I Am Not Your Ace-in-the-Hole. You Are.

My path towards health and healing has not been an easy journey. And up until 2016, it wasn't very successful. During my previous nearly four decades of reading, research, study, and trial and error, my health continued to decline. I would sometimes experience stabilization, or even some improvement of a symptom, but it wouldn't last. Eventually the symptom came back or a new one developed. It was such a  frustrating and disheartening process. 

When the really weird symptoms started to develop, I knew any practioner I went to, conventional or alternative, would just look at me like I was crazy. These symptoms included one foot getting red hot, while the other one was so cold it needed a slipper; immediate leg cramps just by pointing my toes; pounding, loud heartbeat in my ear when I laid down to go to sleep; intense itching at my hips, with no visible cause; splotchy redness on the tops of both feet; tips of my second toe, on each foot, turning pale and numb when in cold weather; and restless legs. 

All of these strange symptoms are now either gone or 80-90% improved. What finally worked when everything else I tried failed? Medical Medium information. I discovered his first book in July 2016 and, since then, have been voraciously studying, learning, and implementing the information he continues to provide. 

People tend to want a quick fix. Something to calm a symptom, so they can get back to their regular life. They're generally open to natural options, as long as they aren't too hard and don't disrupt their current routine or eliminate anything they currently enjoy. That was me for a long time. I looked for a supplement or herb I could take, a diet that would help, or a practitioner that could fix me.  

What I've learned, though, is that real healing is not that simple. Real healing requires knowledge and commitment. Knowledge of the true cause of a condition, not just a theory, and what to do to heal it, and commitment to giving your body what it needs. I'm so grateful that this information is finally available, thanks to Anthony William. After decades of searching, it was definitely a hallelujah moment when I read his first book.

I am frequently asked for my take on various health issues from family and friends. I want to help as much as I can, but I've found that giving a couple of suggestions about what to do hasn't been all that helpful. A recent video by Echota Keller helped to confirm what I was starting to conclude. To truly heal, people need to learn the information themselves, directly from the original source. Echota has been healing with Medical Medium information for about as long as I have. 

When I just answer people's questions, I limit their ability to heal. They may embrace my suggestion, but they won't fully understand the real cause of their condition, what else their body may need, how other foods could be making healing difficult, and what to expect from the healing process. The one or two things I suggest may help a little bit, but it won't be enough to motivate the person to stay on that path or pursue it deeper.

While my husband's diet has improved a bit along with mine, it still has a long way to go before his body can really start healing. A while back, he said he considered me his ace-in-the-hole. If he ended up developing a condition that disrupted his life, he would look to me to help him heal. In the meantime, he wanted to continue embracing the foods and beverages he enjoys. 

After realizing how little I've been able to help others by just answering their questions, I started pondering this ace-in-the-hole designation. By immersing myself in Medical Medium information, I've finally been able to start healing. I've learned the specific causes of each of my conditions, which foods help and which ones are problematic, that healing is not linear and flare ups will happen, and that healing is a long-term process. I was able to start slowly, to keep it manageable, and then ramp things up as I was ready to take my healing to the next level.

No one can know my body better than me. No one can know better than me what I'm ready to embrace, what works for me and what doesn't, or how quickly I want to heal. And if I want to fully heal, to completely get rid of all my problem symptoms, I have to commit...every day...every bite...forever. Medical Medium can show me the path, but it's up to me to do the work.

The same goes for my mental, emotional, and structural health. My chiropractor, the awesome Scott Kolofer, can teach me how my body is connected structurally, recommend exercises and other resources to help me strengthen and gain flexibility, and provide skilled bodywork to help loosen things up and coax things in the right direction. But it's up to me to do the exercises...every day...no matter how tired I am...even if it's only for a few minutes...forever. 

I can learn about the value of meditation and how to release triggered emotions, but I have to do the meditations. I have to stop and take time to relax through a triggered emotion to allow it to release. I can't put it off, saying I'll deal with it next time. Some form of meditation needs to happen every day, even if it's just for a few minutes before I get out of bed, and my emotions have to be released immediately after they've been triggered...every time...every day...forever.

Is this path easy? Hell no. I spend 2-4 hours each day doing kitchen work to prep my food and juices, about an hour each day meditating and doing my exercises, and 5-7 hours each week aquiring and storing fresh produce and a few other foods. Along with work and sleep, this hasn't left a whole lot of time for other activities.

Eating out at restaurants ranges from difficult to impossible. When I travel or am invited to a meal, I bring my own food. My foods are not complicated. On the contrary, they're too simple. Steamed veggies, fresh fruit, baked or steamed potatoes, leafy greens...not complicated at all. But just try to find them without salt, oil, dairy, dressing, or any other potentially troublesome additions.

This path doesn't have to be as all-consuming as I've chosen. Baby-step changes are totally okay for anyone who needs to ease into it. For me, however, when my back went out in the Fall of 2019 and I was seriously debilitated, my commitment to this healing path ramped up. It became my highest priority, and it still is.

Is this path worth it? Hell yes. Absolutely. 100%. No question. I am finally healing, and it's dang awesome.

I recently reminded my husband of his ace-in-the-hole comment. I let him know I would not take on that role. If he wants to heal, he'll have to learn the information himself and decide on his own healing path. I can point to where the information is and offer guidance here and there, but it'll be up to him to do the work. I won't spoon-feed it to him. He has to be his own ace-in-the-hole. 

From now on, this is how I'll be responding when others ask me for help with health issues. Use the Medical Medium information as your foundation. Learn the cause of your condition, learn what aggravates it, learn what heals it, and select healing options based on what feels manageable. Embrace more of his recommendations when you're ready to take your healing to the next level. 

Address other aspects of your health...mental, emotional, and structural...in a mannner that works best for you. Get support where needed. Some techniques will be helpful stepping stones, while others will be worth settling in with. Be willing to do the work. Be committed. Give your body what it needs to heal. 

I am always happy to help, but I'm not your ace-in-the-hole. You are.

Wordless Reconciliation

It had been a week since my Dad had died, and I was heading down for the funeral service. My back was not healed enough to make the drive all at once, so I broke it up with a hotel at the halfway point. When I was packing for the trip, I felt compelled to bring my Sacred Path Cards by Jamie Sams. 

Four months previously, I had received emails from my brother that hurt me deeply. Since then, he and I hadn't had any direct communication. Trying to resolve the issue via phone or email didn't play out well in my mind, especially since my emotions were still quite sensitive. While we were both active in supporting our Dad as he went through Hospice, all communication was with our sister. My brother's work schedule was such that his visits and mine never overlapped. 

Tomorrow my brother and I would be seeing each other for the first time since the email exchange. I was concerned that I hadn't made as much emotional progress as I'd hoped. I knew my brother had a good heart and a deep love of family, but the things he'd said to me made me wonder if that still applied to me. I knew that I had allowed his words to hurt me, and that I have a choice in that. I also knew that my ego was part of my problem. I'd tried processing my emotions numerous ways, but I couldn't let go of the desire to have him acknowledge how much he had hurt me.

A few weeks before, I had picked up the Sacred Path Cards. I had done three different readings so far and every reading, even the one where I just pulled a card out of the deck, gave me the Give-Away Ceremony card. This is a card about releasing, letting go, making a sacrifice, and surrendering. I knew this card was referring to the situation with my brother. 

I had arrived at my hotel a bit later than expected and I was tired, but I needed to do a card reading before going to bed. This was my last chance to get myself in a better state of mind before I saw my brother the next day. I opted for the Sacred Mountain Spread. This is a five card spread where the first four cards represent areas where a limitation or denial has been set and needs to be resolved to move forward. The first card I turned over was the Give-Away Ceremony card. I was surprised to get this card again...and yet not surprised. 

The card in this first position means "you are being asked to look at what you feel you cannot achieve in the card's lesson, hence your limitation is made clear for you." I knew I had to disregard my ego. It was time to let go of the need to have him acknowledge my hurt feelings. Those feelings were valid and needed to be seen, accepted, and honored, but that only needed to be done by me. 

As I was lying in bed, I brushed aside all the hurtful words and our differing belief systems, of which there are many, and focused instead on his soul and its connection to mine. In doing so, I was able to feel the love and goodness at his core once again, and I felt my heart finally start to heal. 

When I woke up the next morning, the release had happened. I no longer even needed to discuss with him what had transpired between us. The one remaining thing that I didn't know, was whether or not he had any continuing animosity towards me.

When we met in the parking lot at the church, we both greeted each other the way we always had, with smiles (behind facemasks) and heartfelt hellos. I didn't see or feel any change in his attitude towards me at all. This made me wonder if he even remembered the email incident and the things he had said to me. Perhaps he had been able to let go right away, while I struggled with the after effects for months. Regardless, I was glad to see the love in his eyes and hear the gentle greeting he always gave me.

