I once went on a long and deep health journey to heal from what was probably mold toxicity and parasites during a year I lived in Africa. I did the health protocols and supplements to restore my gut and thyroid and anxiety, but they didn't help. I felt I was still getting worse, unable to eat solid foods and reactiving to everything.
Then I made a ridiculous decision, but one that aligned with what I felt I was supposed to do. I would go back to Africa, but this time to a place where I had no control over even the food I ate. I would survive off of what was flown in on the plane and live in a compound created in a desert in South Sudan, an emergency hospital setting in a wartorn country, where I would experience deaths of women and babies and see malnourished children fighting their way back one porridge bowl at a time.
What if healing wasn't the act of doing things to heal our bodies?
In that dessert where I was fed gluten heavy rolls baked fresh daily in a mud stove, stoked by real fire, my gut healed. In my limited protein diet, which consisted of really tough meat that took more calories to chew than I received in my body, I grew healthier. In the water from the deep well bored into the dry earth of place people would never choose to live in except nomadically, I nourished myself into a new journey of my life. In the afternoon heat, 120 degrees of sun beating down on the tin roof of the cement maternity ward, I reached for a precious Coca-cola as my sustenance. Yet, I healed.
My thyroid, my gut, my lungs, my anxiety healed.
How did my body heal without good food, good supplements and good living conditions?
I can tell you what it wasn't:
It wasn't prosperity. No, it was sad to see people live with nothing and die from lack.
It wasn't hope. No, I did not find hope in this eternal crisis of human suppression and war.
It wasn't being in a controlled, safe place. Nope, this was a tough place.
The body heals when it feels safe and has energy.
I was puzzled why my body healed in this place. I now understand that an environment was created for me that did promote my feeling of safety and energy, different than in my American life.
I felt safe, because of community
I felt safe in the community of the team. I was with an organization that is a master of logistics. Doctors without Borders (Medicins San Frontiers) takes no shit in getting things done that need to be done to care for humanity. There were more people doing logistics than health professionals. It amazed me.
I had clear protocols to work by, and the supplies needed. For every loss you grieved, you had so many gratitudes. I felt I was a part of something good for humanity.
There was no politics, no judgement, no religious agenda. Humans were humans. Teammates were teammates. Some were so tough. They taught me to smoke cigarettes while they told stories of burying mounds of bodies from Ebola. Each week when the place arrived with a new teammate, someone would make a run to the brothel to get this ridicuoulsy strong beer strong called Orangeboom. We were from so many countries. We had the expat team, the regional African team, and the local team, and we were all together.
Community makes your feel like you belong. I had never experienced community like this. I had so much joy doing things for the team. Every Friday I was with the South Sudanese cooking staff, helping them with ingredients for pizza night, laughing and getting creative together. We had dances to African pop music and goat roasts. I once led a murder mystery party and teammates came up with the most creative costumes, which included using condoms for boob enhancments for their character.
I had energy, because I didn't have to do everything on my own.
And I had energy. I took shifts with other Kenyan midwives, running the ward. I wasn't expending energy doing anything else in life- no mowing grass, no grocery shopping, no driving anywhere. I literally sat under the gazebo and chilled any time I wasn't on my shift. Exercise wasn't on the agenda. My nervous system sat right there trusting everyone else with their responsibilities and me doing only my very focused responsibilities when it was my shift, or when a chaotic even called for support. Even though the work was exhausting, I had pure rest in that gazebo.
Support and Boundaries create the safety and energy you need to heal.
What I learned was that if beneath the healthy things like quality food, supplements and active lifestyle you don't have a nervous system and adrenal system that can be at peace, you won't heal.
For us modern women, removing responsibilities from our plate allows us to heal. Giving up control over everything is part of this equation. We cannot keep everythign to ourselves to manage. I'm terrible at this, as are many high achieving women who learned early on as little girls to get valued by our achievements.
If we didn't just receive love and support, and instead became achievers, we don't actually attract support. We don't receive. We find partners and friends that like that we give, do, control, and direct things.
We lack the feeling of support and our energy dissipates. Our bodies and female hormones become dysfunctional in this state.
Our adrenal system is producing too much cortisol because it wants to push us through.
Our nervous system is active, trying to protect us, as if we aren't safe to just relax.
Inside, we don't feel worthy of receiving.
If this resonates with you and you aren't finding the healing you need from the protocols and supplements, then it's time to journey deeper. You deserve to live the rest of your life feeling safe, feeling you have energy, and belonging to a community that lets you sit and relax under a gazebo, healing within, even when the wars are nearby.
Although I have not figured out how to unwrite this narrative in my life that tries to constantly return me to a path of doing everything on my own and driving my body into an unhealthy state, I know embodiment tools have been really helpful for me and my clients.
Finding community, partnership, love, meal sharing, everything that is meant to be in traditional lives, but in this modern society, is probably as hard for you as it is for me. We have to get creative. Acknowledging that we are missing these things and making effort to find them is the journey. One step forward at a time.