Healing Intentions for 2024

This week meant getting back on my healing team's schedules. Seeing my acupuncturist after not getting in for several months felt so good. As far as healing the root cause of my autoimmune disease to get that mis-immune mechanism on safety, acupuncture has been my number one tool. Eating nourishing foods that support my body and don’t trigger inflammation and more dysfunction with processed sugars and harmful substances is at the base of my healing pyramid. Acupuncture, chiropractic, targeted supplementation, and counseling all lay like bricks above that.

I’ve been in a really aggressive ‘flair’ since having Liv. This is typical of autoimmune disease. Pharmaceutically, my options seem to be slimming down; my autoimmune disease is deemed ‘aggressive’ and ‘difficult’ to treat. My liver enzymes are steadily too high. I am in a tricky place, unable to handle high doses of prednisone anymore to douse the inflammation, the concern of pancreatitis from immunosuppressants, and there not being other conventional therapy options to help save my liver; my OHSU medical file is bleak AF.

Thankfully, tests from this summer reveal my liver tissue is hanging in there just fine, it’s even better than my initial results back when this whole mess became my reality in 2016. So despite my osteoporotic bones(thanks to prednisone and leaches… I mean kids) and my liver labwork, I feel quite like the next overstretched parent of young children. I accredit this to all the real, wonderful food I raise and carefully select to feed us.

The liver is the ONLY organ that REGENERATES.

REGENERATES> (of a living organism) regrow (new tissue) to replace lost or injured tissue.

OR> reformed or reborn, especially in a spiritual or moral sense.

Oxford Dictionary

I used to think, “Why, of all the organs, does my immune system have to target one essential to living!?” I still think that when I am giving my immune system a stern pep talk to call cease fire and better train the troops.

Recently I realized the magical irony of this. For years now I have, if I ever worshipped anything, you could say, worshipped regenerative land stewardship practices. I implement them here at the ranch with such passion. I believe wholeheartedly that these simple practices of mob-grazing and rotational grazing, mulching, and cover crops are the solution the Earth so desperately needs us to deploy on every inch we have molested. It is labor intensive and that is what so many people in our world lack and need too—that physical connection with the earth and microbiome. Our land and souls healing and thriving and creating abundance together both tangibly and mentally.

There is no mistake. There is no casual coincidence between my feelings and implementation towards land regeneration and my poor assaulted liver being the ONE thing that I absolutely have to regenerate to live the life I aspire to. The magic is that I have the power to do so. I know that I will get through this ‘flair’ of extra immune assault and liver inflammation when I am meant to. That there is a lesson I am meant to learn. A person I am meant to work with. Something I must do. Once I get this next piece of the puzzle worked out, life will be that much sweeter, I will have lived that much more the life I am meant to. It is weary work. This summer I definitely had a very low point in being 29 years old and to have such struggle and to know this will likely be a prominent part of my existence—a lifelong battle. That is really why I must adjust my perspective. Pursue healing. Manifest health. Refrain from seeing it as a battle or struggle but a journey of enlightenment and purpose. Ultimately an opportunity for immense passion.

Last year I decided to choose a word to focus on or the entire year. It was inspired by my acupuncturist and our conversations around being a parent. The word is Surrender. I will continue to carry that intention with me because no one masters that in a year when kids are an ever-evolving variable in ones life, haha. This year I will add Grace.

Grace is a multi-faceted word, but how I want to embrace it into myself is this; I want to handle the hard situations in my life with grace. I don’t want to be remembered as being mean, angry, spiteful, and ill-tempered. I want to handle the hard with a calm calculating energy. I want to be sympathetic rather than irritated. I want to be understanding rather than angry. I want to have a little grace for others and myself, but mainly in how I interact with my family.

I am really looking forward to being even more intentional as I proceed through the year with a new word and renewed inspiration to keep manifesting the healing and health I ache for. There is a lot of spiritual and emotional/mental work on my docket for 2024, the most intangible pieces of my healing puzzle that I’ve been saving for so long. The time is now.