Self Care under Fire

Here in Northern California we are facing incredible amounts of wildfires which have devastated Napa and Sonoma Counties and are greatly affecting the surrounding areas. 

Here are some ways to care for yourself with herbs, nutrition and ways to care for those affected.

 

SELF - CARE

Get a mask - N95 or P100 - this category of mask will block out the size of particulate that is in the air. Most bay area stores are completely out. Order online to get shipped ASAP. If anyone has a better suggestion, I'd love to know how to get a mask faster. 

Get an air purifier. These fires could be out soon, but there will be residual particulate in the air that can affect you and your Lungs. There are all types, but the best according to The Sweethome is The Conway - linked here for $230 on Amazon. Higher end or budget pick listed on this post by The Sweethome.

Support your Lungs with Nutrition - the Lungs are a crucial part of our immune system and they are greatly supported by our digestion. 

To eat

  • some sour flavors - with this dryness, our Lungs need support keeping moist. Sour helps to astringe moisture - citrus is one of the easiest ways to get sour. 
  • some pungent flavors - radish, onion, garlic, ginger - this can help dispel toxins that are accumulating in the Lungs. 
  • pears - are a superfood for the Lungs - AND they are in season - they help to moisten the lungs. Eat raw or make poached pears. Here is a great recipe with some seasonal spices.
  • white unprocessed foods - pears, apples, onion, garlic, white rice, white sesame seeds, lotus root, lily bulb - all of these have medicinal effect in Chinese medicine specifically to support the Lungs
  • warm cooked foods - support your digestion with soups
  • fermented foods - eat fermented to support your gut health which in turn supports your immune system

To limit / avoid - 

  • sugar
  • dairy
  • refined foods

Herbs

cordyceps - Root and Bones has a great product but is sold out at the time of this post. You can search on google. Mountain Rose herbs is a great supplier.  Or check with your local herb store.

  • SF - Rainbow Grocery or The Scarlet Sage
  • Oakland - Five Flavors Herbs or Homestead Apothecary
  • Berkeley - Lhasa Kharnak

If you are having specific symptoms I recommend you check in with an herbalist or acupuncturist to create an herbal formula specific to your needs. I provide herbal consults. If you are interested you can sign up here. Or contact me for more details. 

How to Help

There are a lot of people to help right now and ways. There are options, do what you can with what you can.

With your dollars

Community Foundation of Napa County

Napa & Sonoma County Fire Relief

The Milo Foundation - their animal sanctuary was evacuated and they need dog food, cat food, cat litter, dog and cat bowls, financial donations, foster families and more. 

With your time

Foster an animal through The Milo Foundation or Hopalong

Bring Supplies

SO many medical offices, small businesses are taking donations and collecting them to send up. Check in with your community and see where you can bring helpful supplies!

I will do my best to update this list as things move forward. 

Healing Hurts - Charlottesville

Wounds don’t heal the way you want them to, they heal the way they need to. It takes time for wounds to fade into scars. It takes time for the process of healing to take place. Give yourself that time. Give yourself that grace. Be gentle with your wounds. Be gentle with your heart. YOU DESERVE THAT.
— Dele Olanubi

The tragedy in Charlottesville is a sharp reminder that there are so many hard edges, so much hate, so much scarcity, so much fear, so much division in our America. It has been a struggle to for me to find the right words and to take the right action. I spent time this week posting and reposting the work of many incredible people I follow who have been advocating for a world without white supremacy that unites to take action against hate.

As a healer, in my struggle to find words I have done what I know how to do, examining America as a living, breathing, heart beating body. Upon examination, I see our political system as broken limbs and our leader as a head completely detached from any symptoms of pain. I see America's heart as broken, like two charms separated into two pieces with a zig zag down the middle. Our continuous struggle to mend the broken heart charms but separation, scarcity, fear, otherness getting in the way. 

I have been thinking about healing the body, the thing I know how to do for myself, the thing I know how to help others do. If America were my patient what would I do?