The day went well and it was nice to have our whole family together to celebrate the memory of our Dad. When the time came for goodbye hugs, my brother and I embraced like we always did, and then he did something he'd never done before. He held me a little tighter and a little longer and said to me, "I love you, Jenne." In that action, I felt the words "I'm sorry" without needing to hear them. My feelings had been acknowledged, and all was now resolved between us.

Michael Singer points out the importance of separating your personal, emotional reaction from the problem at hand. Our emotions will always complicate and aggravate a situation. When we encounter a problem and respond with emotional upset, we now have two problems to contend with...the original problem, plus our emotions. When we learn to promptly accept and release our emotional reaction, we are then able to give our full attention to resolving the problem and we will make better decisions. 

Through this challenge, I've learned that true resolution comes by going within. I had to learn to acknowledge and let go of the "stuff" I'd acquired during my life that made me so sensitive...the hurt, betrayal, and insecurities that had built up over the years. The more I am able accept and release these pent up emotional states, the less other people's words and actions will bother me. In The Untethered Soul, he says, "Break the habit of thinking that the solution to your problem is to rearrange things outside. The only permanent solution to your problem is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality." 

My brother's words were not about me. They were about what was going on with him. The more I can release my emotional triggers, the more of a positive effect I can have on the world around me. Situations on the outside will regularly present themselves to me. By doing so, they are asking something of me. My intention going forward is to try make every moment that passes before me be better off for having done so. To achieve this, I have to let go of my emotional baggage and face every situation with love, understanding, and compassion. Not an easy goal for sure, but definitely worth the effort.

I have since done a few more readings with my Sacred Path Cards, and the Give-Away Ceremony card is no longer showing up. Soon it will be time for me to work through my next limitation, but until then I'm appreciating the newfound peace I've attained with what I've learned so far.

Embracing Abandonment & Betrayal

When I was at my lowest point with my back a year ago, my current chiropractor, Scott Kolofer, looked me in the eye and said, "I will not abandon you." We both knew that he didn't have all the answers to help me, but the reassurance of his constancy was huge. As I shared this memory with him recently, I was surprised by the depth of emotion it triggered in me. 

In the 13+ years I've been actively dealing with back problems, I've seen six other chiropractors. As I contemplated my chiropractic history, I noticed feelings of abandonment and betrayal that I'd never really acknowledged. I am not saying there were any bad intentions on their parts at all, but, from my perspective, their actions or choices eroded any remaining faith I had in being able to rely on a healthcare practitioner...a faith that had already been seriously trashed by the medical profession. 

Four of my previous chiropractors either stopped practicing or left the area with little to no notice...the longest advance notice being 30 days and the least 0 days. I understand each of their reasons for their choice, but that doesn't change that fact that I was left to fend for myself, feeling abandoned.

Two of my previous chiropractors gave me bad adjustments that I had to find another chiropractor to fix. In these situations, it was my choice to switch, but that was based on broken trust. Submitting to chiropractic treatment requires relaxed muscles, which stems from a sense of trust in your practitioner. I trusted them to help me get better and I left feeling worse. I know they had good intentions, but it doesn't change the fact that my trust in them had been broken, and left me feeling betrayed.

While working through each of these situations, I brushed my painful feelings aside and went into problem solving mode. If emotions of abandonment or betrayal started to kick in, I would focus on the things I needed to do to move forward, try to look on the positive side of the circumstances, or distract myself with other activities. 

As I was remembering where I was physically last year, and what Scott had told me, the emotions that came up made it clear that I had never acknowledged my feelings of abandonment and betrayal that were caused by my other chiropractic experiences. 

At the same time, I came across this video of Kyle Cease that addressed my issue specifically. Serendipity can be so cool. The emotions I was avoiding are not pleasant ones to feel. Kyle points out that we tend to have a storehouse of ways to avoid feeling unpleasant emotions, including justifying them, denying them, and distracting ourselves. All of these techniques keep the emotions lurking in the background, unresolved. The emotions will keep trying to get our attention... and we will keep looking for ways to not feel them.

So that's what I've been doing all these years. Abandonment was met with a resolve to not be dependent. Betrayal was met with a resolve to be more cautious with my trust. If I could achieve those two things, I wouldn't have to feel those painful emotions. But this was just symptom relief for my emotions, and symptom relief doesn't heal. 

My emotions just wanted to be seen and acknowledged...by me. Even if it wasn't the other person's intention, I am allowed to feel abandoned and I am allowed to feel betrayed. Once these emotions are fully embraced, they can be released. By denying them, I've been keeping them trapped.

So I finally embraced these emotions and felt them deeply. Was it painful? Yes, you bet it was. A few tears were shed. After a few hours, though, the pain started to lessen. After a day or two, the emotions released. I'm now actually feeling quite peaceful about my chiropractic past.

I'm now aware of this pattern in me and I've started seeing it in other areas. If an uncomfortable emotion is triggered, my automatic response is to look for something to take my mind off it... checking the news, turning on a movie, listening to music or a podcast. 

To break this pattern, I stop my search for a distraction and tell myself to just feel the emotion that was triggered. Some emotions release fairly promptly, while others take a bit longer. Some are just uncomfortable, while others are more painful. As I do this more and more, I'm seeing a decrease in the frequency and intensity of my emotional triggers. The more quickly I feel and release an emotion, the less emotional baggage I have to carry with me into the future.

I am deeply grateful to Scott for sticking by me this past year. He continues to provide my body with gentle, skilled care, and shows me how to care for my body better, so it can heal. 

My other chiropractors tended to encourage regular "maintenance" visits and more frequent visits when pain was present, creating dependence...and then I was abandoned. Scott is focused on healing, strengthening, less frequent visits, and ultimately independence...and he stuck by me. I find this truly fascinating.

As I look for my path going forward, I was struck by what Kyle Cease said in his video. Don't look for your path. You are the path! Wow. How cool is that? I am the path. I may not see my whole path all at once, but I can at least see the next step. And that's enough for now.

Is Ignorance Bliss?

In the movie The Matrix, Neo is given the choice between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill gives him the unpleasant truth. The blue pill leaves him in blissful ignorance. The question being, would he rather know or not know what's really going on? This question has been on my mind lately. 

For decades I searched for answers to health related problems, for myself and my family. I went from one resource to the next, one expert to the next, one protocol to the next, looking for answers. If a recommendation sounded reasonable, I would give it a try, using myself as a guinea pig. Sometimes I would experience symptom relief for a bit, but the condition would invariably come back. Every resource I found was just offering guesses or theories about the cause, typically blaming the person (you're not thinking right) or the person's body (you have a faulty body). No one had real answers.

I watched my family members suffer through these conditions, while standing by feeling helpless. I did the best I could with the information I had. Even my own symptoms continued to get worse, in spite of my diligent efforts to try to heal. The more I researched, the more I learned how little knowledge and information was out there. "Cause unknown," "condition can't be cured," and "can last for years or be lifelong" were phrases I ran into over and over again. Symptom relief was the focus of all healing modalities, rather than cure, and even the symptom relief was typically short lived.

Then in July of 2016, after reading Anthony William's first book, Medical Medium, I exclaimed, "Answers! I've finally found them!" His detailed explanations about the causes of each condition made complete sense. He laid out recommendations for healing. Real healing. Actually reversing conditions and then curing them, using food, herbs, and a few supplements. This path is simple, meaning you can do it on your own if you choose, but it's not necessarily easy. Is it worth it? Yes. Absolutely. 100%.

The proof of the effectiveness of his information is in the healing stories, including my own. Not just a few of them, but thousands of them...hundreds of thousands of them, all over the world. People are healing conditions that were considered incurable. Many had been debilitated for years, decades, and sometimes their entire lives. Going from doctor to doctor. Trying one treatment protocol after the next. Spending the bulk of their resources in the search, only to end up bedridden, misunderstood, and in despair. 

A young woman who went through this, and would have dropped out of college if she hadn't discovered Anthony's information, summed it up well. "In a toxic world full of noise and disinformation, there is truth, there is real healing, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel."

And yet, for a variety of reasons, many people aren't ready to give this information its due credence. I respect that. Each person has their own path, their own perspective, and their own free will. Many people have trouble accepting the source of his information. Much of his information contradicts what is generally accepted as true. I'm also aware, first hand, that this path isn't easy. Simple maybe, using real foods and a few supplements to heal, but definitely not easy. For those who want science to back up their choices, there just aren't any studies on the healing benefits of celery juice, bananas, or potatoes. And it's really unlikely there ever will be, because there's no profit in it.

