Happy Valentine’s Day! Wishing you a love-filled day today and every day. Today’s message is just for you…when you give all you have to help your loved ones feel better. As mothers and women (and yes…some pretty terrific dads too…and nannies) we have been caring for sick ones from generation to generation.
From hot steam vaporizers with Vick’s VapoRub and children’s aspirin in the 1950’s and 60’s to prescription drugs, over the counter fever medications like baby Tylenol and cool mist humidifiers in the 1980’s to aromatherapy, essential oils and herbs in the 2000’s, it’s mostly the moms who learn to care for the sick.
Mothers are the ones who will make homeopathy a part of every household. You are the ones who will make a difference in the health of our future. You can use homeopathy safely for acute illnesses. Acute illnesses have a beginning, middle and an end. Like chicken pox…yes it is infectious and is passed easily from one child to the next but it is self-limiting. Asthma is a chronic illness. Eczema is chronic. Children diagnosed on the spectrum are dealing with many chronic conditions. When an illness is chronic, you need a health team of homeopath, naturopath, nutritionist and/or medical doctor.
You Make a Difference: You Keep Homeopathy Alive
This quote says it all. (Dr. Dorothy Shepherd also has another great little book that I use in the Vaccine Free: Now What? course – Homoeopathy in Epidemic Diseases.
“Dorothy Shepherd always felt that much of the future of Homoeopathy lay in the hands of the ordinary man – in – the – street. By his demand for safer alternative medication in his time of need, when hope was well nigh lost, the homoeopathic art would be kept alive by those doctors and intelligent lay practitioners who truly sought to heal the sick.”
Gweneth E. Robinson, Thornbury, N. Devon, Introduction to the book Shepard’s More Magic of the Minimum Dose
My Stories: Your Stories
Being sick as a child meant that life slowed down. My mom was present. She would often just sit with us, cool hand on a warm head. Those are the memories I have as a child.
When my kids were sick, everything stopped. Appointments were cancelled, commitments postponed and we spent time just being together. We probably watched more movies than is recommended for the quiet needed during healing, but my memories are of fuzzy blankets, pajama days and a day that slowed down to the basics only.
Slow Medicine
“Like so many of my experiences at Laguna Honda, that sitting with Ms. Gilroy in her dark and cool room as she tossed and turned changed me and stayed with me. I thought about it a lot. I’d done so little for her, even less than I’d done for Steve. I hadn’t looked into her eyes, held her hand, or reviewed all her records. I’d done nothing at all. Except sit. Bout how effective that had been! The diagnosis had appeared without me sending her to the emergency room, without additional tests, scans, or biopsies. Somehow, just by sitting with her, I’d understood what was wrong.
I began to try it with my other patients. Just sitting.
…This being Laguna Honda, however, I had the times to wait and see-for family and friends to show up and fill me in on the details…In short, for Slow Medicine to do its job.” God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet
The Spiritual Part?
I am leaving you with another quote.
When I look back at the sick days and the parenting days, only now do I understand that those days were my spiritual pilgrimage, leading me to where I am today. I hope you find that for yourself as well. This perhaps, is the deeper meaning of sickness, health and slow medicine…we have an opportunity to nurture a spiritual understanding that will help us make sense of our world.
The Baby is Dirty All the Time
“The baby is dirty all the time. We are constantly changing his diapers and wiping his bottom. Yet it’s easy to see that he is pure. His mess has nothing to do with him; he doesn’t even know about it. And his ignorance of the mess he makes has nothing to do with him either; he will learn. We are not deceived by the mess into thinking that he is either impure or stupid. We have never seen such purity! No matter what he does to sheets, diapers, clothes or our laps, purity remains to us an obvious characteristic of the child’s true self.
…It is fairly easy with diapers because we more or less know what we have to do. But crying? Staying awake later? Hitting? Demanding? Whining? Being sick? It seems so much harder as we become more and more concerned with what to do instead of what we need to know. But just as we can see purity right in the middle of the diapers mess, so also must we learn to see gentleness in the middle of the violence, innocence in the face of guile, health where there seems to be sickness, perfection where imperfection seems to be, intelligence where there appears to be stupidity, goodness and the desire to be good right where there seems to be willful badness.” Whole Child/Whole Parent: A Spiritual & Practical Guide to Parenthood, Polly Berrien Berend.
This kind of spiritual journey is neither for the faint of heart nor for the weak. Parents, especially moms, seem to come with an innate source of this kind of toughness to persevere…to love oneself and the child even in the darkest of times.
We need each other. We need to hear the stories. Is this hard for you? Me too.
Support for Caring for Sick Kids
If you would like some support in using homeopathy for healing in acute illnesses, consider joining with like-minded parents for the Vaccine Free: Now What? 12-week e-Course. Read more about the course here.
Make your home in Calgary? There will be a Live course offered if you are more of a hands-on, meet in person kind of learner. Same course information but delivered in real time.
Watch for an extra newsletter this week with more information on the Vaccine Free: Now What? 12-week e-Course.
Yours in health and healing,
Donna