Charlottesville is a gaping wound. The wound is deep, gushing, threatening the lifespan America's body. It is raw, exposed and bleeding out. We need help to save us. 

I have been struggling to find the right words. How to fight, how to heal, how to stay soft but firm. How do we heal this wound in time? What if time runs out? What if the pulse stops, there is no more breath in our country? How do we move forward in the midst of hate of close minded white supremacists, when our country was founded by people who had the same oppressive values? 

America has changed, healed and evolved since it was founded. But these old wounds are re-surfacing and coming to a head. It's painful, it's frightening and it needs to come out so that we keep talking about it. I know what I would say if America was my patient. I would say "better out than in." This does not mean that I support acts of violence or that I am rooting for my patient to experience pain. It means that when things lie dormant, under the surface they can be more dangerous, more powerful than when they are exposed and visible. As a practitioner when I see things come to the surface and show as symptoms, they are finally treatable. 

Let us keep hope as these terrifying and horrible actions surface that we continue conversations that need to happen. Let us see the symptoms and TAKE ACTION to treat what is happening. 

Resources are listed below. Please please please take the time to check them out. 

RESOURCES:

Want to be a white ally but need help? Join & support Safety Pin Box

BUSTLE - How to Help Victims of Charlottesville RIGHT NOW

Tema Okun on how to end White Supremacy Culture in Organizations

"This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being proactively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking. Because we all live in a white supremacy culture, these characteristics show up in the attitudes and behaviors of all of us – people of color and white people. Therefore, these attitudes and behaviors can show up in any group or organization, whether it is white-led or predominantly white or people of color-led or predominantly people of color."

Put your money towards businesses owned by POC, Women, LGBTQ and other minority groups. Our country runs on money and money deeply expresses our values. Not only spending your money but also following these people and reading their posts are an incredible way to support the America you want to live in. 

Late Summer Wellness

It’s August ya’ll and we are in the secret FIFTH season! Did you know there are actually five seasons. What else could there be besides the Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter?

In Chinese medicine we have a very short and VERY important fifth season. For you it just blends in between summer and fall, but LATE Summer is actually it’s own thing.

Late summer has organ pairings – it’s own emotional symptoms – physical symptoms AND ways to take care of yourself through the shifting weirdness.

If you are starting to feel…

… a bit more worried, or just beginning to have your eye on the fall… yup, late summer shifts from freeform joy of experience into a bit more method and rhythm

…hmmm, maybe some digestion issues – definitely late summer. It’s season of the Stomach and Spleen, your digestive rulers.

…a bit more needy, wanting more touch, cuddles, and closeness… yup, that’s late summer too.

…cravings for sweet. Yum ice cream! Yes chocolate! Yay cookies! Sugar, sugar, sugar!

To have a healthy season...

…slow your roll from the fast pace, expansive, fun fun fun, go go go rhthym of pure summer. I mean it, literally, slow your roll. Schedule a little less, start to hibernate a tiny bit more and just slow down.

…start eating more warm & cooked food. Seriously. Summer it’s ok to go ham on the sushi and watermelon but late summer wants some digestive love. Eat more cooked foods.

…get a massage. Ahhh, you know the neediness, the touch? That’s your Spleen, it connects to your muscles and if you are deficient a massage can be the perfect way to give your Spleen the late summer self care it needs.

…ah, ok sugar. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Time to work on digestion, microbiome and a balanced nutritional intake.

 

To grasp this season a little bit deeper, reflect and get a delicious Late Summer recipe - consider checking out this Late Summer ebook

Grief in the Season of Joy Part V. Fin.

The thing about grief is that it gets better. It gets easier, it lessens, it lets off the gas. And at the very same time it doesn’t.

Remember the resume bullet point? (If not, go back to Part II) I had qualifications on being a professional handler of grief. I was until my dad died. Since then I have been knocked over, ribs shaking, snot-dripping crying like when I was a little girl. I have not had tears that have overcome me since I was a child, maybe a teen.

