Flying Solo

On navigating a course of action

Photo by Jacob Norrie on Unsplash

I.

Three years ago, I got bumped off a hamster wheel of my own making. I had been hustled by the power of trying too hard, an inherited family trait.

Virtually all homeopaths like myself are lone practitioners without office assistants. We fly solo all the way; I had done so for over 25 years.

I am part of a professional minority among swells of “complementary and alternative” practitioners in the U.S. I practice in a large city where the desire for homeopathy surpasses the number of qualified practitioners. I watched colleagues succumb to that pressure and bail out while they were ahead.

I promised myself I would never become a helping profession statistic.

The day of my cancer diagnosis, I felt like I had been in an accident that was my fault. To survive, I had to lift my foot off the gas, roll to a full stop and assess. How did I throw myself, against my instincts, into a heap on the floor? I needed to overhaul my health and my life—from the inside out.

But life was busy. I had neither intention nor the time to reinvent myself.

Not just because of the demands of a solo practice. Nor because of the commute between three locations or the stacks of filing and billing. I am one of a fortunate few in my field who was flying solo but thriving in service to those seeking and helped by what I describe here as, Good Medicine.

II.

From an early age, I learned to cope with tough personal decisions on my own.

My father, taken from his seven young children at age 36 in an accident, was not around to call on for advice. Solo was the only way I knew.

“Self-care”, in part, drove my professional success. I refueled with a balance of holistic medicine, regular outdoor recreation, meaningful connections, creative endeavors, good rest, yoga, meditation and nutrition. I had rarely been ill.

When illness struck, I did not feel successful at all. I was blind-sided. My energy, the strength of my life force, could no longer sustain my expanding professional and personal commitments.

I was driving over my speed limit before I knew what was happening to me. When trouble hit, I was running on empty. Then suddenly, with nowhere else to go, the 24/7 home care of my rapidly declining 94-year-old mother began.

As my mother weakened, I ignored and denied the strain and had overlooked how to make a course correction. I fought even harder to keep it all going. She and my clients were counting on me. I denied the physical strain until my symptoms stopped me.

For the first time in my life, my capacity to stand on my own feet collapsed. How did I fail to let up before the surprise ambulance ride and a diagnosis? I had convinced myself that my hemorrhage was a large benign fibroid that could be removed.

After the ER doctors determined it was cervical cancer, I felt lost and weak. I was thrust rudely into the country of conventional medical treatments, an unpleasant foreign country governed by to me objectionable laws and methods of operation.

What next, I thought? I had some decisions to make.

III.

Self-reliance, I discovered, was a hazard when taken too far.

I embarked on healing myself, and the meaning of “flying solo” became plain. Managing the responsibilities in my life is different than taking responsibility for the course of my life.

I turned to the immutable laws of nature which govern the healing process. They cannot be ignored, try as we might, without a price. My return to health began with the homeopathic wisdom inspired by observations from nature.

My options for survival in the wilderness of treatment choices required me to use a map I rely on every day in our practice that we call the Direction of Cure¹.

Practitioners use this decision-making tool to assess the general direction of healing in both acute and chronic care. Observation and experience generally reveal that signs of healing logically proceed in one direction. Assisted by well-chosen homeopathic remedies, intervention is called for only when these signs are not going as expected.

We observe skin heal itself when symptoms disappear in the reverse order of their appearance and move from the innermost to the outermost. For example, when a bedsore develops from pressure on the surface, the outer layers of skin will first break down inward toward the bone. Nature’s healing process takes place in reverse order: the skin heals over from the deeper subcutaneous layers of tissue nearest the bone outward to the surface. The new layers of skin slowly replace the symptomatic tissues in the reverse order of their appearance. We can all expect ourselves to heal this way.

IV.

What is doing the healing here? The driver of healing is primarily nature, not the practitioner nor the treatment, per se, contrary to the assumptions in Western medicine.

The person and their energetic capacity initiate holistic recovery when faced by the complexities of both medical treatment and integrative health options. Patients and practitioners alike benefit from this fundamental fact.

Between the first visit to urgent care and my hospital discharge four days later, skillful professionals, both conventional and homeopathic, fortunately helped stabilize the emergency until my system recovered from threat. I am grateful both to them and to my body’s innate capacity to heal.

But to stop the cancer’s spread, how would I endure their prescribed treatments? I have never tolerated synthetic drugs well. Up until then, holistic health options available to me helped me stay well.

I knew from professional experience that, if rushed through treatments, I may well miss the subtle signals of correct healing direction. Toxicity clouds judgement and weakens nature’s capacity to react. I have witnessed negative outcomes in fast-track medical treatments (outside emergency situations) that require a slower, rational approach.

At my first oncological visit, a veil of disbelief came over me as they reeled off their survival rates meant to lessen the blow. I felt co-opted by a team of mechanics poised to “cure” my body like a broken machine as quickly as possible when everybody knew the risks of the aggressive interventions I faced.

Based on the principles of healing direction I knew, I chose very conservatively among the conventional treatments available to me.

My medical team appeared dismayed by the unconventional treatment choices I made for myself as I entered treatment with them. I did not invest in their “overall survival” predictions for my life. I could not possibly help them understand that.

Instead, I would primarily monitor how my emotional, mental, and physical reactions were going while using homeopathy to heal myself. Those reactions, when rebalanced from the deepest center of disturbance outwards, were central to my homeopathic course of care.

My doctors knew I was involved with the home care of my mother during treatment, yet they were not inclined to acknowledge my emotional and mental distress in any way.

Their plan did not address the elephant in the room. Yet, as a homeopath, I knew how family grief surrounding my mother’s decline affected my energy inwardly, before my physical illness appeared outwardly.

V.

I remember telling my oncologist, who searched my eyes for understanding, that cancer originates in the soul, not the body.

Homeopaths, just as I imagine therapists or ministers might, often observe in practice that as underlying emotional or mental tensions resolve, physical symptoms then rebalance along the correct path of healing: from the innermost feelings and thoughts to the outermost physical conditions.

Homeopathic therapeutics also includes a safe and non-toxic pharmacy of homeopathically prepared substances from nature. Chosen skillfully, they kindle vital energy needed to counteract or neutralize specific stressors, like griefs, irritabilities, fears or anxieties, as an integral part of physical healing.

I understood, and had experienced before, that as my deeper tensions resolved, my physical healing process would follow, outwardly.

I broke the promise to care for myself and had become a “statistic”. I may have gotten myself into a jam due to an inherited family trait, but I finally relented from trying so hard so much of the time.

Flying solo endangered me—it obscured all emotional intelligence.

So, I let up and stepped away from full-time practice to sustain my progress. I have more slack in my days and bounce in my step, wherever they may lead from here.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. Lao Tzu

1. Direction of Cure. Stated in simplest terms, symptoms appear and disappear from above to below, from within to without, in the reverse order of their appearance, the most recent symptoms disappear first, and symptoms experienced longest disappear last (and, according to classical homeopaths, via the shortest and safest route). Nicola Henriques, Crossroads to Cure, (St Helena, CA Totality Press, 1998) pg.12.