3 | On the Highway to Heal

The many lanes on the Highway to Heal

“True Healing is not the fixing of the broken, but the rediscovery of the unbroken”  ~ Jeff Foster

The Road to Rediscovery and Healing is a multi-lane highway, with each lane equally important.  The first 4 years of recovering my physical, mental, and emotional health was a wild ride across many lanes, to say the least.  Every part of me was broken, ravaged by 38 years of  the unchecked use of cortisone for the treatment of chronic eczema (refer to blog chapters 1 & 2); every part of me needed restoration and rediscovery of self.   I’m grateful to have had an awesome support network which was organically, possibly divinely, curated.  This support network came about really by the dropping away of those people in my life who were scared or triggered or unable to deal with what they were seeing happening to me, perhaps felt helpless. What my friends and family were faced with, was genuinely scary, quite confronting to say the least.  I’ve no grievance or judgement toward those people; It was ok with me then and it’s ok with me now.

I didn’t have the energy on any level of my being to be holding space for others, it was all I could do to hold myself together, moment by moment, breath by breath, hour by hour, most days. Those beautiful souls who stuck around had the ability to look past the damaged and broken human being in front of them and were able to see Me, they knew my heart already and wanted to help me live.

I offered everyone in my life an opportunity to tap out, extended with love and compassion for how challenging this was going to be for them and our relationships, whatever type of relationship it was.  By six months into the collapse - I even offered my partner (at that time) an out – I knew by now, I wasn’t going to get better quickly or easily, that it was going to be a rough and a very long journey – “you’re in it for the long haul or you’re not – this is your opportunity to decide and I’ll hold no grudge.”  He stayed through the worst of it and was a huge support to my recovery for which I am forever grateful.

I was incredibly broken; My physical body needed an extraordinary amount of help, so food & homeopathy were my first tentative steps forward.  However, it was the unbroken in me that firstly needed rediscovery – my will to live, my inner strength & bravery; my keen sense of observation, resilience, my thirst for knowledge, most importantly my intuition & consciousness – this is the juice, the Gifts within me, that were going to Heal me.

There were two phone calls I made, the day after leaving the doctor’s office.  First, I rang my Mum and then I rang my ‘hippy’ Sister, Beth.  In that first week or so Mum came and stayed with me. The little girl in me wanted and needed my Mumma and felt soothed and loved by her being there.

For most of my life, even up to that point, Mum and I had a fragmented relationship.  I was still holding onto a lot of anger, bitterness, and frustration toward Her for my condition and upbringing.  In saying that I knew in my heart, our relationship needed healing, and that our healing would help me mend. This was an opportunity to start that process.

When she arrived, she was absolutely shattered by what she saw.  I believe it triggered her emotionally a lot; her feelings of guilt, shame, hopelessness, and heartbreak to see her daughter at rock bottom like that.  I was sort of aware that was happening for her, but as mentioned, I didn’t have the energy to soothe her.  She would ask me what she could do,” I feel so helpless” she would say.  She did her best to simply be there, to love me by doing the things she knew how to do such as cleaning, cooking, changing my sheets daily, helping me with bathing and applying natural oils and creams to my skin.  It was very helpful, caring, and supportive, as I didn’t have the strength to do any of that and it made Her feel valued.

At the same time, I was experiencing deep emotional triggers by her presence – especially when she’d say (without thinking) to ‘stop scratching.’  Those two words would set me off on a scathing inner dialogue at her and at myself – It was those two words I heard daily as a child, to my frustration, as I could never figure out or understand how to do that – I was just so fucking itchy ALL the time.  My mental filters were few and far between at this time, and my support network quickly understood that to say that to me would result in them being verbally or energetically bitch-slapped.

At around 10 days My sister Beth arrived, armed with a plethora of books (online searches were in their infancy back then). She had natural health reference books that included kinesiology, whole food as medicine, cooking books, Ayurveda, the Homeopathic Materia Medica and a wealth of her counselling books and study notes.  I cried my heart out when she arrived, and we laughed our heads off at the amount of books she dragged all the way from northern NSW.  There was no turning back, now, we were about to embark on a deep dive into ALL the alternatives, for ALL levels of my being, to uncover and discover what was going to work for me. 

The first thing Beth did was to start cooking for me.  I was so physically emaciated and needed a lot of nutritional support.  Beth had a reasonable understanding of Ayurveda and instinctively knew that my body needed deep nourishment and cooling.  My Immune system was shot and I was suffering inflammation throughout all my body systems, from my cells, nervous system, immune system to vital organs, gut; joints, muscle and connective tissue and of course, my skin.  Inflammation equals heat and through her knowledge of Ayurveda she knew we could cool my body’s inflammation through the ingestion of cooling foods [I’ll share more on my ‘food as medicine’ journey with you as my story unfolds]. It was interesting to me to be experiencing the intense heat from the inflammation within me – feeling and glowing like a slow combustion stove most of the time - and at the same time, I often felt incredibly cold and had difficulty feeling warm even during the summer months.  It was like being on a pendulum of opposites all the time. 

