Healing is relationship, healing is radical community building

Plants both as food and medicine continue to be an important part of my healing process. I like what Wendell Berry says about herbalism because it’s very much in keeping with the “everything matters” meme I often mention. Everything matters because everything is in relationship with everything else in our environments and our lives. Systems of healing that include herbalism understand this fact. Indigenous and shamanistic cultures understand this fact. We need to return to our roots while embracing and safely utilizing all we’ve learned while we forgot about them too.

Herbalism is based on relationship ~ relationship between plant and human, plant and planet, human and planet. Using herbs in the healing process means taking part in an ecological cycle. This offers us the opportunity consciously to be present in the living, vital world of which we are part; to invite wholeness and our world into our lives through awareness of the remedies being used. The herbs can link us into the broader context of planetary wholeness, so that whilst they are doing their physiological/medical job, we can do ours and build an awareness of the links of mutual relationships. ~ Wendell Berry

For now our society remains seriously disconnected. Trauma is a symptom of disconnection. Psychiatry too often ignores trauma because, it, too, is disconnected. We don’t know how to take care of one another and therefore we don’t know how to take care of ourselves. We get this from our parents and we pass it on to our children if we don’t become conscious. Healing requires learning how to do these things as a species not just as individuals. In the end healing is radical community building. I touch on that idea at the end of this post.

More posts that speak to this relational understanding: