Does asking for help make you squirm?
Yah, me too.
Why’s that?
I remember a time when I would NOT ask for help. Not ever. I thought I had to do it all myself. You know, pull myself up by the bootstraps, be tough and self-sufficient. Thinking I’d be a bother to others in asking for help or show some inherent flaw in my character, or weakness in my know-how.
Geeze, what crazy silly stories those…
Do you ever wonder why we’re here? I mean really—why we’re really here?
How do we sum that up? Can we do it in just a few words?
I think Carl Jung did a pretty good job when he said this:
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you really are.”
I like this because it doesn’t presume a particular purpose with a definable outcome. (Whew!)
And it includes all of…
I recently had an experience with conventional medicine excellence.
We tend to focus on how conventional medicine lets us down, but it can rise mightily when we are in urgent need.
I was hiking in a rainforest in Maui with my family when I noticed a floater appear in my right eye. Ugh. Annoying! I’ve gotten these on and off for years. They park themselves in the center of my vision,…
HOW TO LET GO OF BIOLOGICAL TOXICITY
Bolster the Body’s Innate Detoxification Systems
The reality is we live in a toxic world. And in spite of our best efforts, some toxins will get in. This is especially true for environmental toxins. But we’re not helpless. Not only can we take responsibility for avoiding them, we can also bolster our bodies’ innate capacity to remove toxins.
What is…
I’ve been off the grid again. This time immersed in the science and wisdom of Lyme and tick-borne diseases (TBD) at the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) annual international conference.
I learned so much to help me care for these chronic, complex, long-suffering clients, increasingly showing up at my door.
I wanted to share some big themes.
ILADS clinicians and…
Ever checked out the pain reliever isle at the grocery story? Seen the many shelves of Ibuprofen bottles lined up in all shapes and sizes? Labels promising to relieve practically everything that ails you?
Ibuprofen, part of a family of pain-relieving drugs known as “non-steroidal anti-inflammatory” drugs (NSAIDS), is the staple go-to pain and inflammation remedy in most American households, and…
True, we all want to be cured. We all want our pain to go away, our wounds to heal, our function to be restored, and our energy to soar.
But I think there’s more. I hear this in what my clients blurt out when I ask them about their goals and aspirations. How they want to feel like their true selves, to live their best lives, and reach their full potential.
They’re talking about healing.
And…
Dear Ones,
Are we just outsiders? Outliers? Losers?
Or are we unique?
We failed those treatments that came straight out of our physicians’ “practice guidelines” or that we read about on-line. Even those popular “miraculous” food and lifestyle protocols that worked so well for the authors, or our friends, did nothing for us.
What’s the problem?
Guess what? We’re not all the same.
Part of my work…
“Teach the tongue to say, “I do not know,”
and thou shalt progress.”
–Moses Maimonides, ca 1200 AD
Good advice for what seems like a culture full of know-it-alls.
Physicians are some of the worst offenders. I remember in medical school being taught that if I didn’t know an answer, make one up. And if I didn’t feel confident, fake it for the professors and patients.
I failed at that.
What I’ve…
Yep. As humans, we have fewer genes in our books of life than a grain of rice. Or a worm. Or many of God’s smallest creatures.
Does that mean we’re just puny and insignificant? Do we have far fewer options than we believed? Less wiggle room as our destinies unfold? Did the genome project leave us high and dry?
Not at all. In fact, the truth about our genetic legacy is just the opposite.
Let’s…
I am no different than you—asking questions. Wanting answers. Needing to understand how it is all unfolding before me. Now. Impatient and occasionally impertinent when the answers do not arrive.
Then I think of Rilke’s quote, which I came across as a teenager. It gave me SO much comfort then, and it still washes over me warmly, soothing my pain for not knowing, reminding me that not knowing…
We’re all familiar with the ways conventional western medicine falls short—sizing us up so fast as to not hear our whole stories or treat us as whole people, not seeking root cause solutions to our problems, parceling us out among specialists who look at just one piece of us (often missing the bigger picture that provides the answers), among other things.
But that’s only because we’re…
I had a new client come to see me yesterday. This previously well, highly active, Nature-loving woman had been in excellent health until falling suddenly ill eight months ago. It took her docs six months to diagnose Lyme disease. She was the perfect candidate for this diagnosis—extensive exposure to ticks, typical symptoms for Lyme, AND her lab tests were overwhelmingly confirmatory.
The…
Every find yourself putting things off because you don’t feel All Ready?
Like that perfect time will come, your tool kit will be perfectly stocked and organized, your energy and enthusiasm will be robust, and you’ll dive in with the full support of the Universe all around you, humming and whistling as you go?
Me too.
And how does that work for you?
Things rarely happens that way for me. If what…
My story of vitamin D resuscitation.
I used to struggle with winter. And thought it was just how it was. The short days, long nights, unforgiving cold. Just awful! I felt sluggish and tired and blah about everything.
Each year I met the descent into winter with dread, and pined for the release of spring.
When I learned that the light nutrient, vitamin D, helped others with seasonal affective…
Inflammation is beautiful. It is not the beast. It is not bad, nor our enemy.
We need an intact, healthy immune system, capable of robust inflammation. When we need it. Whenever called upon–24/7.
In fact, we cannot survive without it. While inflammation results in much human misery, it does so as the wise and elegant response to real danger signals–from both internal and external sources–that…
In part three of my Hypothyroidism series, you’ll learn action steps you can use right now to heal the root causes of your under active thyroid.
In the first of this series I introduced hypothyroidism as a manifestation of damage from an autoimmune-inflammatory syndrome, amplified by unmet nutritional needs. This is the most common cause of hypothyroidism in the developed world. We learned that…