MERGING INTO THE HOMEOPATHIC LANE.

At the same time as Beth was settling in, I rang her husband James, Homeopath, Naturalist and Water Artisan; we got started immediately with Homeopathy.  Beth had bought a good range of homeopathic Remedies James had sent with her and over the course of my treatment, He would send me other remedies and sometimes I’d source them locally. 

Initially, I was quite terrified of Homeopathy as I had tried it in the past with a practitioner who was quite gung-ho and rigid in his treatment of my condition, not really taking into consideration, everything about me.  His dosage and remedies were often off, and I would suffer detox or ‘like’ symptoms horrendously and became quite ill under his care.  Detox for most people might be headaches, muscle and joint pain, stuff like that.  Detox for my body is exactly like the severe eczema kid you see on tv news sometimes, raw, weeping, bleeding painful skin, exhausted and traumatised.  So I walked away from that modality with a bad taste in my mouth.  To go back to it at this juncture was a torturous decision.  You can imagine it took a HUGE leap of faith and a great deal of trust in James, to step into Homeopathy again. 

James’ knowledge, experience, care and empathy were essential to my Homeopathic Healing journey.  His choice of remedies and the dosage was absolutely key, very well considered and always spot on.  There were times when he would need to take a few hours or overnight to absorb all we talked about, to then select the remedy and dose [potency/frequency and dilution]; everything had to be considered to avoid aggravating my immune system.  In those first weeks, James and I spoke daily, sometimes a few times a day if my symptoms changed swiftly in response to the remedies.  We worked at the level and pace to which I was experiencing healing; with a change in symptoms, would come a change in remedy and/or dosage.

“Remedies can be finely tuned to match the vitality of individual's immune system ie. the more fragile an immune system the greater the susceptibility to aggravate; therefore the greater the vulnerability, the greater the sensitivity is required, so as not to aggravate symptoms which would further weaken the overall vitality.
A remedy will work every time, on condition that the remedy is similar to the totality of the dis-ease [symptoms] being presented; together with administering the remedy at the right potency, dilution and frequency, thus the causation being removed.
The purpose of the homeopathic remedy is to boost the immune system and assist the body to restore its innate vitality and imitate a healthy immune response." ~ James

Homeo-what? HOM-E-O-PATHY!

The word is made up from the Greek words Homeo – similar and patheia [pathy] – suffering/disease. Essentially It means similar suffering or similar disease; the whole concept of homeopathic treatment is based on this meaning and the healing principle is  ‘Like cures Like’.
Homoeopathy is a very old and proven system of natural medicine  that is individualised,  taking into account the totality of the symptoms [dis-ease] being expressed by the individual and; as such is divergent from Allopathic Medicine (modern western medicine) that focuses on the affected parts using drugs that are typically synthetic chemical substances, that cause a change in an organism's physiology or psychology including unwanted side effects, to suppress symptoms, in order to alleviate discomfort.  Homeopathy considers the ‘whole’ whereas allopathy isolates parts.

My journey into Homeopathy with James, was quite different this time.  It was precise, calculated, unrushed (although I wished at the time for it to be otherwise), it was exact, sometimes unsympathetic, meaning it just had to be what it was at the time, including ‘detox’ symptoms, like – treat like.

James patiently coached me to isolate each symptom, to provide detailed insight to Him about the sensations I was experiencing e.g. how I was feeling mentally, emotionally and physically. How to describe in detail the intricacies of the symptoms, how to locate the origin of the symptom; how to deep dive into my physical, mental and emotional bodies so he could determine the exact remedy with the exact dosage. For example, I’d say to James, “I’ve got a really bad headache.” He would ask me so many questions about that headache such as “where in your head is it located? Front, back, middle, side-which side? Is it to the side of the front of your head, middle or the side of the back of your head? What does it feel like? Sharp, dull, throbbing, stabbing, heavy, like a pressure band? What does it smell like? Is there colour? Lightning? What had I been thinking about before it started? What emotion/s was present at the start and throughout? 

I’d never heard such questions before when talking with medical professionals.  It wasn’t just about headaches, any symptom would be dismantled with questions - the itch I was experiencing, the weird taste in my mouth, the peculiar smell lingering in my nose, feeling every single hair on my body as if they were sticking into me like needles, the crawling sensations on my skin, my eyeballs feeling heavy or hollowed out, the internal heat and inflammation I was experiencing - what that felt like, smelt like, looked like, even tasted like? The deep unmoving ache in my gut, the subtle sensations and even noises I could hear in my body? the sorrow in my lungs, the anger in my kidneys … I mean seriously, who asks these questions?  A Really good Homeopath, that’s who!

