For months I passed by the shelves of old medicine notebooks thinking I should revisit them. I didn’t because I thought I’d be sad at all I’ve forgotten, but yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, or the one before that, I pulled the oldest of these from the shelf. As I read my old hand written notes, I began to cry. Not for what I’ve forgotten about how best to combine plants for specific effects, etc., but for the simplicity and clarity of absolute faith in medicine, in what talks to us, what teaches us. Certainty resting on accumulated experience, mine and the generations before me.
Saturday I'd gone to the woods to sit with an old ally. I saw something, but until I read these notes, I didn’t quite understand its magnitude. The depth and reach of what was shown, what was told. The miracle of it.
In all honesty I think I’ve still been affected by the experience of our recent period of trouble. The suddenness. Trying to keep our patients alive, trying to do the right thing for employees. Being wrong. Making correction. Being wrong again. Doing the best I could, knowing it wouldn’t be enough. Like you. Perhaps like all of us.
Going forward, I will go to the mountains, to the water and immerse myself in this old medicine, this record I have on my shelves of what went before. I will not be diverted by fear or other invitations to get lost, to lose myself.
Medicine. The teachings. The bloodline. These were always enough.
~June O’Brien
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