Therapeutic Environments

What is the Wise Women Tradition?  

Recently this concept has resurfaced and has reminded me where I came from. This is a tradition passed down from European women, often an unwritten body of knowledge of how to birth babies, how to grow medicine, how to care for one another. It includes midwives, herbalists, and earth based lifestyles. This was the medicine of gypsies, of small towns, and countrywomen for thousands of years. They were the guardians of care.

I came from a small town in New Hampshire.  My grandmother soaked my feet in ginger tea and my mother sprayed lavender in the “atomizer” as a way of cleansing the house when we were sick.  And make no mistake; we did get sick, sometimes very sick.  We also, brought foods to one another during a “hardship” and grew and canned our own food.  We played in the dirt and were never late getting home or “coming in” because we were worn out and hungry.  We sometimes snacked on berries that we couldn’t identify and sometimes had stomach aches as a result.   We never ate those berries again!   Susun Weed herbalist and Wise Woman says there are three traditions of healing, Scientific, Heroic, and Wise Woman.  Listen to what she says is the Wise Women Way:

“Wise Woman Tradition is the world’s oldest healing tradition. Its symbol is the spiral. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Life is a spiraling, ever-changing completeness. Disease and injury are doorways of transformation. Each one of us is inherently whole, yet seeking greater wholeness; perfect, yet desiring greater perfection. Whole/healthy/holy. Substance, thought, feeling, and spirit inseparable intertwined.”

It is a way of life, one that embraces the natural world, that reminds us that change is inevitable and that change gives us hope, allows us to restore and then to re-emerge with new energy.  The Wise Women Tradition does not disconnect us from our roots but allows us room to move, to resettle, to grow and yet remain rooted with our knowledge.  Cultures all over the world depend on this knowledge to be passed on.  What do I do with this sadness?  How do I save this little lamb when its mother has rejected it?  Indeed how do I survive tragedies?  I can dance in the streets; sing from my heart and yes, if anything about this sounds familiar, it may be Haiti.  For all the struggles of this lovely culture, of all the political difficulties these people endure there is a common thread it is the women the wise healers that have held the hands of hope.

So what does it mean for us to restore our Wise Women inside of each one of us.  In history she was invisible but today maybe we need to be less invisible, offer our knowledge without apology.  As we go about each day in our communities share nourishment for our bodies, our spirits and our emotions with hugs, with warm home made bread and with the weeds that grow abundantly and that offer minerals and health. The Wise Women in each of us does not need to quote data or look to the web for her source, she is her own source. This is a process of remembering.  Of getting quiet enough to follow our path. Place our hands that extend from our hearts in the soil and grow wildly and widely.  We need to embrace our natural perfection and find our uniqueness.

For today (as this is all each of us have been given) celebrate your uniqueness. Invite the Wise Women.

Being Myself, figuring out me

I set an intention recently “I am myself”.  Then immediately decided I didn’t know what I meant.  So I set out on a reflective journey to figure out what had come out of my mouth and what did it mean?  First I made a list, and it went something like this “being myself means”: 

• Having integrity (strength)
• Speaking for myself, my truth as I know it
• Speaking my truth but harm none
• Laughter, lots of it
• Feeling, owning all these Connie feelings
• Focusing on positive things about each day
• Putting positive people in my life
• “Doing” what feels passionate; making tinctures, plant medicine play, touching nature
• Owning my personal power and not giving it away to someone or something else
• Acknowledging my wisdom and not comparing it to other’s wisdom
• Embracing my crone-hood
• Enjoying what I have
• Acknowledging what I have is enough
• Honoring my work, my play and my life
• Loving my friends old and new, my partner and my home grown community
• Being an imperfect self and being with others, also imperfect, but willing to grow themselves

Now as I look at this list I have to decide what to do with it….maybe being myself means picking each one of these one by one, looking at what it means as it relates to me and how I can strengthen, hone or develop a better relationship with this part of myself.  It was easy to make the list, but as I am contemplating each thing I wrote I find I am reluctant to choose this or that.  I realize I am looking for something easy to start with.  So now this becomes a stand up moment, there is no easy way.  This is crazy, not only am I trying to get out of this easy I am also making this public!  I am aware, frightfully aware, that I have just spun a whole new list of intentions.  Who said life was boring?

So I have chosen one and decided I will reflect on this and come November it will be my birthday gift to myself.  After all, in my 66 years there has had to be some measure of complexity that explains why this (my myself list) looks so daunting and head spinning.   So join me in making your “myself list”.  See what emerges.  See what you are from the inside out.  As for my November gift to myself, here it is.  Thanks for listening and with your support I choose:

“Acknowledging my wisdom and not comparing it to others wisdom”

Connie Henry, 2011