So let's get back to the red pill / blue pill question. In the past, I felt helpless because I didn't know the cause of a condition or what to do about it. Now I feel helpless because I have answers, but people often don't want to hear or implement them. This is the question that I've been pondering lately. Is it better to feel helpless with answers or without them? 

When I didn't have answers, I was constantly searching for them. If someone presented me with a health concern, I gave them the best information I'd come across so far. After learning more, I would sometimes come to a different conclusion than the information I'd previously shared. It was a frustrating process, but I felt good that I was at least giving people a few alternatives to mainstream approaches, even if I sometimes wanted to revise my previous response. 

Now that I finally have answers, I've found that many people either aren't open to them or aren't ready for them. I watch them suffer, while sitting on the knowledge of what they could do to start feeling better. It's really difficult to withhold information that could be seriously helpful. Painful even, in my heart. I take solace in being able to periodically plant a seed about other options, but I've learned from experience to not share the information in depth unless asked. 

So which one is better? Being allowed to share information that won't be significantly helpful...or...to not be allowed to share information that could make a huge difference in someone's life? The first one is frustrating. The second one is seriously painful. 

I'll take the pain. I'm a red pill person. Give me the truth. With all of its scary implications and disruption. Let's get it all out on the table, out in the light of day, so we can start dealing with it. It hasn't done us any good to keep it hidden...quite the contrary, actually. 

Now that I have answers, I no longer have to search for them. If someone asks for my take on a health issue they're dealing with, I'll give them the best information I have to offer, as I've always done. If they're not open to what I have to share or aren't ready for it, I might be able to plant a seed of possibility. At some point, the person may be back for more in depth info, after trying other methods and seeing little improvement, or they may not. At least I was able to let them know that more information and options are available, if they ever want to go there.

At the end of the documentary about Linda Ronstadt, Linda explained that she had to stop singing because of Parkinson's disease. I now know that Parkinson's is caused by heavy metals in the brain, primarily mercury. These metal deposits disrupt the electrical impulses and neurotransmitter activity in the brain, resulting in the tremors. The condition is aggravated when these metals begin to run and oxidize, which is largely due to a high fat diet. 

Getting the metals out and lowering fat intake are essential with Parkinson's. If she were to consume the Medical Medium Heavy Metal Detox Smoothie on a daily basis and adjust her diet to significantly lower her fat intake, maybe she would soon be able to start singing again...even if just for her own pleasure. But I've learned, by trial and error, to not offer these suggestions unless asked. I won't be calling or writing to Linda to let her know. How sad, though, to see her spirit diminished by her inability to continue singing, at a time when information is finally out there that could make a difference for her.

If I didn't have the answers, I would just express sympathy for the person's situation, offer help where I could, and accept the situation as unavoidable. Actually, even with answers, I've learned it's better to continue to embrace the first two...express sympathy and offer help. The third one, though, I can no longer do...accepting the situation as unavoidable. 

While I've had to learn to not offer help unless asked, it's not easy. And yet, I know that everyone has free will and their own belief system, and that has to be respected. In the meantime, I'll continue to acquire more answers and a deeper understanding of the information I already have. I'll continue to heal and strengthen my own body, share what I know when requested, and wait. Because some day, possibly decades from now, people will be ready to hear it. When that time comes, I plan to be ready.

As far as the blue pill goes, I've tossed it in the trash. Give me the truth...every time.

Coming Full Circle

The location sounded real familiar when he described it to me. When I learned the address, that confirmed it. I had been there before. My current chiropractor was moving into the same location where I saw my first chiropractor 13+ years ago. 

Walking into that office again was a strange melding of past and present. The essence of the past superimposed on the present. The reception area had been redesigned, but a hazy image of the way it used to be was still there. When Scott showed me around, we went into a room where I had had a neurological test on my legs after my back surgery. The memory of that flooded back. Things were different, and yet the same. I was different, and yet the same. The condition of my back was different, and yet the same. 

For more than 13 years, I've been seeing chiropractors in an attempt to heal my back. During that time I've seen seven different chiropractors, and now I was back at the beginning. Back where I started. Back at the office of my very first chiropractor. 

The first question that kept popping in my head was, "What does this mean?" Coincidence didn't seem enough to explain it. It felt deeper than that. The second question, which got more to the heart of the issue was, "Did you achieve a healed back? Are you better?" The sad answer is...no. My back currently has just as many issues, and actually a few more, than it did when I was first motivated to see a chiropractor all those years ago. 

A more encouraging question then presented itself. "What have you learned?" The knowledge and experience I've gained through all this is where my progress lies.

I settled on chiropractics after trying homeopathy, rolfing, herbal medicine, mind-body connections, acupuncture, and more. I didn't like taking pain meds, which I limited to ibuprofen infrequently, and I wanted to avoid back surgery. Chiropractics was my best option, based on what was available at the time.

Hindsight is a fascinating learning tool. When looking forward, we can only see through the lens of what we know. When looking back, we can see through the lens of what we've learned. "If I only knew then what I know now" is the phrase that often comes to mind. And yet, our past decisions need to be honored. We made the best choices we could with the circumstances and information we had at that time.

Seven chiropractors over 13 years might seem like a lot, but it was often the chiropractor's action that forced the change. My first chiropractor decided to stop practicing, giving me only 30 days notice, two others left the area, with even less than 30 days notice, and one cut way back on his hours and changed the focus of his practice. With the remaining two, it was my decision to make the change, due to unhelpful adjustments that required fixing by another chiropractor.

As disjointed as my path may seem, the chain of events ultimately led me to my current chiropractor, Scott Kolofer, who is providing me with a unique style of care that my body desperately needed. He is helping me move forward and actually heal. My chiropractic path led me directly to him, and for that I am grateful. 

My previous chiropractors provided varying levels of benefits, but the focus with all of them was on symptom relief, rather than long-term healing. In early 2008, after four months of nearly constant pain, my first chiropractor recommended back surgery after seeing my MRI. From a symptom relief perspective, the surgery worked. I woke up in the recovery room virtually pain free for the first time in months. It did not, however, help with any long term healing. The scar tissue build up from the surgery has been an aggravating factor in my current condition.

To get on the path of real healing, I had to learn about the specific factors that were causing my condition. From Medical Medium, I've learned about the viral component of low back pain; what to do about it using foods, herbs, and a few supplements; how to knock back the variety of Shingles that commonly aggravates the low back; which foods to avoid that promote scar tissue build up; and which foods and herbs to embrace that break up scar tissue and reduce it. 

Scott is the first chiropractor I've seen who takes the time to help me see the musculoskeletal reasons for my back problems. He shows me exercises and stretches to promote healing, and how to do them correctly. He doesn't just hand me a few xeroxed pages of exercises and say "Do these," like my previous chiropractors have done. He actually gets me on the floor and gives me instructions about what my various muscles should be doing during each exercise. My ability to heal is now at a place it's never been before. I'm actually feeling the difference, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

So here I am, 13 years later, back where I started. My future looks far different than it did all those years ago. At the start of my journey in 2007, I was desperately searching for answers and for a practitioner who could fix me. My healing would move forward for a while and then backslide, and I didn't know why. The process was so disheartening.

Today my back issues are at a more challenging place, but my outlook is brighter. I finally have answers. What a difference that makes! It's so empowering to know the real causes of my condition and what I need to do to fix them. My current chiropractor is an equal partner on my healing journey. I am so grateful for his skill and compassionate care. I'm no longer looking for a practitioner to fix me. That's my job. 

Healing is simpler than we've been led to believe. Simple, but not necessarily easy. It takes focus, study, determination, and work. I had to be willing to change my daily routine and make healing my top priority. Has all that effort been worth it? 

Absolutely. I can see a healed back in my future, and it's no longer just wishful thinking.

Trusting My Body

I've never felt really healthy. I've always been dealing with something, especially respiratory and digestive issues. Once my back problem kicked in, that has been a constant issue as well. Having had chronic symptoms my whole life, it's been pretty easy to conclude that my body was just not as strong or resilient as other people's. 

My mom told me I turned blue at the age of six months from asthma. I had my tonsils out when I was 2 years old and again when I was 10, allergy shots in my late single digits and again in my teens, frequent bowel issues from diarrhea to constipation, several broken bones, a few strep throats starting at 18 months, pneumonia when I was 9, and that's just some of the highlights from my youth. Problematic symptoms continued into adulthood, and more were added to the list. 

I've always seen these symptoms as being who I am. I am a person with allergies, weak bones, back problems, and weak digestion. I came to accept that my body had faults and all I could do was to manage those weaknesses. When I broke a bone, I accepted it because I had weak bones. When springtime came around and my allergies made me a wreck, I understood that I'm a person with allergies and did what I could to manage the symptoms. When digestive symptoms kicked in, I did my best to help my weak digestion. When I came down with a cold or flu, which happened often, I attributed it to my not so strong immune system.

