The medicine that makes us whole
Lately, my beautiful and very
pregnant daughter has been struggling with a bad outbreak of eczema; she can't
get it under control and it is frustrating for her. I tried to make it
better by telling her that it is most likely a combination of pregnancy
hormones, the strange weather and acidic food that she has been eating lately
which is most likely aggravating her eczema but that didn't really help lower
her frustration level...ha! Yea, don't use logic to explain a frustrating
situation that you aren't in but the other person is as it goes bad rather quickly....lol
So what is a
mother to do? I don’t know about you,
but it's hard for me to see my children struggle especially if it causes them
physical pain. As my daughter stood before me with sadness in her eyes,
in that moment of wanting to help but not knowing what to do, it was then that
I remembered what my dad used to do when I was a child and I went with that.
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my daughter & dad many years ago |
My dad was
forever in the bush: sometimes for work, sometimes to hunt, sometimes to hide
(yea hide…lol) and the other times to get medicine. I remember him going
out into the bush and coming back an hour or two later with what I thought were
just leaves/plants and watching him at the stove boil or prepare it to get it
ready for us to use. I had no idea that this wasn't a normal practice for
everyone; where you made your own medicine if you were sick. Come to think of it, I don’t recall much
about taking pills when I was younger unless we were really, really sick and had
to go to the hospital. In looking back,
I don’t think we could afford buying medicine too much.
Isn’t it
interesting how memories come back to teach us something that we forgot but was
just waiting to be brought back again at the right time and place? Well, yes it
is! The memory of my dad at the stove
putting the plant into the pot of water and turning to me to let me know
this medicine will help, was a teaching that I didn't know I possessed until
the day I had no money to get medicine from a store. I had been making medicine for years for my
kids, but stopped for some reason as they became teenagers and then young
adults.
So I looked
at my daughter and said "I will make you some medicine to help you"
and set about getting the cedar ready to boil. I had been picking and
preparing cedar for a week for someone else and managed to save a bit for
myself as I knew that I was going to make medicine for my daughter as a week
ago I had let her know that having a cedar bath would make her skin feel good,
soft, and would protect her and her baby inside of her.
She agreed to it and set about
getting ready for the bath. With cedar in hand along with a pot and
water, I stood at the stove stirring the cedar boughs enjoying the smell of
cedar wafting through the air and down the hallway making its way throughout
the whole house. I felt safe and very much at peace while preparing the
medicine. It was then that my mind drifted
through the thought that my spirit missed doing this; missed making medicine
and missed how it made the air around me feel alive and all that much more
cleaner.
When I
finished making the medicine, I silently thanked my dad for what he taught me
and grateful that I taught my children about our ways of life and the medicines
that make us whole. I believe that if I had not taught them this from an
early age that our beliefs are a part of who we always were and are, then my
daughter would not believe that the medicine I was making would help her;
believing and knowing about oneself is part of how any medicine works. So,
in each stir, I sent my prayers that it would soothe my daughter's skin and all
would work out as it should; the power of the mind and soul is one of our
greatest medicines that we are born with but forget at times.
When the
smell of medicine had finished floating through the house and into the
bathroom, I took out the cedar boughs from the pot and put them aside as I carried
the pot of cedar water to the bathtub where I poured it into the bath water my
daughter had drawn minutes ago. I stood there for a minute watching the
color of the medicine mix with the clear bath water creating a light green mixture
that reminded me of the sea as it swirled about.
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My daughter and I. |
In that moment, as I turned to tell
my daughter it was ready, I could feel my dad's presence and had a sense of deja
vu. But instead of seeing my dad turn from the stove to assure me the
medicine would help, I was now in the spot that my dad had been so long ago,
looking upon his little daughter and saying, “this medicine will help".
Our medicine makes us whole; it was
and will continue to heal us. Medicine
isn’t just the plants we use but the food we put into our bodies, the thoughts
and emotions we experience and the movement of our physical bodies. We have
everything we need within our traditions and culture; let go of what isn’t
medicine to you and you will become whole again.
Miigwech,
In good thoughts,
Carrianne
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