It was all these subtleties that gave so many clues as to the right remedy, potency/dilution/frequency on any given day.  I’m very grateful to have learned this skill, a ‘healing hack’, if you will.  As frustrating as it was at times – it has served me well ever since.  In the beginning, our conversations started out sometimes twice daily; over time - daily, then a few times a week, then a couple of times a week, then weekly and at some stage fortnightly and monthly, then as needed; however, if something changed unexpectedly, at any time, we’d be deep in conversation again.   

Homeopathy knows that the body has the capacity to and seeks to express and expel (detox) the dis-ease to the surface and out of the body – that applies to all levels of our being – the physical body, the subtle body, the mental body, the emotional body, the energy body.  The whole concept of ‘getting worse to get better’, allowing the body to express the dis-ease, was a bitter pill I found very hard to swallow, having had this experience previously with that gung-ho Homeopath many years before, had me feeling reserved about going back to Homeopathy.

Even though I understood what that concept meant, I already felt pretty fucking bad and with the foundations of homeopathy being ‘like treat like’ this meant to me that I may experience short periods of detox.  James was acutely aware of my previous experience, and through choice of remedy & potency, sought to boost my immune system, assisting my body to imitate a healthy immune response, lessening the detox experience somewhat.  One of those instances is a vivid memory and something I will never ever forget.

WHAT THE F-F-F….??

I’m not even sure of the specific symptoms I was experiencing at this particular time, the physical, the mental, or the emotional, however on the other side of a very deep conversation with James, together unpacking all the symptoms, the symptoms within symptoms, in all my bodies, James sent me a remedy I’d not yet used at a potency that was unusual.  With great faith I took the remedy exactly as instructed. 

Within 12hrs of taking the remedy, I could feel things shifting, at first emotionally, something I was quickly learning to tune into.  These emotional shifts were deep, heavy, dark, even a little troubling. My recall of the emotional traumas I was facing in that moment, is now sketchy, I just remember the sense of foreboding and spiralling down. I knew that I had to get to know my shadow side and walk with it to experience healing; I knew that getting to know my shadows and reconciling them would bring me to a much better place both emotionally and physically. I stepped into the emotional abyss  again.

Twenty-four hours in and the physical symptoms started to surface, a tingling, nervy sensation on the top right-hand side of my scalp developed.  Over the course of a few hours the sensation slowly spread like a ripple effect across three quarters of my scalp.  It took quite a bit for me to observe and dismantle the symptoms so I could explain it to James; I could hear his knowing nod on the other end of the phone, with great empathy for my ‘detox’ experience.

The tingly, prickly, nervy sensation continued to spread across my scalp and felt as if it were touching and penetrating my skull and brain.  I started to think the worst of course, brain health stuff like aneurisms, blood cancer, brain tumour etc., these were the dark thoughts that would invade, spiralling me into fear.  Fear was the darkest shadow and always the biggest hurdle.

Hold fast Trish and ride it out I told myself as I took the reins of this beast.  There was lots of stuff coming to the surface – emotional, mental and physical.  Beth helped me through the emotional and mental, the physical however, were my reigns to take.  The tingle & prickle turned to an itch that was relentless.  It took all my strength to not scratch that itch; the couple of times I did, the pain was extreme, and it spread the rash like wildfire. The rash spread across my scalp, right out to the edges of the tingle & prickle and was like thousands of little bubbles of inflamed fluid.  The intensity of pain, itch, prickle, tingle was off the charts.  I took Panadol and antihistamine for my sanity and lots of Rescue Remedy for my nervous system.  One night, all those bubbles started to erupt and break open, releasing a very smelly fluid, blood and heat; and then the broken blister rash crusted over.  The eruptions lasted for about 3 days and the crusting lasted around 3 weeks for it naturally dry, heal, flake and fall off.  I couldn’t pick at it, peel it off or even wash my hair throughout the whole process.  It was a fucking nightmare! What I was experiencing was the expulsion of the Herpes virus.  I used to get cold sores (herpes) a lot. The homeopathic remedy had sought it out - like treat like - and pushed it to the surface of my skin.  Why it erupted on my scalp, I’ve no idea.  What I do know, is that I have NEVER had another cold sore, herpes virus,

 since.

As you can imagine I have many stories like this, weaved throughout 4 years of intense healing.  I barely left my home during that time – it was overwhelming and just too much physically, mentally and emotionally.  The times I had to, usually left me dealing with exhaustion, physical pain and emotionally traumatised for a few days. 

I quickly surrendered to the knowing that every so often, you’ve just got to retreat - not retreat from life, rather, retreat (or hibernate) Into Healing – this was a lane I was often in, over the next four years, on my highway to healing.