This newly experienced depth of emotion as an adult has shocked me. It has made me feel out of control, and like a small and vulnerable little girl. It has also reminded me that no matter how you prepare yourself, brace yourself for the worst thing to happen, it does not protect you from the pain. Nothing can.

The thing is, I am still a vulnerable little girl. She is there to remind me that life is hard, it hurts and sometimes I really want my dad.

IMG_1275 2.JPG

Back to things getting better. It does get better, or something. Days keep passing. The sun keeps rising. And life goes on. I have learned that something that seemed impossible one evening has full potential the next morning. 

After enough nights of sleep and sunrises that marked the passing of time, all of a sudden it was spring. Finally, after six months I was ready to go visit the place where he died.

I had craved being in the place that he died since the day after his death. The woman who called 911, who found him face down, who heard his last words, “I’m just walking.” She gave us a great gift. She found our family and told us her story.

I wanted to walk his last steps, to see where he took his last breaths. And it was more beautiful and perfect than I could have imagined. Seeing this beauty of the place he finished his steps on earth has gifted me more peace, trust and acceptance. In his last steps he walked up a small hill towards an oak tree. In the Spring, I followed the path he took in his last footsteps. The feeling of being beneath the oak tree was a sigh of relief. The oak tree had been there for his death and for perhaps hundreds of years prior. Suddenly his death felt like it was part of something far beyond his time in a human body. It was part of a greater ebb and flow of life. 

Nayyirah Waheed the mourn

I have a general trust in the order of the world. There is something about life lessons teaching us what we need to know, when we need to know them. I have realized that even when we are good and we learn the life lesson, it doesn't prevent the pain, the grief, the sorrow that comes with loss. There is nothing that takes away the humanness of the experience. That is probably my greatest lesson to share.

For now, I hope to enjoy the rest of Summer, the season of joy. To let my heart crack open with it’s aches, pains and tenderness. To let it all wash over me as an intensive lesson on duality, death, life, love and moving on.

Grief in the Season of Joy Part IV.

I got really lucky with who I got for a dad. My dad was great. He was imperfect, and he would be the first to tell you that. He could totally be an Eeyore, and was known to both have a spark in his eye and drag in his step. He epitomized contradiction. His humanness, his lack of filter, and his big radiant heart, he was incredibly loved.

His memorial service was huge. It was about 500 people and I stood on stage and shared intimately, vulnerably, heartfelt feelings without breaking into sobs. In that moment on stage I felt so cared for, so held, and definitely not alone.

So much of Grief with a capital G has been the feeling of being alone. My dad left me alone. And I’m not alone. I have great friends, amazing family, a beyond supportive partner. It doesn’t take away the aloneness of grief. Everyone wants to, so badly, but they can’t. No one is the person who died. No one can bring back the one person you want to make you feel not so alone.

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist’s office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved.
— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

 

Joan Didion saved me. I read A Year of Magical Thinking five months after my dad died. She so perceptively encapsulates the feelings of insanity that come with losing someone you love. She made me feel less alone.

I write this fragmented, imperfect reflection on grief because it helps me. If you have lost someone and you feel so very alone, I want to gently remind you that you are not alone. No one will have your specific pain for your specific bond with the person that you lost. You may only really be seen by those also recently bereaved, but you're very much, not alone. 

Grief in the Season of Joy, Part III.

There are photos, before he died. It was 7PM on the east coast, 4PM on the west coast. We had just arrived to Portland, ME. It was sunset.

We were happily on an outlook gazing over the city. It was beautiful. Also there was dog poop, the scent was wafting in. Couples were sitting at this outlook, enjoying the view. People were taking photos. We were taking photos, I was hysterically laughing at this incredible serene, instagrammable moment made real by stanky dog poop.

