Important! I've officially switched over to featherspirit.com, so you'll probably need to update your readers :) It may take a little while for ruth-writes.com to redirect, but hopefully it all shakes out. I'm so lost when it comes to all this!
I'm so glad you're all enjoying these guest posts as much as I am. It feels like a giant supportive hug! A tribe of friends ready with cheering and loving to welcome in this new space. I'm so grateful :) This post is the last of the line-up.
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I'm so glad you're all enjoying these guest posts as much as I am. It feels like a giant supportive hug! A tribe of friends ready with cheering and loving to welcome in this new space. I'm so grateful :) This post is the last of the line-up.
Today Uma joins us, sharing her story of her journey to health -- a story to which I can very much relate. I loved reading this. (Her blog was one of the very first I started to read, years ago.)
Welcome, Uma!
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"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know." — Pema Chodron
I've spent the past couple of years studying natural healing and thanks to an incurable skin disease called rosacea, the past couple of months practicing it on myself. Years ago, when flushed cheeks and a few bumpy spots on my face led to the diagnosis, my dermatologist handed me a tube of ointment and presented a solution that sounded simple enough. "Just use this antibiotic cream when you have a flare up — oh, and you may have to use it for the rest of your life."
The rest of my life? Well ok, I thought. How difficult could that be? Back then, the concept that my body might actually be trying to tell me something through this language of dis-ease was still a foreign concept, and I made no attempt to interpret its increasingly urgent messages. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who only acknowledges the aspects of you they feel comfortable with, ignoring the parts that challenge them, making you feel incomplete, inauthentic, unheard and unseen in their presence? I have. It's frustrating, isn't it? And yet this is exactly what I was doing to myself. Instead of acknowledging, interpreting and respecting everything my body was trying to tell me I put my faith in something outside of myself — in a tube of chemicals. I chose the quick fix, the "simple" solution. I trusted that the cream would silence, indefinitely, the voice of red spots and bumps so I didn't have to do the much more difficult and time-consuming work of having an authentic relationship with myself, of acknowledging my own needs physically and emotionally. And for the most part, it worked. Until a few months ago.
With my skin much worse and the tube of ointment no longer working I suddenly found myself turning to the herbs, diet and practices of natural healing that I thought I'd been studying in order to help others, recognizing that I am the one who needs help. And with nowhere to run from this difficult truth I began what promises to be a long process of looking at my whole self — not just the parts that are easy to acknowledge and get along with, but the parts that are more prickly and demanding and challenging. Parts that I would have gladly gone on ignoring if rosacea hadn't brought them up out of the darkness.
Natural medicine believes that rosacea, like many other diseases, has its roots in the digestive system, but eliminating dietary triggers like gluten, chocolate, alcohol, and caffeine is only half the battle, a skirmish I can handle myself in the privacy of my own kitchen. The other aspect of digestion — the proper digesting of emotions by actually expressing them — is going to take some work. Work I don't even know how to begin yet. But this endeavor — the work of building right relationship to both inner and outer realities — is the essence of true holistic healing, a nurturing of the Whole Self that isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to disease. Its directions for use are different for each one of us and are only interpretable when we stop trying to see things the way we want them to be and instead recognize them for what they really are. I wish I could write that the solution is as easy as the dermatologist made it sound, years ago. But one of the lessons I must have to learn, among so many others, is that true healing doesn't come from a tube.
I've spent the past couple of years studying natural healing and thanks to an incurable skin disease called rosacea, the past couple of months practicing it on myself. Years ago, when flushed cheeks and a few bumpy spots on my face led to the diagnosis, my dermatologist handed me a tube of ointment and presented a solution that sounded simple enough. "Just use this antibiotic cream when you have a flare up — oh, and you may have to use it for the rest of your life."
The rest of my life? Well ok, I thought. How difficult could that be? Back then, the concept that my body might actually be trying to tell me something through this language of dis-ease was still a foreign concept, and I made no attempt to interpret its increasingly urgent messages. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who only acknowledges the aspects of you they feel comfortable with, ignoring the parts that challenge them, making you feel incomplete, inauthentic, unheard and unseen in their presence? I have. It's frustrating, isn't it? And yet this is exactly what I was doing to myself. Instead of acknowledging, interpreting and respecting everything my body was trying to tell me I put my faith in something outside of myself — in a tube of chemicals. I chose the quick fix, the "simple" solution. I trusted that the cream would silence, indefinitely, the voice of red spots and bumps so I didn't have to do the much more difficult and time-consuming work of having an authentic relationship with myself, of acknowledging my own needs physically and emotionally. And for the most part, it worked. Until a few months ago.
With my skin much worse and the tube of ointment no longer working I suddenly found myself turning to the herbs, diet and practices of natural healing that I thought I'd been studying in order to help others, recognizing that I am the one who needs help. And with nowhere to run from this difficult truth I began what promises to be a long process of looking at my whole self — not just the parts that are easy to acknowledge and get along with, but the parts that are more prickly and demanding and challenging. Parts that I would have gladly gone on ignoring if rosacea hadn't brought them up out of the darkness.
Natural medicine believes that rosacea, like many other diseases, has its roots in the digestive system, but eliminating dietary triggers like gluten, chocolate, alcohol, and caffeine is only half the battle, a skirmish I can handle myself in the privacy of my own kitchen. The other aspect of digestion — the proper digesting of emotions by actually expressing them — is going to take some work. Work I don't even know how to begin yet. But this endeavor — the work of building right relationship to both inner and outer realities — is the essence of true holistic healing, a nurturing of the Whole Self that isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to disease. Its directions for use are different for each one of us and are only interpretable when we stop trying to see things the way we want them to be and instead recognize them for what they really are. I wish I could write that the solution is as easy as the dermatologist made it sound, years ago. But one of the lessons I must have to learn, among so many others, is that true healing doesn't come from a tube.
Thanks for the opportunity to guest post Ruth and yes, I did forget to update my reader ; ) Looking forward to tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteSorry for all the reader confusion :) Thanks so much for guesting! xx
ReplyDeletethis post is amazing and wonderful confirmation. thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteGlad it was a confirmation for you. Uma is one of my favorites!
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