom itself.  And I have had experiences in my own recovery that very much surprised me and OFTENTIMES EXCEEDED what I had been led to expect was possible for me.

That does not mean my experience becomes a promise or a “cure” for everyone else.

My story is evidence of my story.  Many of you were around during my tent days, 6.5 years of homelessness, the disabilities I faced with no income or help…in fact many of you got to watch it on youtube, facebook and instagram in real time!

And while difficult at times, it gave me something enormously valuable – Curiosity, Hope and Determination.  It taught me never to assume that the first explanation is the only explanation.  It taught me that a diagnosis can be important without necessarily being the entirety of a human being.  It taught me that sometimes we might need emergency medicine.  Sometimes we need nutrition.  Sometimes we need rest, water, sunshine, laughter, love…and sometimes we need to remove something that is harming us.

And sometimes the hardest medicine of all is finally looking directly at the thing inside ourselves we have spent years trying not to feel.

That is the education I bring to this work.

Not perfection.

Not omniscience.

Experience. Study.  20 plus years of asking questions.  And 35 years plus of dis-ease, learning painfully, from my own body and Journey.

The Body Is Part of the Conversation

We know that prolonged stress and trauma can affect the physical body.  Sleep changes.  Hormones change.  The nervous system changes.

Digestion can change.  Pain can change.  Immune and inflammatory processes can be affected.  That does not mean illness is “all in your head.”  It does not mean someone caused their disease because they had the wrong thought.  And it does not mean medical care should be ignored.

It means something much simpler: The mind, nervous system, emotions and physical body are not separate little kingdoms pretending the others don’t exist.  WHOLE Health contains ALL of these components.  It is not possible to have a healthy mind without a healthy body and vice versa. It ALL works together in a perfectly harmonius manner…They talk to each other…constantly!  Focusing on one component while ignoring the other is why most of us live with some kind of dis-ease.  Is it time to ask ourselves, what are we not at ease with?  What can we do to improve?

I also work from a spiritual understanding that the body can sometimes become a map of things we have not completely processed.

I have spent years studying traditional ideas connecting different parts of the body with grief, fear, anger, suppression, boundaries and other emotional experiences.  And I like to learn the hard way.  lol

I don’t present those relationships as laboratory diagnoses.  I use them as places to look…Questions…Doors…

• Where are you afraid?
•  Where are you grieving?
• Where are you angry?
• Where are you living against yourself?
• Where have you learned that you aren’t allowed to say no?
• Where are you carrying responsibility that was never yours?
• What happened shortly before things began changing?
• What are you pretending doesn’t hurt?
• What are you still surviving, even though the original danger may already be gone?

Sometimes those questions lead nowhere.  And sometimes opening one of those doors changes everything.

I have watched people experience profound changes without taking a single herb…Sometimes they finally grieved.  Sometimes they left something harmful.  Sometimes they forgave themselves, or others.  Sometimes they changed the way they were eating or living.  Sometimes they stopped fighting their own body.  Sometimes they finally established a boundary.  Sometimes they finally said the word: NO!

Sometimes they realized that the coping mechanism that once helped them survive was now keeping them trapped in survival mode.

And how do I know how easy it is to avoid all of those things?  😀

Because I am guilty of it too.  Sometimes that person was/is ME!!!

I learned most of this the expensive and effective way…On myself!

I have been the person searching for something outside myself to fix what I was refusing to look at inside.  I have been the person ignoring my own boundaries.  I have been the person carrying old pain long after the original moment had passed….I have been the person whose body finally seemed to say:

“Since you apparently aren’t going to listen any other way…”  OUT OF COMMISSION FOR YOU!!!  Now you have nothing but time to listen!!!  😀

And Yes, I Love Plants

Of course I do.  I grow hundreds of them and use them daily!!! Plants are extraordinary…They contain nutrients, minerals and countless biologically active compounds, and human beings have worked with them for food and medicine since the beginning of time……..by the way, NOT arguing about that, and other things we can’t prove is one simple way to improve your well being!  😀

Modern medicine itself has repeatedly learned from substances first discovered in plants and the natural world.

