Hello everyone! I am a kitchen witch, herb lover, self proclaimed healer, organic gardener and lover of Mother Earth.
I spend many hours each day communing with nature. We grow a lot of our own food and transform it things like healthy meals, herbal remedies and skin care.
If I were to boil down the primary focus on my natural health journey I would have to say that this quote from Hippocrates says it all.
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
I stand by this with every ounce of my being. I believe in this so much that my husband and I have transformed our entire lifestyle so that we can empower ourselves with new skills and discover more about who we really are. We are self taught and dabble with many forms of naturopathic remedies in our every day life.
Plants provide nourishment, medicine and skin care. What more do we really need?
Join the Natural Medicine group
I recently joined the wonderful group Natural Medicine and I've been so inspired!
If natural medicine is your thing, you'll find a warm and passionate group with a diverse knowledge base. Natural medicine is a project run by @riverflows, @mountainjewel and @holisticmom, three Steemfolk that are passionate about the benefits of any medicine that supports whole healing of our bodies, minds and hearts. You can find more about this group in the introduction post found here.
@naturalmedicine is hosting a contest encouraging everyone to share their natural medicine story. This post is my response to the question they have asked: How Has Natural Medicine Impacted Your Life? You can learn more here.
A place that knows me well.
Passion & influence
Last night I asked my husband about our natural health journey. Although he fully embraces it, he said that it was pretty much forced upon him by me. Say what?!
It was part of the package when he fell in love with me. At 22 years old he really wasn't interested in healthy food, organics, all natural soap and all the other things that come with natural health. He just wanted the girl. He's learned and experienced a lot since then and has his own natural health story. Maybe he'll tell it some day. He told me he is grateful that I brought this to his life.
Let's all Cherish Earth goddesses & the healing powers of Mother Nature
Before I get into the story of what lead me to embracing natural medicine I want to say that women are quite magnificent.
I didn't always know this but we should all know this. Women have power to bring life into the world and to sustain it (should we choose to). Whether it be the food and medicine we learn to forage, the plants we nurture, or the food we cook at the hearth, many women carry deep knowledge and instincts to nurture, heal, and to provide nourishment. I think this is all to often repressed or portrayed as weakness in our modern world.
Modern society is breeding a disconnect from Earth and creating reliance and weakness in us all. I honestly don't think women should be fighting for equality with men.
There is so much more to fight for. Something much bigger. What happened to grounding ourselves, reconnecting with what is sacred, embracing our feminine powers? There is just so much more to experience than what we are taught. Perhaps my next journey will be that of a man or a fish but today I am going to embrace and chase the life of an Earth goddess.
Of course with all passions there's usually a story that lead us there. This is a taste of mine.
My healthy connection with nature aside, an unfortunate comedy of errors and misguided actions by the world of modern medicine would become the true catalyst that lead me to a life focused on nature inspired natural wellness.
As a teenager I suffered a lengthy bout of illness. I had developed strange persistent symptoms: migraines, dizziness, nausea, diarrhoea, weight loss, exema, extreme fatigue along with bronchitis and pneumonia.
I was sent to doctors and specialists and endured numerous and often brutal testing but they could not find what ailed me. I was given medications, steroids, copious amounts of antibiotics and I was getting worse. It was at one point suggested that my problems were "all in my head".
Darling it's all in your head.
There’s been this long history in medicine of believing that women are especially prone to hysteria, that symptoms are psychogenic. There’s a very direct lineage, where hysteria, in the 19th-century idea of it, has been passed down generation by generation. Symptoms aren't taken seriously, and they’re dismissed as depression or anxiety. source
Then when I declared that I was going to be vegetarian (it made me feel a bit better) It was suggested that perhaps I had anorexia and maybe bulimia as well. It's funny how things quickly devolve to patient blaming when the solution can't be found or you try to find a solution yourself that is less conventional.
These highly educated doctors seeded doubt in my family and everyone soon became frustrated. I started to become guarded and distrustful of everyone around me. I armed myself with library books and started reading about vegetarianism, natural health remedies and everything else I could learn. My mum had been confiding with her sister in England and this aunt became my saviour.
Over in England she was busy doing research to support me. She shared advice about foods and natural remedies. She sent a jar of evening primrose oil and other natural products. Someone was on my side.
Finally The Answer. Could it really be that easy?
One day my Aunt called and told us to snip off a chunk of my hair and expedite it to her ASAP. She forwarded my hair to a clinic in France who performed an analysis that tested for allergies. This one simple test changed my life.
The list of allergies and intolerances that I had was staggering. It was pages long. Hundreds of food items, animals, plants, chemicals and other substances made this list. With relief and renewed optimism I saw a dietician, who taught me so much about food. I did a fast to cleanse my body and was quite literally eating like an infant carefully introducing one food at a time.
Learning that food had the power to harm and to heal was such a powerful moment in my life. It changed everything.
Unfortunately months of being given the wrong treatments had taken its toll on my body. My immune system was compromised. I frequently fell ill with colds and flu, bronchitis and pneumonia.