I never thought my body was working against me, I just concluded that the one I had been given was faulty. Not as strong as other people's. When my mom's diagnosis of Lupus was described as her body attacking itself, that made no sense to me...at all. It wasn't logical for a body to do that. The ridiculousness of that diagnosis got me to start questioning how much doctors really know about illness and how to heal.

I searched for answers for decades, in an attempt to find out what was really going on with my various health issues. My tonsils had clearly been inflamed, but something must have caused them to become inflamed. My ongoing and lifelong allergies had to be caused by something that made my body more sensitive than other people's. I hadn't had a low back injury, and yet my back seemed to be collapsing. What was causing that?

For years, all I was able to find were suggestions to manage symptoms and theories about what might be causing them...and the theories didn't make much sense. Then, finally, in 2016, I discovered Medical Medium and got the information I'd been desperately searching for. The real causes of my various conditions. Explanations that made total sense and rang true. To heal, he says, you need two things. You need to know the real cause of your condition and you need to know what to do about it.

Allergies are caused by streptococcus, which is antibiotic resistant and settles in the liver, digestive system, and respiratory system. Low back problems, when no injury has occurred, are commonly caused by a variety of shingles virus. Rosacea, which I developed as an adult, is a form of eczema caused by the combination of the Epstein-Barr virus and heavy metals, particularly copper. And the answers kept coming.

To heal, I needed to stop feeding the viruses and bacteria, get the toxins and heavy metals out of my body, and bring in foods and supplements that would help my body heal. Simple, yes. Easy, no. But it has been worth it. I'm healing in ways I never thought I could.

My body is showing me that it's not faulty. It's not weak. It was just overwhelmed and trying the best it could, given the circumstances. Our bodies can be challenged by pathogens and toxins at birth, as was the case for me. With the knowledge I've gained, I look back at my diet over the past six decades and cringe, especially so with my first two decades. Later in life I tried to eat healthier, but my diet has always been high fat, which totally bogs down the liver.

As I've learned what my body really needs, and what it needs me to avoid, it feels like my body and I are learning to work together better. With each step forward in my healing, my trust in my body increases. With each day that I give my body the tools it needs to heal, I hope my body is learning to trust me as well. 

After decades of unknowingly bombarding my body with unhelpful foods and exposing it to so many toxins, it wouldn't surprise me if my body were to just get fed up with me and say, "You're on your own, lady!" But it doesn't. It keeps doing the best it can to keep me safe. Medical Medium says our bodies love us unconditionally. I've sensed that my body is now cautiously optimistic, now that I finally have the knowledge I need to heal. It's my intention to build on that optimism and turn it into confidence. 

To encourage supportive communication between me and my body, I have a few mantras that I like to say on my walk to work:

• I trust my body's intelligence and its ability to heal.
• Now that I finally have the knowledge, I will strive to give my body what it needs, avoid things that cause it trouble, and work to earn my body's trust.
• My body is a healing machine. It desperately wants to heal. All it needs is the right tools.

My trust in my body continues to grow. With each symptom that improves or heals, my faith in my body's capabilities increases. I'm not faulty. I'm not a person with allergies. I am a person with a strep infection that's causing my body to develop allergy symptoms. Once I kill off and heal from the strep infection, I will no longer be a person with allergies. Once I kill off and heal from my shingles infection, my back issues will stabilize. Once I kill off Epstein-Barr and cleanse out the toxic heavy metals, I will no longer be a person with Rosacea. 

Knowing the true cause is essential. Knowing what to do completes the puzzle. I'm now seeing what my body is really capable of...and it's truly impressive.

Perceived As Homeless

I was walking down Broad St, going from work to yoga class, when a bicyclist rode up behind me and said "Excuse me. Are you okay?" I smiled and said, "Yes, I'm fine." We stopped and chatted a bit. He said he'd experienced challenges in the past, so wanted to see if there was any way he could help. It didn't take long for me to realize he thought I was homeless...and I knew why. 

I explained that I was barefoot by choice, and that my feet often caused people to conclude I'm homeless. He admitted that my bare feet were the exact reason he came to that conclusion. We chatted a little longer, I thanked him for his concern, and we both went on our way. When he left, he went back the way he had come. He had gone out of his way to come check on me.  

Now I have to admit a couple of things. I'm not the most fashionable dresser, sometimes referring to my style as upscale bag lady. My bags are knitted rather than plastic. And in this instance, I was talking to myself. I had recently listened to a podcast that recommended free form brainstorming and the advantages of doing it out loud. I'm not sure if the bicyclist saw me doing that, since he came up behind me, but it's a possibility. 

Even still, this is not the first time someone thought I was homeless because of my bare feet. It happens quite regularly...and began immediately after I kicked off my shoes eight years ago.

I've been regularly walking up, down, and across Broad St for decades. When I worked downtown, I walked the 1-1/2 mile commute once or twice a day. For a good number of my downtown working years, I was on a pretty regular walking schedule. To make my commute time more productive, I would often read, knit, or even spin while I walked. 

During my pre-barefoot years, it was not unusual for people I didn't know to stop and tell me how much my walking inspired them. These conversations happened in movie theaters, in line at various local businesses, and while I was walking...and they happened frequently. The conversation would typically start by them saying, "You don't know me, but I see you walking on Broad St every day." They would then share their desire to walk or bike, rather than drive. Some would follow that with the reason they can't, but others would say that I inspired them to pull out their bike or go for more regular walks. 

As soon as I took my shoes off and started walking barefoot, these conversations stopped. Now when people stop to talk to me, they want to make sure I know where the homeless shelter is. I've been told where I could get a meal. I've been asked if I had a place to sleep that night. And more than once, homeless people have offered me a pair of shoes. Nothing else about me had changed. I just took off my shoes. 

It baffles me that people associate bare feet with homelessness. I've encountered numerous homeless people over the past several decades, on my walks, working downtown, and on my current shorter walk to work, and they are all wearing shoes. I've been racking my brain to remember if I've ever seen a barefoot homeless person, and I may have seen one, once, from a distance, many years ago. That's it. 

I'm guessing this misguided perception comes from the phrase "they were so poor they couldn't afford shoes," because it seems pretty obvious to the majority of people that no one would be barefoot by choice. 

The other misconception people have about bare feet is that they're dirty and unsanitary. They believe that health and safety codes require customers to wear shoes when going into a business, especially a restaurant or grocery store. Actually, there are no health or safety codes requiring shoes in any business...for customers or their employees. The only time shoes are even referenced for employees are the requirement of steel-toed boots for construction and industrial workers. 

This perception that bare feet are a health or safety code violation is partly related to the "no shirt, no shoes, no service" era that started in the 1960s, when businesses wanted a way to refuse service to "long haired hippies." If people don't assume I'm homeless, they'll often conclude I'm a hippie. Sorry, I missed the hippie era by about 8 years. 

As far as bare feet being dirty goes, yes I do get dirt on my feet. It tends to be more noticeable against my skin color, than it was against the black soles of my shoes, but my feet are far cleaner than my shoes ever were. I wash my feet every night. I never washed the soles of my shoes.

The reactions I get from my bare feet continues to fascinate me. Many times when I've walked towards someone and smiled, they've smiled back. Then their gaze drops downward, they'll see my bare feet, and then they'll look at my face again. But this time their expression has completely changed to one of confusion and caution, while I'm still smiling just like I was before. 

I've learned to not assume a person's change of expression is a negative response to my bare feet. Many times people in that position have approached me after a few minutes and shared the joy that going barefoot brought them in years past. Rather than being confusion and caution, their expression change was actually reminiscence and longing. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between the two until they start talking. 

People ask me if I'm bothered by glass and hot pavement. Glass is not a big problem and my tolerance for hot pavement has increased. I generally don't need footwear on concrete or asphalt unless the temperature is over 100° or under 35°, and even in those situations flip flops will suffice. As far as foot and ankle injuries go, I've had far fewer of them without shoes than I ever did with them.

Eight years in and living barefoot is totally working for me. My feet are happier and my spirit is lighter. My alignment and posture, the strength and flexibility of my feet, and my stability when walking have all improved tremendously. Back when I wore shoes, I was always afraid of falling when going up and down stairs, especially so after my back surgery. As soon as I took off my shoes, that fear went away, because I was now able to feel each step with my foot.

My bare feet have also helped me improve my overall health. In my early years of barefooting, I had regular problems with periodic foot sensitivity that would kick in a couple of hours after eating. With the diet changes I've made, that problem has now been resolved, along with several other symptoms. It was my bare feet that made me aware of the problem. If my feet had been in shoes, I doubt I would have noticed the sensitivity. 