 

Since my dad died I have had many more incredibly serene, instagrammable moments. In those picture perfect moments what is still there the metaphorical undercurrent of realness by stanky grief and pain.

I was in Maine when my dad died. We were on a vacation after the wedding of a very dear friend. I was already raw with emotion from seeing someone I loved open his heart in a huge celebration of love.

At around 12AM my mom called and I couldn’t hear the alarm in her tone. She sounded fine. I think she asked how my trip was, trying to delay the words that came next, “dad died.” She said.

I was sitting, but I know that I crumpled, or fell over, or something. But really all I remember was hearing myself yell, “Noooooooooo” It wasn’t a tone I had heard leave my body before.

Sobs overtook me and I had to go throw up a little. They don’t really tell you that, I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but I am telling you. That it can happen. You can be an adult who is so sad, crying so hard, that you need to throw up.

Grief in the Season of Joy, Part II.

I have made a lot of mistakes in my perception of grief. I have experienced a fair share of loss and so I thought I knew.

It felt like my experience was a bullet on a resume.

 

Lauren Kaneko-Jones, Licensed Acupuncturist, Health Coach, Sensitive Human

Life experience:

  • grief, the losing of people I have loved, the knowing how to survive, I’m qualified
  • when it happens to you, I can help you.
  • when it happens to me, don’t worry, I got things covered.

 

I thought the knowing-how-loss-works could prepare and protect me. My qualifications would make me immune to the pain. In fact, I was EXTRA prepared for this loss! My dad’s mortality previewed when I was seven years old with a major heart attack in a third world country.
He was so lucky to survive!
We were so lucky he survived!

However the manic feelings of being lucky don't spare the pain of a loss when it happens. 

Ever since my dad's first heart attack I have prepared myself.
‘Dad might not be at my wedding.
Dad might not know my kids.
I am lucky, he is lucky, we are lucky.’

What I was really trying for was,
‘I will be ok,
we will be ok,
this will not hurt me,
this will not be hard,
I was ready, he was ready, we were ready.’

Yet even with all the trying and the aim to escape the grief of my dad's death, what happened was something more like this,
'Dad's death was beautiful.
He was so lucky to die quickly.
We are so lucky he didn't suffer.
Dad's not going to be at my wedding.
Dad's not going to know my kids...
I am... so not ok.'

The holding on to the feelings of 'being lucky' was an optimism that could only go so far. There were only so many words of comfort. Beneath all the attempts to be ok, was deep love and grief.

My luck that my dad survived 24 more years beyond the first heart attack was something I held onto tightly. Somehow, throughout those 24 more years, I thought it would make losing him a bit softer.

I assumed (in hindsight maybe it was sheer hope) that grief’s pain would elude me. Because, hopefully we lose our parents and they don’t lose us. It’s the natural order. And yet, it feels like the worst thing that ever happened.

Image Credit: Faces and Voices of Recovery

Image Credit: Faces and Voices of Recovery

Grief in the Season of Joy, Part I.

Summer in Chinese medicine is connected to the heart, which is connected to joy. The heart does not lie and whatever we have been feeling comes right up to the surface as we go into the summer solstice late night June 20th. The longest day of light illuminates what is within us.

For me, what is within me is grief of losing my father. I have wanted to put my grief into words so that maybe it could help someone else, maybe it could prepare them for their own sorrow. Or maybe it would just give them permission for it to be really hard, really big. But I haven’t been able to put it out there. My fear is that people are scared, they can’t handle it, they don’t want to see my pain. That might be true, but also, stories of others grief have made me feel so less alone, so less insane that finally, heart thumping, hands shaking I am sharing.

Yesterday, Father’s Day June 18th, 2017 has been 9 months since he died, to the date. It was just as hard of a day as I expected it to be.

I took my 99 year old grandmother to church, something he did 9 months ago the day that he died. I came home and I took a big, long nap. It is hard to be awake, and a feeling, hurting human. It is so hard to remember that I have no more father on Father’s Day.