But I also believe something very important….Natural does not automatically mean harmless…or better.

That is why I do not casually tell people what herbs they should take.

Before even discussing an herb with someone, I want to know about their medical conditions, medications, allergies, surgeries and other circumstances that might matter.

-Plants can interact with medications.

-People can be allergic to them.

-Preparation matters.

-Dosage matters.

-The person matters.

-The situation matters.

Something that is appropriate for one human being may be completely inappropriate for another.  We are ALL unique and should be treated as such!  There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to real healing!

So I educate.

I may explain how a plant has traditionally been used.  I may discuss nutrients or compounds it contains.  I may discuss available research and/or personal experiences.  I may explain possible risks or interactions…AND I may explain what I personally would investigate or consider if I found myself in a similar situation.  But I might not tell someone to throw away their medication and I might not tell someone to ignore their doctor.  I also might even refuse to say anything based on the circumstances presented to me.  I am not a magician and healing takes time, lifestyle changes, baby steps…but I don’t wave a magic wand.  I can teach you about simple life changes that MIGHT help, but I do not pretend to replace emergency medicine, diagnostics, surgery or the knowledge of medical professionals.

There are things modern medicine does extraordinarily well…they can sew your arm back on.  I can’t.  They have life saving diagnostics and devices, like AED’s.  I have cayenne…lol

There are also areas where nutrition, lifestyle, herbs, emotional healing, spiritual practice, rest, community and changing our environment may have something meaningful to contribute.

I don’t believe those worlds have to be enemies.  In fact, I think some of the most interesting possibilities appear when people stop fighting over which toolbox is allowed to exist and start asking……………..What does this particular human being actually need?

Getting to the Root

That is why, when someone asks me, “What should I take?”

I am more interested in asking, “What is happening in your life?”

Not because I believe every physical illness has a simple emotional cause…but I am old enough to have seen MANY cases over the decades where that definitely, at least, helped!  However, human bodies are far more complicated and individual than that.

But the truth is, symptoms occur inside a human being who has a history.

– A nervous system

– An environment

– Relationships

– Nutrition

– Beliefs

– Habits

– Losses

– Stress

– Joy

– Fear

– Purpose

– Trauma

– And a story

I want to know the story.  Sometimes the answer really may include a plant.  Sometimes it may include better nutrition or replacing something the body is lacking….and sometimes it may include conventional medical treatment.

Sometimes it may be sleep…sometimes movement…sometimes changing the environment…sometimes ending a destructive relationship…sometimes grieving someone we lost twenty years ago…sometimes forgiving ourselves…sometimes realizing that saying NO is not a crime!  Yeah, I wrote a song about that…lol

And sometimes healing isn’t about adding one more thing at all…sometimes it begins by asking:

What can I finally put to rest?

That is what being a Medicine Woman means to me.  It is not standing above another person and telling them how to heal.  It is not pretending I have all the answers.  As anyone who knows me knows, my own life cured me of that idea a long time ago. 😀

It is sitting beside another human being and helping them become curious enough to ask questions they may never have been invited to ask before…allowing them to feel safe, heard, teaching, listening, observing, learning and loving…EXACTLY where you are and for who you are.

Sharing what I know while being willing to say what I don’t know.  Respecting both the wisdom of nature and the individual experience.  Understanding that sometimes the body needs physical intervention…and sometimes the human SOUL (soil) living inside that body desperately needs to finally be heard.  My job is not to tell another person HOW to heal.  My job is to help them become curious enough about themselves to start asking better questions while hopefully inspiring the desire and confidence in others so that they may know, YOU CAN DO THIS, TOO!

Because after everything my own body has taught me, this may be one of the greatest lessons I have learned:

Healing is not always about finding the next thing to swallow…sometimes it is medicine…sometimes it is an herb…sometimes it is food, grief, boundaries, rest, nature……..and sometimes it is changing your environment.  Sometimes it is finally telling yourself the truth.  And most often, it is several of those things working together.

But every once in a while, the most powerful medicine isn’t something we add at all.

Sometimes healing begins when we finally put down what was hurting us.

As always, I thank you for the Honor of being able to Serve You! <3