People who know me are comfortable and accepting of my bare feet. In fact, many of them now expect it and will call me out if I happen to have flip flops on. On more than one occasion, I've had someone who knows me, or who knows of my barefooting, ask me why I'm wearing shoes. I'm okay with that. It's awesome to have people encouraging me to take off my shoes, even on those few occasions when I actually put some on. 

Tension or Relaxation?

In my youth, I often heard comments about my ablility to relax. My Mom would gently lift my arm, and then let go of it to see how quickly it would drop back onto the armrest. "Wow," she would say, "you're really relaxed." I was also a slow eater. At the dinner table, I would often be the last one still eating after everyone else had finished and left the table, and I was comfortable with that. Even though I had times of worry and nervousness, my ability to physically relax was always there. 

When I reached my late 40s and started looking for ways to heal my increasingly problematic low back issues, I pursued body work for the first time...ultimately settling on chiropractics. When my first chiropractor noticed tension in my neck and shoulders, she would often suggest that I was too stressed and should find ways to relax. 

Actually, my life was not stressful, but her comments led me to believe that I was stressed and didn't know it. So I consciously tried to relax my body and my muscles, in an attempt to counteract the stress that apparently I didn't know I had. Based on her comments, I came to the conclusion that tense musles were bad and relaxed muscles were good. 

I also noticed that I was now a fast eater, rather than a slow one. I was frequently the first one finished at the dinner table, rather than the last. Being a mom to three kids may have had something to do with that, but I sensed that there was more to it. 

As I pondered my childhood ability to relax my musles and eat my food slowly, I wondered when things had changed. I'm sure it was gradual over the years, making the change unnoticeable, but looking back it had resulted in a pretty huge leap.

For years I believed I was aggravating my physical issues with my mind, based on the comments by my first chiropractor. If I could control my thoughts and relax my muscles, my shoulders wouldn't be so tense. If I could rediscover how to physically relax, like I was able to do in my youth, my back problems would start to resolve. If I could stop worrying about what needed to be done next, I would be able to slow down my eating speed.

I started focusing on calming my breath, taking regular baths, taking magnesium supplements, altering the focus of my thoughts, intentionally relaxing all my muscles, and giving meditation a try. While each of these gave me a little break from my symptoms, to varying degrees, none of them made a difference for the long term. Meditation wasn't clicking for me. It felt like I was mentally tapping my foot and looking at the clock the whole time. Letting go just wasn't happening.

When I discovered Medical Medium information in 2016 and learned the true causes of my various symptoms and conditions, I was finally able to cut my mind some slack. I wasn't a mind over matter failure. There were physical reasons for my inflamed joints, tense muscles, anxiety, and racing mind. The culprits were viruses and toxins, primarily toxic heavy metals. When viruses eat heavy metals, they release neurotoxins that inflame the nerves. When the inflamed nerves are the vagus and/or phrenic nerves, that's when anxiety kicks in.

I started incorporating Medical Medium recommendations into my diet and supplement routine. Gradually at first, and then more diligently as I started noticing improvements. Looking back at my 60+ years of food consumption and toxin exposure, there was a lot that needed to be cleaned out. And I mean, a lot. After decades of searching, I finally had the tools to turn my health around.

The more diligently I embraced Medical Medium recommendations, the more I healed. My mind became calmer, my anxiety reduced, and my muscle tension continued to ease. When my back reached a serious low point last year, I reassessed everything. Based on the amount of healing I'd experienced over the prior three years, I concluded that my diet was on track. That left mental/spiritual and physical to focus on. 

I gave meditation another try. This time it made a significant difference for me. I had knocked back and cleaned out enough pathogens and toxins to allow my body and mind to do a better job of relaxing and letting go. Meditation was actually able to relieve my back pain temporarily. I started meditating daily for at least an hour. What a difference this made! 

Physically, my track record of exercising and stretching was sporadic. The real problem, though, was my lack of understanding of the specific muscles in my body, how they worked together, and what they really needed. This is where my current chiropractor, Scott Kolofer, has been such a big help. Do muscles need tension or relaxation? The answer is yes. 

Tension is not all bad and relaxation is not all good. We need a balance of both. Learning about core muscles vs supportive muscles helped me to understand a significant factor in the decline of my back. I needed to learn to tighten and tone my core abdominal muscles, so that the muscles in my back, that had been spasming from overwork, could relax. I needed to achieve tension and relaxation at the same time!

Exercising is all well and good, but doing the wrong exercises or doing the right ones the wrong way will often aggravate the situation. Both of these were issues for me. Pushing myself too hard was also a problem. Doing the right exercises for my current condition (gentle is okay when it's needed), doing them the right way, and doing them every single day have been essential parts of my healing routine.

As far as the speed of my eating goes, I'm still a work in progress there. I've found that I like my food at the optimum temperature and texture. Eating it promptly is the only way to achieve that with every bite. I guess a cold plate of food didn't bother me as a kid. Smaller portions have helped, as well as allowing some time to pass before refilling my plate.

Step by step I continue to learn, and my body continues to heal and strengthen. This process typically happens more slowly than I would prefer, and is not without periodic setbacks, but that's okay. As long as I'm utimately heading in a forward direction, all is good. 

Keeping My Power

It's been a challenging couple of weeks. I've been working to understand and come to terms with the incident that happened with my brother, which was mentioned in my last post Finding My Voice...and My Power. His words left me feeling attacked, betrayed, and disregarded. The pain I've been feeling has been deep in my heart, the deepest emotional hurt I've experienced in a long time.

My thoughts about the incident have been flipping back and forth between trying to understand what may have caused him to behave this way towards me, and trying to find ways to protect myself from this type of hurt in the future. 

I don't agree...at all...with the many of my brother's social and political views, nor the anger that those views tend to bring out in him. And yet, his love of family has always been deep and strong. At family gatherings, this love shines through. When our Dad was injured last year, my brother was the closest one at hand to help out. He made the 2-3 hour round-trip drive several days in a row to be there. My knowlege of his capacity for love caused me to feel even more blindsided by his verbal attack. I didn't see it coming.

My emotional skin is on the thin side. I admire people who have thicker emotional skin. Reading about Connie Rice's ability to walk confidently into a room of 1,000 people and 5 panelists, who all disagree with her on the topic being discussed, and ultimately sway many of them to her viewpoint is so cool. I'm glad there are people like her out there, but that ain't me...yet.

Looking at the factors that may have caused my brother to behave this way, Fox News is definitely implicated. Many of the phrases he spewed at me came straight from Fox News and/or their affiliates. Propaganda techniques have been in use throughout history and many of them are now accepted advertising strategies. Manipulating people's emotions alters the way they think, which alters their actions. Fox News has employed these techniques on a level that one has to question morally and ethically.

An article by Dr Cynthia Boaz on the Fourteen Propaganda Techniques Used by Fox "News" gave me some helpful insight. Then I started reading Tobin Smith's book Foxocracy. He was a Fox News contributor and guest anchor for 14 years. He lays out in detail the techniques intentionally used to manipulate people. He points out that being able to recognize these techniques makes them less effective. It's good for all of us to know when we're being subject to propaganda techniques, because they're being used on us everywhere to some degree.

With all I'm learning about the impact of heavy metals on our mental and emotional health, my brother's work as as airplane mechanic is quite likely a contributor. Then we can toss on top of this the stresses relating to the pandemic and country-wide civil unrest, plus anything else that may be going on in his life that I don't know about. Any combination of these could have been influencing factors, which helped my understanding of what may have caused him to behave the way he did, but it wasn't helping me feel safer.

Protecting myself while the wound was still fresh has been a top priority. Since my brother and I live a few hundred miles away from each other and COVID has put a halt to any family gatherings for the foreseeable future, I had time to work through this. I was grateful for that.

I've been focusing on healing my emotional wound and figuring out ways to protect myself from being attacked like this again. I was making some progress in the healing, but soon realized that I was not in control of his behavior. This left me feeling dependent on his willingness to change in order for me to feel safe. 

Then I came across a video clip by Kyle Cease. In it he said, "The truth is not what's happening outside of you. The truth is what's happening inside of you." 

That's when I realized my mistake. I was giving my brother my power. I was allowing him to determine how I feel, giving him power over my emotions. If my healing and strength are dependent on his choices, then I've just given him control over me. Awareness is such an essential step! 

That's when the light bulb went off. I had to take back my power and keep it. It's mine to use for my highest good. It was not meant to be given away.

