Leonie Bedet, R.Ac.
1717 Grant Street V5L2Y6 Vancouver, BC, Canada

Many will counsel you that there is a reason for your disease and that if you could only heal your underlying emotional wounds, pain would leave you alone. But... the body is not an abstraction, and pain laughs at the over-simplicity of this way of thinking. As Harvard Professor and author Elaine Scarry describes, unlike interior pain, physical pain has no referential content. It is not of or for anything. This isn’t to say that pain won’t put you on a path of psychological growth, but as Job discovered, the ripping, destructive agony of an illness doesn’t have inherent value. In Sick Woman Theory, Johanna Hedva tells their own story of living with chronic pain and illness, and how challenging it is for a sick person to find relevance in a world that aggrandizes wellness. Hedva articulates how wellness and sickness are treated as a binary of opposites in our culture. And those who fall on the wrong side of those tracks are considered unproductive and therefore excluded from the collective conversation. We are so fixated on curing illness and eradicating pain that we’re unable to consider people living in pain as leading intact lives. But perhaps more insidious is how this estranges us from our own pain and wretched illness. We are so driven to ‘get well’ that we rarely show any welcoming kindness to this unexpected guest in our lives. Excerpt from Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-pa Turner (belongingbook.com) Photo of Toko-pa resting on a low wooden fence surrounded by golden autumn grasses. She has her hair piled up in a messy bun, wearing brown boots, white jeans, and a striped grey top.

It’s your life. Don’t forget that.

Joint Statement of Apology and Commitment to Action signed CTCMA and 10 other BC Health Regulators recently signed a Joint Statement of Apology and Commitment t...o Action, recognizing past discrimination against Indigenous peoples accessing the BC healthcare system and committing to collaborative work toward reconciliation and healing. The full text of the apology and commitment is available here: https://www.ctcma.bc.ca//2021-09-09-ctcma-signs-statement/

my brain and heart divorced a decade ago... over who was to blame about how big of a mess I have become eventually, they couldn't be in the same room with each other now my head and heart share custody of me I stay with my brain during the week and my heart gets me on weekends they never speak to one another - instead, they give me the same note to pass to each other every week and their notes they send to one another always says the same thing: "This is all your fault" on Sundays my heart complains about how my head has let me down in the past and on Wednesday my head lists all of the times my heart has screwed things up for me in the future they blame each other for the state of my life there's been a lot of yelling - and crying so, lately, I've been spending a lot of time with my gut who serves as my unofficial therapist most nights, I sneak out of the window in my ribcage and slide down my spine and collapse on my gut's plush leather chair that's always open for me ~ and I just sit sit sit sit until the sun comes up last evening, my gut asked me if I was having a hard time being caught between my heart and my head I nodded I said I didn't know if I could live with either of them anymore "my heart is always sad about something that happened yesterday while my head is always worried about something that may happen tomorrow," I lamented my gut squeezed my hand "I just can't live with my mistakes of the past or my anxiety about the future," I sighed my gut smiled and said: "in that case, you should go stay with your lungs for a while," I was confused - the look on my face gave it away "if you are exhausted about your heart's obsession with the fixed past and your mind's focus on the uncertain future your lungs are the perfect place for you there is no yesterday in your lungs there is no tomorrow there either there is only now there is only inhale there is only exhale there is only this moment there is only breath and in that breath you can rest while your heart and head work their relationship out." this morning, while my brain was busy reading tea leaves and while my heart was staring at old photographs I packed a little bag and walked to the door of my lungs before I could even knock she opened the door with a smile and as a gust of air embraced me she said "what took you so long?" ~ john roedel (johnroedel.com)

Posted @withregram @thewhichdoctor_ Exactly.

Helpful reminders

November Foods.