I spent a year in England learning from my Aunt. When I came home, It wasn't long before I moved to my own apartment, and embarked on a decade long journey to build my immune system back up and educate myself about naturopathic remedies.
Mother wolf and her cub
When I was twenty and still not superbly healthy a big surprise came into my life. I gave birth to a healthy and whopping nine pounds of perfection baby boy. I had a natural birth, refusing all pain injections in fear of how they might impact me or the baby. My birthing experience was not very nice. With no option for midwife I was forced to birth inside of a busy hospital, cold nurses and no one to help me with breast feeding or a faulty nipple. I even had to argue to have my son with me in the room 24x7. I never wanted to see the inside of a hospital again. I left as fast as possible.
I'll just pause her for a while and soak up this memory because this is love.
The shared bond between mother and child was at the center of clan life. They roamed long distances learning the secrets of the earth. Drawing nourishment and medicine from the plants, the trees and roots. The female was often honoured in prehistoric art. The miracle of birth and sustenance offered by her body, the bleeding that came and went with the changing of the moon. She was magical like the goddess earth.
I was determined to nourish my son with good food and the healthiest environment possible. We raised him to be kind to all people, to nature and Earth. He was a kid that spent a lot of time outdoors. We camped, explored and marvelled at it all. We saw bears and lynx, played with mischievous ravens and picked berries. He collected rocks, feathers and artefacts. He danced in the sand at music festivals and snuggled into me under the stars, happy and dirty. Today at the tender age of twenty two he's surprised us by developing an affinity with crystals and gemstones.
This was all balanced with the necessity of having to go to work and leave my son with childcare providers.
This really broke my heart and I agonized over it. The choice to work in the home has been ripped away from many women who's calling is not the rat race of today's society. The societal structure shifted making it nearly impossible to raise a family without two working adults. What of those whose inner fire burned to something more? A mother. A nurturer, A healer, A teacher?
As a mother we have an opportunity to be someone's world (for a little while). To teach, to experience amazement and wonder of seeing and learning things for the first time through a child's eyes. With good rearing we play an important role in shaping the future. What we teach our children in their early years carries with them through their lives.
My little innocent off to be schooled by strangers.
I followed the school bus and watched him until he was in the school. I sobbed my heart out and my husband comforted me. what in the world are we doing?
Women do not need to be mothers to be nurturers and influencers. It takes a village to raise children. I have nurtured, shared knowledge and loved so many children in my lifetime. Other women have taught my son skills that I did not possess, have loved him, have helped him to grow into the person he is today.
We should lift women up and empower them in their choices, even if that choice is to stay home. We should celebrate their important role in the development of society. Its a big job, the most important one of all. This relates to natural medicine in so many ways. The world is drowning in toxic products, food, energies and apathy. Changing this begins in the womb.
There is so much we can't control but how we nourish our own bodies and how we teach others to do the same - that we can control.
We have a chance to change the world in unforetold ways by passing on what we know to children. Its sort of an awesome and magical way to have influence over the direction the world is going. Let's teach them natural ways, talk about what and why and show them how. Involve children and make sure they are grounded and connected to Mother Nature.
My bébé playing in the Arctic Ocean.
Sometime Modern Medicine is the answer
Although we managed to avoid the hospitals and medication for the most part, my son did have a few injuries that required treatment. Broken limbs and stitches are surely one good part of the modern medicine practice that I am grateful for. My son actually got Bells palsy at ten years old. He came home from an out of town swim meet with an ear infection and we were shocked to discover that the next day half his face paralysed as though he'd had a stroke.
You can bet I was at the emergency room within ten minutes of this discovery. In the end the doctors actually suggested patience, there was nothing they could do. It was enlightening to learn that some doctors were actually opened minded enough to suggest natural approaches. We turned to natural healing, herbal teas, supplements, massage and facial exercises. We worked through it together and today you'd never know he had it.
Connecting food & health and building a lifestyle around that, lead to a deeper appreciation for my connection with nature and myself.
oh my goodness I feel like I poured out a whole world of Charlotte truths in t his post . My husband just asked me if I am writing a book!
hmm. This is a really long post. I never imagined I would reveal so much so easily.
I haven't even covered all of what I planned to talk about. There's so much more such as spiritual and emotional aspects of Natural healing.
I'll close by saying that natural health is so empowering. When you begin to understand the infinite healing power that interacting with nature provides and when you start to explore your own connection to nature, you soon see that there is this whole world at your fingertips, beneath your feet just waiting to be discovered.
The sun is not something to be feared or blocked with chemicals. We need to absorb the sun for health just like the plants around us need it to thrive. Always remember that we are part of nature and Earth. We must learn to listen to our bodies and follow our natural instincts.
Much love to you all, be well ❤
Building a greener, more beautiful world one seed at a time.
Homesteading | Gardening | Frugal Living | Preserving Food| From Scratch Cooking|
You can also find me at: walkerland.ca | Facebook
Photo copyright: @walkerland