To be truly safe, I need to focus on strengthening and stabilizing my inner self. To not let what's going on outside of me determine how I feel internally. Having compassion for myself needs to be my foundation. 

With this new perspective, I now see what I need to do. I need to work on thickening up my emotional skin. To not be so affected by what other people think of me. To be able to use my voice and accept that others have the right to not like what I have to say. I may say things imperfectly. I may not get my point across as clearly as I'd like. And sometimes I may be wrong. And that's okay. I'm human. And humans cannot achieve perfection.

Emotional healing, like physical healing, is a three steps forward, two steps back process. At times I will falter and slip back into my old ways, but I'll just brush myself off, learn a bit more, and get back on track. I've made great progress in reducing the physical causes of my worry and anxiety, thanks to Medical Medium information. This improved internal calmness has made it possible for me to start working through my emotional triggers and begin altering how I respond to them.

I am grateful to my brother for providing me the opportunity to learn this lesson. As my emotions calm, my pain reduces, and my path for healing becomes clearer, compassion for my brother is slowly starting to grow. I don't know what our relationship will be like going forward, since that's not entirely my choice, but I do know that I'll be fine regardless of what he decides.

In one of my emails to him, I signed off with the word "Love." He responded that it was too late for that. I know for a fact that he is wrong about this. It's never too late for love, as long as compassion is riding along beside it.

Finding My Voice...and My Power

I've always been more of a listener than a talker. If attention is focused on me and I think my words are being judged negatively or even doubtfully as I speak them, the nervous adrenaline rush will cause my face to blush. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. As I watch the reaction in others as I feel my face get red, embarassment kicks in, which makes my blushing even worse. I often try to ignore their reaction and continue on with what I was saying, but it's not easy. My words become less focused, due to everyone, including me, being distracted by my red face. At a young age, I concluded it was easier to stay quiet than to try to use my voice.

For most of my life, if I found myself in a group setting,  I listened and observed. Handcrafts, such as knitting, were enjoyable, calming, and gave my hands something to do while everyone else talked. When I had an opinion that differed from most people, I would sometimes speak up briefly, but often kept it to myself. If I decided on a path that I knew others would judge, I frequently still moved forward with it, but did so quietly. 

Over the past year I've been doing a lot of internal work. Meditation has been a great tool to calm my mind and emotions. It helps me to see the heart of an issue more clearly. As I got the hang of meditation, I started addressing situations that triggered my emotions. I looked for the real cause, the true emotion that was triggered. Finding the correct emotional word is essential. With the wrong word, you're on the wrong part of the map. Like trying to find your way from LA to Monterey, but all you have is a map of Colorado. You won't get there without the correct map.

It was time for me to get to the heart of the trigger behind my blushing when someone seemed to disagree with what I was saying. This included the varying extremes of reactions in others, from doubt to disagreement to offense to anger. Even someone who was just unsure about what I said would trigger a reaction in me. So what was going on inside of me to make me feel triggered?

At first I attributed it to fear, insecurity, and/or lack of confidence. That kind of touched on it, but those emotions weren't at the core of my issue. So I kept looking. Then during a meditation session, it came to me. Guilt. That was it. But why would I feel guilty about my ideas and opinions?

I'll spare you the play-by-play of my emotional work. It turns out that somewhere along the way I'd gotten the impression that I was supposed to be perfect. To always know the right answer. To not be wrong. To always know the right thing to say. If someone doubted what I was saying, then maybe I was wrong. If someone got upset by what I was saying, then I had chosen the wrong words. If it turned out my statement was not correct or that I had said something upsetting to another person, then I had failed in my perceived expectation to be perfect...and I felt guilty about that failure. 

Where did I get the idea that I was supposed to be perfect? Well, school is a big one. Teachers judge us by our mistakes, rather than our successes. When you get a test back from a teacher, it typically shows how many questions you got wrong, in bold red ink, rather than the number you got right. Combine that with my Mom's belief that all four of us kids were geniuses, and this increases the pressure to get the right answers and say the right things.

I skipped a year in school, from first to second grade, was put in a gifted program in elementary school, and was expected to sign up for Advanced Placement classes in high school. Keeping up with all this was a struggle for me. I was often praised for being a "good" student, because I was cooperative and quiet. 

In my early teens, I had a brief conversation with my Mom that, in my mind, confirmed her expectation for me to be perfect. I came home from school one day and happily told her I got an A- on a test. Her response was, "Why didn't you get an A?" Now I know she was just trying to help me see where I could improve, but what I heard was that I wasn't good enough unless I was perfect. After some more emotional work, I've come to realize that I'm human...and perfection is not achievable as a human.

The other issue suppressing my voice was my feeling of unworthiness. This came out during a guided meditation that directed me to feel worthy. My emotional reaction said, "No, you're not worthy. Other people are more important than you." This surprised me. I had no idea this feeling ran so deep. 

I regularly put other people's preferences and needs ahead of mine. This seems to be the unspoken expectation of women and moms. If I did anything purely for myself, I often felt selfish. In my previous writing efforts, I found myself researching other people's findings and opinions that rang true with mine, to help justify my own conclusions. My own beliefs had no value, unless someone more worthy than I believed the same way. 

Now that I had identified the two issues that needed to be addressed, guilt and worthiness, I was able to start making some forward progress. I started this blog to give my voice some practice.

My progress was put to the test last week when two emails from my brother landed in my inbox. The topics were a couple of issues currently facing our country that I have pretty strong feelings about. His words were filled with such vitriol for any group or person that believed differently from him, which included me, that they hit me hard in the heart and left me deeply saddened. 

In the past, I would have deleted his emails and moved on, but these hurt too much. Silence felt like complicity. To not speak would show a disregard for my own voice. I had to respond. I expressed the hurt I felt from his words, and referenced examples where compassion and understanding were more successful at achieving resolution in the topic of his emails, rather than additional force. 

Family love had always seemed to be the foundation of our relationship, even when we disagreed. I thought I would at least get a response that showed concern for my feelings and perhaps a toned down effort on his part to communicate his point. Silly me. Boy was I wrong. His replies focused directly on me, saying I was either evil or an idiot, and pushed the verbal knife even deeper into my heart. I was blindsided.

It's been a rough ride the past few days. My wounds are still pretty fresh, but I'm making progress working through my emotions. My first response, of course, was to question whether or not I should have expressed my opinion at all, and to wonder if I had made a mistake by choosing the wrong words. Old habits die hard. I was able to rule out those concerns fairly promptly, with the help and support of my sisters and husband. 

My voice is absolutely valid and valuable. It has just as much right to be expressed as his does. I don't need to get into a full on debate with someone, but I have the right to say I disagree. With my silence, I've probably been giving the impression that I agree for far too long. It's time for that to stop.

Although this recent experience shook me up pretty harshly, it has strengthened my resolve. It confirmed the value of my voice and my right to express it. Through this blog, I plan to give that right some exercise. Thanks for listening.

My Breakup With the Medical Profession

Over the years, my relationship with conventional Western medicine has become more and more distant. You could say we've broken up, although I still respect and appreciate the two areas in which they shine...acute, life threatening situations and traumatic injury. Alternative medicine does a better job of calming symptoms without the toxic effects, but even my relationship with these forms of medicine has become more distant. We're still friends, but we don't see each other very often.

Growing up, my Mom took us to doctors whenever there was a health concern. Injuries were fairly routine for me and my three siblings. Mom was even-tempered and matter-of-fact when someone got hurt. If first aid wasn't enough to address it, she'd calmly put us in the car and take us to the doctor's office. Broken arms, broken leg, front tooth knocked out, deep fat fryer spill on a leg, head split open (from jumping on the bed), and so on. The broken arms (four times) and deep fat fryer incident were mine. 

She handled other health issues just as calmly, which for me included having my tonsils out (twice), allergies (including two rounds of allergy shots, in elementary school and again in high school), asthma, and surgery on my left ankle bone. In my teens, I began having pains in the general area of my appendix. As we were prepping to go to the doctor to have it checked, my Mom calmly told me to pack an overnight case...just in case it turned out I needed surgery. Fortunately, I didn't. 

She was no different with her own health challenges, which were numerous over the course of her lifetime and several of them life threatening. She was diagnosed with Lupus when I was in high school and it was not uncommon for her to be in the hospital now and then. As I was starting college, my Mom went back to school and got her nursing degree and license. After that, she spent even more time at the hospital, often as a nurse and sometimes as a patient. She died in 1991, at the young age of 56, from complications relating to the Lupus, six weeks after making the decision to refuse dialysis.

This was my medical upbringing. Doctors have the expertise, medications and recommended treatments can help us, stay on top of your own care, ask questions, keep a positive attitude, and quality of life is more important than quantity. These are the things my Mom taught me by example.

