how to recover
We moved to a little yellow house when I was four. There was a kidney-shaped garden plot in the backyard, full of tomatoes, peppers, mint, parsley, perennials. I remember tiptoeing barefoot through it, plucking lambs’ ears leaves and dandelion seeds, fashioning them into bandages and medicines for my dolls.
When I was seven, I dragged my mother to the dusty basement stacks of our local library so I could pore over herbal medicine textbooks, turning the pages with reverence. I treasured the little plastic pot of beeswax salve, slathered it on every bump and scrape. At eight I received my first diagnosis; at ten I was gifted a colorful atlas of human anatomy. I remember the genetic counselor’s laminated pages of chromosomes and the raised colorful sketches of blood flow and synapses.
At nineteen and at twenty-eight, I walked into formaldehyde-scented labs, held first a brain and then muscle fibers. At twenty, I taught pleasure and vibrators and sex education; at twenty-four I trained as an overnight hotline rape crisis counselor.
In my thirties, now, my practice of nourishment is a daily discipline for myself and others, shaped over years of studying the art and science of healing. What I offer now is everything I have learned.
HOW TO RECOVER is an online class where we learn to deepen our own practices of healing and care.
Over five weeks, we will explore tools to build containers of safety, ways to reckon with the things that hurt, routines and rituals to support resilience and restoration, and systems to make care sustainable, pleasurable, and joyful. We begin Saturday, January 28, 2023.
If you are a person with a body and a brain, I made this class for you.
a few medicines:
As a thank you to you, dear reader of this newsletter, use code CHAI20 for $20 off HOW TO RECOVER.
I got to chat with one of my oldest friends about some of my favorite topics, including the medical and wellness industries, agency in healing, and of course, ginger chai. You can listen to our conversation here.
Sometimes we need an antidote to being “seen inside and out but somehow not seen at all.”
A resolution to have no resolutions.
A long distance bestie who asks, “who has held you while you cried about this?”
Sitting in a warm sunpuddle when it is frigid outside, and silk layers under wool sweaters.
until next time.