How Returning to Ancient Plant Medicines Inspired Me to Walk Away from Modern Medicine as a RN
By; Stacey M Constante, RN BSN MSCN
"I understood why I began to feel disconnected from my environment, myself, and others. I had come to a deep understanding that nothing was happening to me, it was happening for me."
The journey of walking away from conventional medicine as a registered nurse began with my own healing (as it usually does for most). I had been diagnosed with endometriosis and experiencing depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. I reached out to my primary care physician for help and was referred to a psychiatrist who spent five minutes analyzing me, pulled out his prescription pad and prescribed me an anti-depressant, which made everything worse for me. In addition, I was sent to a gynecologist who told me the agonizing symptoms of endometriosis was something I had to live with. As a registered nurse, I knew conventional medicine was not equipped to handle these conditions.
Since I was a young teen, I had started to feel as if I had a dark cloud around me. I was very disconnected from schoolmates but trying everything I could to bottle it all up, smile, and fit in. It took several years for these suppressed emotions to surface more intensely so I could process and release them. However, I never knew what it meant to honor my feelings, sit with my discomfort and analyze it. I was taught to push through, get over it and move on. And so that’s what I continued to do until my body and mind no longer was able to hold such distorted emotions.
This toxic relationship with myself began to spill into relationships with others. Everywhere I went turned to chaos. My relationships fell apart and all I could do was point the finger at everyone else but myself. I would run away from every opportunity to face my own shadows reflected by relationships and my surroundings.
I felt this instinctual need to leave my environment before I shattered any remaining ‘positive’ thing in my life. After finishing nursing school in 2015, I left from a suburban town in Illinois to a remote location surrounded by the sacred Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Colorado.
I began to reconnect with myself as I walked amongst the powerful medicine of the ancient mountains. I camped and hiked with my only companions, the surrounding mountains and lingering wild animals. I learned what it meant to truly be alone. Here was where I was forced to face myself.
I took a trip into Crestone, Colorado and joined a seven-day meditation retreat at the Zen Center where I was able to camp with other beautiful humans. I met an inspiring woman in her 40’s who invited me to a Half Moon Hikuri (peyote) Ceremony.
After spending 10 hours overnight in a tepee surrounded by women and feeling the powerful medicine of this sacred cactus, I was able to comprehend what it was to truly feel deep love for myself and everything around me. My heart had burst open and I allowed profound happiness take over.
This experience opened my path to deeper healings throughout my many journeys around the Americas where I was introduced to other sacred plant medicines such as ayahuasca, Huachuma (San Pedro), Bufo, Kambo, Yopo, etc.
I understood why I began to feel disconnected from my environment, myself, and others. I had come to a deep understanding that nothing was happening to me, it was happening for me.
I would have stayed as most do, stuck, hopeless and disempowered because society has normalized this.
These medicines taught me that if we clear all the stories we have been taught by society and rewire our programming, we clear the dark cloud that blinds us from the ability to see what is already within us. I was able to broaden my awareness and truly hear the calling of my innate wisdom.
I found my medicine within; we all have our unique medicine. However, along the way I had seen how modern medicine squanders this. They tell us we don’t know anything about medicine. We get reprimanded by speaking up about the knowledge we do know or questioning their decesions. We are told we are not doctors, so we do not know. We are sent through a revolving door with more unanswered questions and confusion.
This is not TRUE medicine. We know our bodies best. No one can tell us more about our bodies than we can. We are all so unique from one another through our own experiences, lifestyle, genetics, lineages, gender, and so on. There is no size fits all approach, it is very personalized.
Along the way we have been robbed from our innate ability to listen to the cries of our bodies. We have been shown to silence them with synthetic medicines only to need more medications for side effects from the original prescription, and so on.
I thank my experience with conventional medicine as I had to see from behind the scenes as a nurse to inspire me to walk another path.
We need to come back to teaching others how to truly tap into the innate wisdom within their bodies, eat nourishing foods, move their bodies, and come back to their center to clear out the chaos around. This is medicine, empowering others, showing them the way back to their powerful selves.
This is the medicine I’m willing to manifest as I’ve seen it within my own life. This is not a ‘new age’ trend, this is ancient medicine that has been around for many of years before conventional medicine was born.
Our ancestors knew the herbs to gather for certain healing properties, how to make nutrient dense meals, spent most of their days outdoors, and had a deep relationship with the land. We have lost this connection, but it has never left us. We just need the tools to tap within to retrieve this knowledge. This is what modern medicine does not show us. It treats every system within our body as separate and even worse disregarding our spirit and the mother earth sustaining us.
As human beings we are ONE with nature and by returning to the medicines of the earth, we will come to understand this.
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