I carried on this way for several years with my own kids, but it didn't take long for cracks to start forming in my medical belief system. Part of that had to do with changes in the medical industry and how doctors practiced, but the bigger issue for me was when I started seeing that doctors didn't know as much as I was led to believe. 

The first crack formed with my Mom's Lupus diagnosis. She explained her condition as her body being allergic to itself, and essentially attacking itself. This made no sense to me. Why would a body do that? Do these doctors even know what they're talking about? A second crack appeared when our older daughter, who was 7 at the time, started not feeling good a couple of hours after we dropped her off at school. After several days of this, I took her to our pediatrician. He gave her a checkup and said she was perfectly healthy, giving the impression that she was just trying to get out of going to school. After we left his office, Kathleen looked at me with an expression that said, "He doesn't know jack! There's definitely something wrong." I replied out loud to her unspoken comment with, "I know. He's wrong. I'll keep looking." 

A third crack formed when our allergist saw that our younger daughter, at the age of 5, had chronic sinusitis, probably for years. When I asked her pediatrician why he didn't point this out at her regular checkups, he said he just thought she had a cold...at every visit. I stopped taking our kids to regular checkups after this one. I figured, what's the point? He's not really paying attention anyway. A fourth crack formed when our son's speech therapist, who was recommended by his preschool at the age of 3, said to me, "You might want to try Ritalin. You might like it." I told her I would homeschool Lewis before I'd drug him. After that, my faith in the medical system continued to crumble.

I started studying. If I wasn't able to rely on outside professionals for my family's health care, I had to learn as much as I could on my own. I studied conventional medicine's approach to various conditions, as well as medical history, herbalism, homeopathy, Chinese medicine, rolfing, massage, energy medicine, diet, nutrition, orthomolecular, and more. When people saw what I was reading, they often asked if I was a nurse. When someone in our family developed a specific condition, I would look into that one more deeply. 

I found it quite easy to think like a conventional doctor. Pretty soon I was able to pre-diagnose my family member's issue. It was also easy to know advance what a doctor would offer for it, since conventional medicine has a pretty limited toolbox. If we wanted what the doctor was going to offer or even just a confirmation of my pre-diagnosis, I would make an appointment. If we didn't need either, we wouldn't go. 

When my older daughter was 20 and living in Wisconsin, she started having joint pain. She saw a doctor there who told her she had early symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis. The doctor said the treatments they had were too harsh for her early stage symptoms, so he told her to come back when her symptoms got worse! Well, that got me ranting. It became glaringly obvious that they don't have a clue about what really causes these conditions. They know nothing about real prevention. Their medications and treatments don't cure. They're just addressing symptoms. Alternative medicine has many of the same problems, but at least it tends to be less toxic...although the explosion of bad nutritional supplements out there is forcing a change in that conclusion.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Where chronic illness is concerned, both conventional and alternative medicine focus on symptoms. Now don't get me wrong. Symptom relief definitely has its place and can be seriously helpful when going through a rough patch, but settling there will not result in a cure. In hindsight, even my current back issues were aggravated by chiropractic and surgical symptom relief. 

When my springtime allergies became especially problematic again in my 30s, I gave my third round of allergy shots a try...with no lasting benefits. This time it dawned on me that the allergy testing only addressed natural things. What about the barrage of toxins and chemicals we're exposed to every day? Wouldn't those be a factor in creating sensitivity in the body? And yet, these were not even discussed. Plant pollen, dust, cat dander...yes. Toxic household products, pesticides, fungicides, mercury, chemical odors, solvents, car exhaust...not even on their radar.

Over the years I've tried what felt like everything, and I was gaining no forward progress in reversing any of my family's conditions. The medical profession's lack of knowledge about the true causes of conditions is astounding. How can anyone know what will help if they don't even understand what's causing the symptoms? 

As the number and severity of my own symptoms were on the rise, and my frustration was at it's peak, the first Medical Medium book was brought to my attention. This was in July 2016. I noticed there were no letters after the author's name indicating a professional designation. There was no bibliography and no references. The first chapter explained where he got his unique information. Okay, I thought, let's see what he has to say. When I finished the book, I declared that it was the best book on health and healing I had ever read (and I've read a lot of them!). I knew I had finally found the answers I'd been searching for...and they actually made sense! 

Lupus is viral. The body isn't attacking itself. It's attacking the virus. It's the toxins released by the virus that are causing the symptoms. Allergies are caused by an antibiotic-resistant streptococcus bacteria. The body isn't being overly sensitive. It's the bacteria that's causing the inflammation and mucus production. Rheumatoid Arthritis is viral. The body isn't attacking the joints. The virus is releasing toxins that inflame the joints. Cancer is caused by the combination of a virus and toxins. Both are necessary for cancer to develop. Get rid of one or both and cancer can't grow. And the answers continued. 

The growing number of problematic pathogens, combined with toxins and heavy metals in our bodies, are the reason chronic illness is on the rise. To heal, we need to stop feeding the pathogens, kill the pathogens (with plants and quality supplements), get the toxins out (gently and carefully), strive to minimize the amount of new toxins getting in, and give our bodies the nourishing tools they need to heal. The proof that this information is the truth, is in the millions of people worldwide who are healing "incurable" conditions with it. 

I will totally vouche. I've been able to cross several items off the list of chronic symptoms I had in July 2016. All other symptoms have reduced and are continuing to improve. With each additional Medical Medium recommendation I embrace, my healing takes a leap forward. And all of his information is available for free. There is no profit motive behind what he does. You can even check the Medical Medium books out of the library.

With this information I am finally empowered to take charge of my own health...and actually heal! Both conventional and alternative medicine have been put in the back seat. In the event of an injury or acute condition, conventional medicine may be asked to step up. For calming, strengthening, and rejuvenating, alternative medicine will be asked for support. 

With Medical Medium information as my foundation, symptom management can be relegated to the past...and health and healing will be my future.  

From Disheartened to Determined

In Kelly Turner's Radical Remission docuseries, she shares that there are ten common actions taken by those who experience the radical remission of a condition or disease. One of those actions is taking charge of one's own health. Of those she interviewed, this step is often described as an epiphany moment; a change in perspective; an elevated level of determination. 

Through the challenges I faced with my back last year, I experienced this epiphany moment as an elevated level of determination to heal. I'd had problems with my back for a couple of decades, including a back surgery in 2008, but the level of pain and debilitation I endured last fall was a new lowpoint. It took a few months for me to fully understand and accept the seriousness of my condition. 

The aggravation of my back symptoms began at the end of June 2019. I was working with a chiropractor and doing my best to calm this flare up. I had preplanned a train trip to Portland to visit my oldest daughter in September. As the date approached, it became clear that my body wouldn't be able to handle the trip, so I postponed it a month. Surely I would be healed enough by October to make the trip...or so I thought. As the new travel dates got closer, I had to come to grips with the fact that I wasn't better. 

On the October date that I would have gotten on the train, my back reached its absolute low point. I was dealing with frequent back spasms and a collapsed lumbar. My lumbar was in the shape of an "S". I couldn't sit for more than 20 minutes, and couldn't stand or walk for more than 45 minutes. I had to lie down for 15 minutes every hour. 

Walking had to be done slowly and carefully, so I didn't bounce. I drove the 1/4 mile to work that I usually walked. I shifted to one-day-at-a-time mode. All activities and tasks beyond day-to-day maintenance were shelved. Crafts, writing, movie theaters, and even my poor garden had to be ignored. Traveling was limited to the city of San Luis Obispo.

I cut my work hours from full-time to part-time. My husband set up a bed for me in my office, to allow me to lie down on my back every hour. I arranged the computer to allow me to continue working while on my back. I'm seriously grateful that my employer was so supportive and accomodating with this arrangement. 

My bed setup at work.

I hate taking medication, but I regularly found myself staring down the bottle of ibuprofen...and periodically succumbing. It didn't provide a lot of relief, but it sometimes helped take the edge off. The pain was exhausting and difficult to bear. It was at this moment that I understood how someone could get hooked on pain relievers, especially when no other option seems available.

I didn't know why my back had declined so much and so quickly. There was no incident that triggered it. I had noticed a slight increase in symptoms at the end of June, and here I was in early November almost bedridden. I couldn't see a path forward to get out of this. I was deeply disheartened and my optimism diminished. 

In that low point, I dug deep within me and found a glimmer of determination and confidence. It was just a glimmer, but there was potential to fan some life into it. I knew my diet was on the right track, as I had healed so many symptoms over the prior two years with it.  Clearly, though, there was something going on that I wasn't addressing.

I decided right then and there that healing was going to be my highest priority. Everything else would be secondary. Symptom relief was not enough. For years I'd been striving to be able to say I used to have a back problem. Now I was going to achieve it. 

