Bea Weaves a Healing Dream

Bea had a full client intake with her herbalist friend Nicholas last week, 3 hours on the phone with her complicated medical history. She still owes him photos of her nails and tongue, but she pulled her back out, again, and has been heavily medicating. Three cheers for ganja tinctures.

He calls today to follow-up on their conversation and she says, “I hear what you’re saying about what I’m eating. I’m doing the best I can with the energy I have, but it’s limited. It's a vicious circle. I’m doing what I can to make the lipedema not get worse, anyway. I know if I’m eating exactly how my body needs to be nourished, with all the soaking and sprouting and all the food as medicine...if I could manage to do that for like 3 months straight with all your protocols, and the kambo sessions like we planned — I think maybe there might not be much else wrong with me. That might just be all I need.”

“Well, I offered to do that for you, in my session tent.” Nicholas says, making it sound like a question.

“Yes, but for as long as I’d need to be there I want to be more comfortable than I imagine being in your session tent, as nice as I am sure it is. I've never been able to make it across the creek with my ankle to see it. And I know you'd bring me everything, but I want hot water whenever I want it without that being hard. I really need a pool where I can swim, we said, too, and there isn’t enough water up there to really swim in, is there?”

“No, there isn’t, and that’s a thing,” Nicholas admits.

“I mean, we could do it...honestly, I guess I just don’t want to worry about having to put shoes on to get to where I can poop, or have to pay attention to rattlesnakes and poison oak,” Bea laughs. "I want your tent to be everywhere across the country available to everyone, without the rattlesnakes, and it's a nice facility, not a tent."

“Fair enough, and conditions should be ideal to test our protocols, anyway. What you are needing is the kind of thing I want, really. Where we can do all the healing work, and hold space for people who are already conscious of their patterns and are already doing the work,” Nicholas says, and then adds, “I want this for you.”

“And then we can see if our protocols are generalizable to the public — yeah,” Bea says, excitedly. “Would you want this facility to be yours, or do you just want to do your work there?”

“Well, if someone wanted to drop a container in my lap to do the work I’m doing, I wouldn’t complain. I am not attached to it being mine, no,” Nicholas laughs, “And, you are exactly the kind of person I want to be working with at a place like that,” he adds.

“I see it being a place where 5-8 people can be hosted, this first one, anyway. I see them all over — all different containers for the work we are all doing...” Bea trails off.

“Yeah, that feels right,” Nicholas says.

“Houses for healers helping healers heal,” Bea muses. “Where we can do all the rest of our own healing work, and offer space to others needing healing. All the support we need, I think, can come from the community. I can work on the marketing, I guess...we’d be giving people a way to support healing by supporting groups that maximize resources for the collective benefit...because why wouldn’t you support that.” Bea’s imagination spins, “I see these everywhere. In the universes where there is less suffering, networks of these houses are everywhere. Supporting every kind of healing work there is for us to collectively do, with people that are the pioneers, the ones that have unfucked themselves.”

“Yeah...” Nicholas begins to say, but Bea isn’t listening.

Bea, speaking over him says, “Hey, I’m going to go write in that notebook you got me, the little black Moleskine one. Some guy I met in my travels gave it a “color bath”, and told me if I’m breathing in rhythm with the heartbeat of the universe that anything I write in it will manifest. So I’m going to go try it, I suppose,” Bea says. “I let it flow onto the paper, and then get out of the way of it manifesting — I think that's how it works, anyway.”

“Right,” Nicholas says. “Go write, I’m open to this being easy!” Bea hears him smiling through the phone.

Bea fetches a pen, and makes herself a standing desk out of cardboard boxes. It hurts her back to look down today, and she can’t really sit well, even on a yoga ball. What she really needs is a swim, and a soak, and a massage, and an adjustment....and the amazing food Nicholas has made for her whenever she’s visited his little off-grid trailer in southern Oregon. He’s a trained chef and also went to school for herbal medicine, and is also a kambo practitioner and facilitator. He and Bea have been working together holding space for mutual healing since 2015. They’ve become great friends, affectionate like close siblings might be — and each list the other as emergency contacts for retreats.

Bea reflects that she has collected a large number of healing friends in her travels, and it’s difficult for many to have housing all year — Bea included. Many have had to heal from significant illnesses, life traumas, and destructive patterning. Everyone needs a place to heal fully, the kind of healing that happens in community. Many just want a place to live and be in service while having all of their needs met, without that being complicated.

Ideally Bea would have access to a wide range of healing protocols, while offering ones she’s cultivated, without that having to be hard. She has a Master’s Degree in Social Work and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy, and decades of self-improvement training. People see her as something of a new age minister, though those aren't the words she'd use. She is a trained therapist, and does healing performance art, and is studying a “verbal acupuncture” tool she’s cultivated to help stop problematic thought patterns, shifting them to more helpful ones. Verbal acupuncture is an amazing tool to pair with entheogens, especially now there are waves of decriminalization happening everywhere. It’s an exciting time to be alive. But she is in so much damn pain so much of the time that she’s not much of a use to anyone ongoingly — feeling under and over-whelmed.

“Healers helping healers heal” she writes in the notebook. It doesn’t matter what these houses are called, she thinks, but this is what they are. Healing collectives. Supported by those who want to see healing.

Writing in the notebook, Bea pours all of her thoughts about the containers for healing that are needed. Places for anyone who practices any healing art to come and be in service, while also having access to getting their needs met. Places where the best food this earth can grow is grown, and what’s necessary for true thriving is studied.

She idly wonders if she can enter this into the writing challenge she saw on Vocal. It would be nice to win $20,000…

Bea can imagine that she already has won, and that the container for this last part of her healing journey is right there waiting. She can see, too, a fully funded network testing protocols for reversing lipedema, perfecting effective treatments together. The network creates food and plant medicine based programs everywhere, supporting healing work for all kinds of dis-ease.

The collective suffering diminishes, and the collective peace grows...

This is an actual conversation between two friends. The main "fiction" in this story is that Nicholas shortens his name, and Bea does not! Any monies received from reads or tips or contest winnings on this story, or generally, will be used for making the visions contained herein come true.

We all need networks of houses for healing to exist.

Thank you!