It’s been some time since I’ve written a comprehensive update on the Navajo Healing Project (NHP). I hope that doesn’t indicate that nothing significant is happening on that front. Quite the contrary. So much of everything that it is hard to capture in words. The momentum of the project felt like a fast moving river and every time I tried to write an update, it felt like I was trying to look backwards when I really should be keeping my eyes forward where I might encounter another rapid or even waterfall! Tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn, I’ll be heading to Dinétah again, making the now familiar autumn drive towards the desert and canyons. My friends tell me there’s been a lot of rain and I feel happy as I think about those generous southwestern clouds all heavy with water. Heavy with life.
I would normally be buzzing around, organizing, packing, running errands, looking at lists and checking things off, but this time, it feels strangely calm. In this space, I’m thinking about you all with enormous gratitude, and I want you to know what we’ve accomplished together.
First NHP Graduation Ceremony
The reason why this trip is chill is because I won’t be running the clinic. The Diné graduates from the NHP program will be setting up and running the clinic. Kaene and Christa graduated from a year-long program last Spring and have since set up a pop up clinic at the Window Rock flea market offering Traditional Chinese Medicine to their community. The NHP program that they finished consisted of bi-weekly Zoom meetings, bi-monthly in person training (either in AZ or CA) and bi-annual free community clinics. The training program was more than just learning the tools of Traditional Chinese Medicine, it was deep healing as together we envisioned what it might be like to practice medicine without recreating systems of harm. In that vein, we had to confront the harm that those systems create and recreate inside our communities, our families and therefore inside us. It’s tricky business because as natural medicine practitioners, we often identify our tools as “healthier” alternatives hoping that using a needle or herb in place of pharmaceuticals or scalpels will be good enough to effect positive change. With this project, it was important for us to confront the systems within which we wield these tools and understand that the system itself produces illness. The varied systems, including the medical system, are based on a colonial system that disconnects us from one another and from Nature, that see relationships only within power dynamics, that coerce us with fear. Trying to navigate the NHP outside of these established systems was like trying to navigate a rapid and dangerous river. We crashed often, our raft thrown against rocks, walls and boulders, everyone thrown off board and disoriented, sometimes hurt. It wasn’t a ride for everyone, many people didn’t want to get back in the raft for a second or third ride. But Kaene and Christa got back in—every time, and here we are.
It’s hard for me to impress enough how much of an accomplishment this is and how much learning there has been for all of us. Not only because Kaene and Christa are now competent practitioners who can treat pain and dis-ease of all kinds (even though that is, in and of itself, beyond amazing), but because for the most part we’ve done it “outside of the system” as best we could. It was uncharted, at times ungraceful (if not disgraceful–mostly on my part), at times scary, frustrating, confusing; at times loving, magical & beautiful; at times healing; at times hurting; and always a mysterious journey.
As I sit here recounting this to you all, I realize that it’s not quite “our” accomplishment that is amazing — it’s the distinct feeling that our efforts alone wouldn’t have been enough. It’s been a miracle… All that transpired could only have transpired with divine support. And when I say divine, it includes you all. Divine as in all the ways seen and unseen that we don’t recognize when we are “inside the system”. Things like prayer and support of all kinds; things like plants and animals; things like food and the kindness of strangers; things like serendipity and chance; things like weather and trees; things like poetry and song; things like forgiveness and understanding, sleep and warmth, trust and love. Things like God. My heart swells and breaks open as I think of all the friends that have supported us with money, time, labor, prayers, well wishes, healing gifts and kindnesses of all sorts. Thank you from the bottom of my bottomless heart.
We are still on the raft. For now, the river is placid. It’s a good time to look back. When I look forward, I see: more interns; I see Traditional Chinese Medicine taking root in Dinétah with a unique flavor informed by Native wisdom; I see healing centers and wise practitioners, more healing, more joy, more love and more connection; I see abundance informed by Nature; and I see a time when all our rivers spill into one ocean of Healing.
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In Community,
