How I Found This Work
My Story
I recently was listening to a podcast about Chinese Medicine. One question that is always asked of guests on the show is: “how did you get into this field?”. I love these stories. The host speaks of how Chinese medicine is not on a Meyers-Briggs test or even on the radar of high school counselors. So this IS a valid question: how does one find their way into such a field?
For me it is about painful growth, mistakes, and intense learning. At 19 I came crashing, barreling into it. I’d landed myself into what I thought was extreme turmoil. Feeling as is my life was over after getting kicked out of my second year of college. It was all my own doing: I pulled the fire alarm in the dormitories in a PMS rage (thats story for another day…) and, despite an appeal process was still asked to leave and not return.
My grandmother, who was a 4 time cancer survivor, saw an acupuncturist since her first recovery from ovarian cancer in the mid 80’s. My mother also urged me to go, after having been, herself.
So I did, and I was immediately bound to it. How much so, I had no idea.
I continued on, got back in school, learned yoga, cleaned up my diet (all while taking Chinese herbs on and off prescribed to me from my acupuncturist). I struggled to connect to my body and the symptoms I had become accustomed to worsened. Over time I became used to them.
“This medicine guides each individual, in all illness, all pain and all struggle.”
Unsure of what I wanted to do with my life, I majored in English. At the time I thought I maybe wanted to be a journalist. So I practiced being one: I interviewed many people I admired, wrote blogs. One of whom I interviewed is my first acupuncturist. I asked her all about it, how she got started, where she went to school, what she loves about it, everything. I found it all fascinating.
For years we continued to be in touch as I moved to Utah after college. I worked a job for the Parks Service in Canyonlands, fighting wild-land fires, seeking out new adventures. I had herbs sent to me and hiked them though the desert as I experienced extreme ups and downs with my health.
My menstrual cycle became a crippling event, affecting my work and state of mind. I’d be in so much pain some days I wished to die. Through my own research I figured out I probably had Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). The doctors I shared this with were very skeptical, but sure enough I did. For 2 years I took herbs on and off to dissolve the cysts. Today at 36 I have no cysts and three young children.
Acupuncture and herbal medicine, has helped me overcome many healthcare quandaries and emotional road blocks—it still does.
If I hadn’t found acupuncture and Chinese herbs (or it, me), I’m not sure where I’d be today. I don’t think I could have continued to live in such agony every month without the healing behind this medicine. With the right tuning, it helps my body to right itself over and over again.
