Let’s do healing differently…
You’ve been feeling off. Maybe you have migraines all the time; your appetite is all over the place. Nothing sounds appetizing so you haven’t really been eating until you’re so hungry you grab whatever is closest and easiest to eat, leaving you with an upset stomach, feeling bloated, sluggish, beating yourself up for going through that cycle yet again. You haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in who knows how long and you’re basically only running on caffeine. You haven’t been feeling like yourself. You barely leave the house, and when you do, you’re anxious, white-knuckling it until you can get home. Maybe you’ve been thinking you really should make some changes—spend more time with your friends and family, read, or use that gym membership you’re still paying for every month. Sometimes you try a new routine for a few days, but nothing really seems to stick. Maybe you’ve gone to the doctor, but after waiting months for a twenty-minute appointment, they just throw pills at you. Some SSRIs that make you feel even less like yourself, some migraine meds that don’t actually help. Maybe they tell you to pick up some melatonin at the pharmacy to help you sleep, and recommend you try a diet to lose some weight.
Then you try a Wise Woman Consultation.
And you feel… heard. Listened to. She asks questions and you begin to see connections you hadn’t before. You realize that she’s here to understand, to get to the root of the issue. She doesn’t just ask about your symptoms, but about your life. About your thoughts and feelings, your hopes and dreams. About what lights you up inside. In talking to her, you start to understand more too. You begin to see the cause and effect. She validates your experience and the two of you work together to come up with a plan. This isn’t just a “take these pills and go on a diet” plan. This plan feels aligned with what you want out of your life, not what someone else tells you that you should want. You leave the consultation feeling relieved and even a bit excited. You’re looking forward to trying the herbs she told you about and initiating the first step of your plan. She’s also made it clear that she is here to work with you to adjust the plan if at any point you feel like you hit a snag or aren’t noticing results. You’re feeling empowered—hopeful rather than hopeless. Like maybe this time, finally, something is going to change for the better.
This is what has been called the Wise Woman tradition of healing, although of course this sort of healing has no gender. Every culture has had their own names for the people who took on this role in their community: shamans, medicine men/women, curandero/as, healers, wise women/men. Traditional healers recognize that we cannot separate the body from the mind or the soul. That an injury to one will impact the others; that true healing means healing the whole. Research is finally catching up to this wisdom that traditional and indigenous healers have known and been practicing all along, yet it takes an average of eighteen years (!) for research to translate into direct practice in modern medicine. Not to mention, integrative practices are harder to bill for in a system where medical practice is often dictated by insurance companies.
This is why I am doing things differently.
The modern healthcare system in the U.S. is broken, and I refuse to contribute to that system. Instead, I choose to be the change I want to see—to build a practice that I would seek help from and would encourage my loved ones to visit also. To put into practice the wisdom I have accumulated through fourteen years of my own soul searching and healing journey along with my training and experience as a trauma therapist, folk herbalist, tarot reader, nature-based spiritual practitioner, historian, and student of curanderismo. To honor these lineages, to gather the wisdom and viewpoints and experiences from each in my handwoven basket and build a practice that blends traditional wisdom with modern knowledge, and to share it with you. This is my devotion to Mother Nature, and to humanity, in my own personal way. So that I may be of service to you. Because what we do to the environment we do to ourselves, and what we do to ourselves, we do to the environment. So when we heal ourselves, we heal the environment. I believe that when we heal our connection with ourselves and with nature, we will create ripple effects that can shift society towards more compassion, towards reciprocal relationships with nature and our community, towards peace and understanding rather than violence and war.
We’re on a precipice. Can you feel it too?
The systems in place now, including the U.S. healthcare system, have run their course. They are running out of things to exploit. They are no longer effectively doing the things they promised to do, and sooner or later something has got to give. It is time to disempower the systems that depend on our reliance upon them and to take our power back. One way we can do this is in revivifying our lives. By healing our minds, bodies, and souls so that we are not dependent upon the systems that keep us dependent, in debt, disconnected, in survival mode, buying things we don’t really need that they have promised will finally make us happy.
So, let’s do things differently. Together we can make real change.