There are three cultures in the U.S., currently duking it out for control or mutual co-existence, depending on which cultural system you choose to believe.  I am a Cultural Creative.  On a whim, I visited the landscape of one of the other two cultures last night.  I went to see the movie “2012”. This is a “made for Moderns” movie.

Whoa…

I am choosing to discuss what I saw from my own cultural landscape, rather than looking at the movie through the eyes of the Moderns for which it was intended. I remain bi-cultural enough to be able to see it, both ways. So as I entered a mall in my Happy Valley, to watch the sold out movie on a big huge screen I was prepared. And having slept on it, I have my response. I have my response through my eyes; my cultural creative eyes.

This is a movie about a dream fulfilled.  In that dream, the dominator culture is able to outwit Mother Nature’s desperate attempt to shake us off of her back.  Despite raging fevers (translate erupting volcanoes everywhere), shaking chills (that would be the earthquakes), and sweats (giant tsunamis), humanity manages to survive the assault by encapsulating, like a virus or a fungal spore.

And after 27 days, we burst forth from our capsule, all  pathologic and dysfunctional values intact, to re-infect the new and pristine world.

To my surprise, there were many human dramas presented in this disaster film; I had expected to watch a big special effects film without a lot of plot.  And those human dramas were generally well acted.  The messages they send are profound and EVIL.

That’s right—I used the word EVIL.

Whoever made this film intends for Moderns to believe that the New World Order will continue with the old ideas of love, family, and marriage.  The central story revolves around a slacker of a husband, dropped by his long suffering former pre-med wife for tuning out his family. His excuse for his slackerdom is that he is a brilliant but under-read and misunderstood writer. As doomsday brings the world falling down around his head, he is always in the right place at the right time, managing to complete heroic tasks of daring. This impresses the former wife, who has moved on to another man. Man #2 wears glasses, so if you know ANYTHING about the end of the world, you can place odds on which one of these guys gets the girl.  That’s right, it’s the slacker.  And despite the character backstory that explains that the new husband is a noble breadwinner, connects with this stepson deeply, appears to be a pretty good lover, saves everyone’s ass by being able to fly a single engine plane then progresses superman style to co-pilot a huge cargo plane, Mr. Four Eyes gets chewed up in the gears of a machine.

No comment on the symbolism, there.

Whoever made this film intends for Moderns to believe that meritocracy and wealth warrant propagation of one’s genes.  As the tremendous arks are built to ride out the waves of destruction, anyone with a billion or more euros can buy a seat.  Which is explained by the fact that “private monies were needed” for the project. Regarding merit, no one except the African American president of the U.S. even considers whether they deserve a place on the ark. Mr. President’s daughter dearest warrants a seat.  She’s a PhD. in art history.  Well, there it is. I am remembering all those ladies at my women’s college back in the day.  The one’s that seemed to major in art history because they had nothing better to do while waiting for their husbands to come along. Seems like they had it right all along.

Despite being a disaster movie with death and destruction everywhere, it still holds on to a belief that we will not die.  Not individually.  An ancient Chinese grandmother and grandfather who look like they are each at least 90 sneak into the ark. Why not?  If I believed that they were included to give some semblance of honoring the wisdom that they would bring to a new world, I could perhaps buy into this, a little.  But the character of the grandmother is summarized in a scene where she is chopping off the head of a chicken.  No great wisdom there.

And last but hardly least, we are given one heart wrenching scene where Mr. Meritocracy himself speaks. This is a character who has great intellect and great looks as his Ark qualifications (perhaps I do a disservice—his character backstory was that he was a fat and lonely little boy…I guess Moderns do occasionally recognize karmic justice). He gives a rousing speech about not leaving behind those huddles masses on the other side of the gangplank.  He is listened to, and the last Ark almost sacrifices all for the good of that few.

But let us remember that “the few’ were the pre chosen one billion euros a person crowd who by luck could not board their own damaged Ark.

Hmmmmmm.

So, that is my report, from out here in the happy Valley, from the land with many Cultural Creatives.  I tried to watch a movie for entertainment, only.  I couldn’t succeed in turning off my brain and my heart for even two hours to just sit back relax, and enjoy the lies. I tried, but I couldn’t help noticing the commercials within the film (especially the Bentley add at a particular climatic scene).

Take a look, for yourself.  Enjoy yourself. Contribute to the big box office success, as I did.  Allow the Powers That Be to take a national pulse.  They will be reassured; no one is going to see Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism; a Love Story” ANOTHER kind of end of the world story.

We are all preparing ourselves to be manipulated into whatever panic of lies our “government” hands down, as we get closer and closer to a predicted time of great change and transformation.

This movies stating clearly that the expectation is that the world will continue as a Plutocracy. No matter that we aren’t smart, or rich. We each and every one of us are expected to believe that we can be the John Cusack Slacker, the long suffering wife who remains in love with her irresponsible ex-husband, or the elderly couple who will be invited along for the ride. We are each given the dream of redemption in the end, winning the lottery and living happily ever after.

And My Modern friends tell me that I am the one with the “airy fairy” ideas!

Happy New Year!