Stretching and strengthening were essential. I had to learn which exercises were the most beneficial and how to do them right. I had previously been straining my body by trying too hard and not doing the exercises correctly. Recommended exercises and stretches would be done every day, even if my abilities were limited and the exercises needed to be gentle. No excuses.

I was going to be even more focused on the healing aspects of my diet. Every bite of food I ate and beverage I drank needed to have a specific healing purpose. Since there was no injury or incident that caused my back troubles in the first place, the cause was most likely a variety of Shingles that liked to feed on toxins, heavy metals, and troublemaker foods. It was time to starve this little bugger. My focus would be on getting the toxins out, avoiding foods it likes to eat, and consuming antiviral and healing foods, beverages, and supplements.

I kept my eye out for options that could help turn my condition from declining to stabilizing to healing. Things like meditation, acupuncture, epsom salt baths, and infrared sauna all helped to calm my symptoms and give my spirit a boost. When they no longer helped with my forward progress, I moved on. 

My chiropractor realized that manual adjustments were actually aggravating my low back, so we swiched to having him give me a monthly 90-minute chiropractic massage. That change has been seriously beneficial. I'm so glad he has skills in both!

Day-by-day, week-by-week, I slowly started improving. Each sign of forward progress, no matter how small, was celebrated. In January I was able to roll over in bed, without having to get out of bed first. In March I was able to sweep the kitchen floor and use a dustpan...all by myself!! I was so excited, I told everyone. In April I was able to drive to a town 30 miles away. At the end of June, I did my first solo farmers market trip in over nine months. 

I still have a lot of healing left to do, but I can see my path now. What a difference that makes! I am so thankful for all the people who assisted and inspired me during the past year, including family, friends, and practitioners. You helped to make the road a little less bumpy.

I give special thanks to Anthony William and Scott Kolofer. They have provided me with skilled care, support, compassion, and knowledge that has pulled me out of the depths of despair and helped me find my path to healing. By helping me to understand the real causes behind my problems and teaching me how to better care for myself, they are increasing the odds of my being able to achieve my goal of a long and healthy life. I am deeply grateful to them both.

During my lowest point last Fall, I started to question whether or not my goal of living to 120 was realistic. This was the first time I'd ever had that thought. Now I'm back in the game. 120 is totally possible. Anyone who doubts me on this can just keep up and see if I make it. 

Unraveling My Past

For decades I’d been accumulating books and craft projects. After our kids grew up and moved out, I turned their former bedroom into my craft and writing room. When I accumulated new books and projects, I rarely let go of any I already had. The books were reference sources for me, so I didn’t want to get rid of them. The projects were ones I had hoped to get started on, or get back on track with. What this room really held was my history, and something about that felt precious and worth keeping.

As is bound to happen when you keep adding things to a fixed space, my craft room got fuller. Actually our house got fuller, since some of the stuff buildup spilled over into the rest of the house. There was less and less space for me to work on my projects, or even my writing. It was also becoming more difficult to access things or even find them.

Then my back gave out. All projects were put on hold. The best I could muster was to peek into my craft room periodically and long for the day when I would be able to get back in there and start working on projects again.

Back issues were not unusual for me, but this one was the most debilitating I’d ever experienced. In an effort to find my path to healing, as well as some symptom relief, I started meditating on a daily basis. The introspection that meditation encourages helped me to see the lack of confidence I had in my own voice. The need I felt to find other, seemingly more qualified people, to validate my opinions and viewpoint. This explained why I felt the need to keep so many books. My project accumulation was largely due to my need to finish what I started. If I didn’t complete a half-finished project or if I never started a project I’d bought supplies for, I would feel like a failure on some level. If I kept them, though, there was still hope for me.

Then there was the history factor. How much of my own history do I need to keep? And what about the history of my relatives that has been passed on to me? The books that showed the progress of my learning, the projects that harken back to a specific period in my life, the furniture that belonged to my relatives that have passed on. If I don’t need these things, don’t use them, and they’re taking up space and weighing me down, is it okay to let them go and allow someone else to make use of them?

Through this process of exploring my emotional interior, something shifted in me. I was ready to let go. I no longer needed others to validate my voice. Projects that didn’t inspire me could be thanked for what they had taught me and given to a new home. Possessions that reflected my personal or family history could be reduced to the things that had real meaning and value for me. Reading a Marie Kondo book and watching a few of her Netflix episodes was especially helpful with the family history aspect of stuff accumulation. She advises keeping only those things that spark joy, although I also opted for things that sparked meaning and usefulness.

Once my back was healed enough to handle the physical side of downsizing, I began going through things. Our book collection was a big first step. We had a lot of books...and I mean a lot, far more than most people. We ended up giving away roughly 1,300 books, and we still have about that many left.

A good chunk of my book collection was related to health and healing, as I had spent decades searching for the real causes of various chronic conditions and recommendations for reversing them, preferably with natural methods. I wasn’t able to find the answers I was looking for until I discovered Anthony William’s first book in July 2016. After reading his book, I threw my hands up in the air and said, “Answers! I’ve found them. Finally!!” Four years and five more books later, he’s still the real deal and continues to provide more and deeper information about health and healing...and his recommendations work.

Now that I finally had the answers about chronic illness and how to heal, I no longer needed to search for them. I had previously chosen to keep all my older books as a record of my personal journey in health research, but now I was ready to let them go. I decided to only keep the health books that complemented or added to Anthony’s information, as well as books that were especially meaningful to me.

I had a similar experience with my fiber arts books. Having owned a yarn shop for five years in the late 1990’s, there were lots of memories in those books, even if I no longer had use for many of them. I gave them one last browse and then boxed them up for travel to their new home. Strangely, I kept the majority of my sock books. As a barefooter, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since I no longer wear socks. But who ever said humans were logical. I really enjoy knitting socks and reading about their history and the techniques that have been used to make them. So the sock books will stay with me for a while longer.

Next it was time to address my fiber, yarn, unfinished projects, and projects I had planned for the future. I started with a deep reality-check breath. I love spinning fiber, but don’t actually spin that much. I had a significant accumulation of yarn, some going back to my yarn shop from 20 years ago, but I no longer knit as much as I used to and had no plans for the majority of the yarn. And then there were the partially finished projects, including partially spun yarn, knitted garments in varying stages of completion, a cross-stitch Monopoly board, and three pairs of socks with only one sock finished. It was time to decide if I really wanted to finish any of these.

I set aside a few bundles of fiber and yarn that still inspired me, and two or three of the partially finished projects. That’s all I would be keeping. Everything else would be finding a more appreciative home. As I went through each skein of yarn and each bundle of spinning fiber, I basked in the memory of where and when I got it. This is something Marie Kondo teaches. Thank each item for the joy it brought and the lessons it taught. Then let it go. Feelings of gratitude add a touch of ceremony to the process, which is calming to the heart.

With the unfinished knitting projects, I started unraveling them so the next person would have fresh yarn to work with, instead of a half-finished project. As I pulled the yarn and watched the stitches unravel, it felt like I was not only unraveling my project, I was unraveling my past as well. Taking it apart stitch by stitch and appreciating where I had been. The whole process of destashing was a walk down memory lane. I felt gratitude for my journey so far, but was finally able to see that I didn’t need to take all of my past into my future.

What will my future hold? I’ve been trying to figure that out for the last decade or so. When we’re young, we’re regularly asked what we want to be when we grow up. Then there’s the expectation for us to finish high school, go to college, get married, and have kids. After that, we’re not expected to do much. In conversation we may be asked what kind of work we do, or did if we retired from that work. Any additional questions are typically inquiring about our past. We’re no longer asked about our plans for the future, because it’s assumed that we’ll just continue to do what we did in the past.

For me, the future is a blank canvas. For as long as I can remember, I have planned to live to 120. I’m 62 now, which means I have nearly 60 more years ahead of me...if things play out as imagined. That’s plenty of time to start something new. My project wish list includes writing, healing, broom making, letterpress printing, sewing, typewriter repair, woodworking, fiber arts projects, plus plenty more things that I haven’t thought of yet...or that haven’t shown themselves as being my destiny.

My craft room is now a wonderfully inspiring place. Three pieces of furniture were moved out, half of the books are gone, and the bulk of my craft projects and supplies have a new home. I removed the closet doors and installed floor to ceiling shelves, which makes my remaining supplies and projects visible and accessible. My letterpress proof press and sewing machines are now situated so I can use them easily and readily. Letting go has been hugely beneficial for my heart, my mind, and my need for creative space. My back and body continue to heal, and I’m getting prepped for my next 60 years. Bring it on. I’m ready.