Dear Patient,
In last week’s episode of the NFYA podcast, I asked my guest Mary Morrison, “What’s your medicine?”
This was a table-turning tactic on my part, since Mary asks that question of her own guests on her We Are Medicine Women podcast. Mary has interviewed a number of acupuncturists, yet none of them ever answer that needles and herbs are their medicine.
In Mary’s thoughtful response, she describes the act of listening with her whole body, and having the courage to speak up when something doesn’t sit right:
That’s her medicine.
We all have medicine to share. Back in January I wrote about this in Healers, which described the medicine I received from friends and family in response to the death of my beloved dog. There was no pill to heal my grief. There were cards, cookies, flowers, texts, hugs.
They were the medicine.
Early in my career, I thought that a fistful of needles was my medicine. Now, I see that the true medicine is what is offered through the needles—awareness, recognition, intention, empathy, reassurance, relief, acceptance, love.
These things are medicine.
And so we all have the capacity to be healers, because we all have some comfort to offer one another, and we can use whatever conduit for healing we like. Mine is often needles. Karen Davis, who writes Life in the Real World, talks about using her camera and pen as medicine. Mary’s is listening with her whole body. Yours might be words. Actions. A gesture or a touch. Stories are medicine. Music is medicine. Silence is medicine.
Your very presence is medicine.
I’ve come to believe that anything generously and lovingly offered to the world is medicine.
Which means we are all healers.
What’s your medicine?
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist
I just love this so much: “I’ve come to believe that anything generously and lovingly offered to the world is medicine.”