That would be on a pagan calendar, with Samhain (pronounced “saawin”)

as the beginning of a new cycle. And that is why the Mystery School

has been launched, at this time. I could go through all of the trials

and tribulations of getting it launched, but why bother?  The

important lesson from it all is, Now Is The Time, This Is The Place,

and We ARE The Ones We Have Been Waiting For.

Lesson One:

(Spoiler alert: designed as FOLLOW UP on the first suggestion in the

essay, “Opeyemi’s Mystery School”)

Why did I ask you to watch an episode of The Outer Limits? Because

that cheesy Outer Limits episode is really a modern fairy tale about

human evolution.

In a T.V. show called “Music of the Spheres” you saw a teen getting

involved with “something” that looked dangerous (suspiciously like a

hallucinogenic drug trip, eh?).  You saw the danger becoming epidemic.

Then you witnessed the father set on “curing” his daughter, through

whatever means possible.  And at the end, there was a surprise twist;

bingo– the danger wasn’t a danger!  What was seen as dangerous and

deadly was actually the way through to a dramatically evolved new

existence for humans.  We humans got miraculously saved, by using the

very thing that was originally considered so dangerous.

I asked you to watch the show, because it follows a theme popular in

science fiction: what do our lives look like when we are truly in the

middle of dramatic change? The dominator culture sees collapse,

fighting, fear, and wrestling for control by the strongest.  Such an

outcome is logically the end point of a culture based on meritocracy,

hierarchy, and “us against them” beliefs. I have long been a fan of a

genre called “cultural fictions”. Written primarily by women, these

fantasies are glimpses into futures where the culture changes as we

evolve; no “future boy meets girl, future boy loses girl, future boy

builds new robot girl”. Look for authors such as Spider  and Jeanne

Robinson, Ursula LeGuin, Sherri Teppler, Doris Lessing, Octavia

Butler, and Marge Piercy. They all explore “what if” futures, with

drastically different explorations of sex, race, class, and HUMANITY.

We women are ready for the evolutionary jump needed to take us

forward.  Google “conscious evolution” and see what has already come

into fruition, through the original idea of Barbara Marx Hubbard (80

years old this year) www.evolve.org. Our dreams and visions are not

fed by the old paradigm, with its expectations that Western cultural

collapse will bring feudal fortresses and a second dark age (see James

Kunsler’s disturbing book, “The Long Emergency”:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4878856748297910182#docid=-8182339989147175705)

We know what to do, and we do it. At red tent temples. At Daughters of

Earth gatherings. At Women’s music festivals, and meditations

retreats.  We are dreaming a world, together.

Here as we begin to do deep work together, we are at the Root Chakra.

We are looking at issues of survival.  In “Music of the Spheres” the

father almost kills his own daughter (with therapies looking

frighteningly like chemotherapy agents) in his attempt to save her. At

the end, the father is one of the ones who chooses to “stay behind”

and die. We are going through a major transformation and we mustn’t

let our fathers (translate patriarchy) kill us. And it is sad but true

that many of “the cultural fathers”  are NOT going forward with us

into this new land.

Let’s end, with a short video of inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzw40xupfOY&feature=related

Next week, lesson two: Practical Strategies for Fighting For Our Lives

What’s a Mystery School?                                 Opeyemi57@gmail.com

An on line way for us to continue our Red Tent nourishment, all month long!

We are Awake and Aware.  Sometimes, that feels overwhelming.  We are women, adventuring through shadow work into light consciousness, and sometimes the psychic contractions feel excruciating.

That story, OLD STORY… that story is OVER.

I am here, as a spiritual midwife. A Channel to the Muse; to Spirit. It is my pleasure to invite you into a new paradigms, where we are willing to be delightfully surprised by how easy this can all be. Our plan for these next nine months is to birth YOU.

That will mean different things to different women, and different tools will be useful to different women, and different life experience will be had, by different women.

We begin with the root chakra. There is shadow work, here. We live in a culture in which we find ourselves, daily, Fighting for Our Lives.  Here is where I invite you to do the first month of work.

Look at your attitudes, beliefs, and feelings towards life, security, and home.

Here are some links, to whet your appetite, feed you, inspire you, and (maybe) frighten you into excitement:

About what it means to be human, and alive:

www.hulu.com

Old Outer Limits episode, titled “The Feasibility Experiement” and/or

NEW series Outer Limites episode titled, “Music of the Spheres”

Watch the history channel’s “Life After People”

(it’s 94 minutes long, and available within the W. Mass library system)

About Security:

See “Capitalism, a Love Story” this month.  If you haven’t seen any

Michael Moore movies, try “Sicko” or “Bowling for Columbine” as well.

(contact me, individually for psychological support around watching

these movies; there are “follow up” inspirational lesson plans!)

About home:

Contact me for unique “lesson plans” based on your personal story…

Women in this program of ethnic Jewish descent and/or embracing

Judaism as a religious tradition, please contact me! There is specific archetypal work here for you in creating “new neural nets”, especially around CANCER

Call me at 413-336-1291      school runs as a GIFT ECONOMY, no charge

I have to write this from an upbeat place, otherwise the information that needs to be disseminated, so that we have access to the best choice for our own health and the health of our children, would drive me mad.

I suffer from what is called “The Cassandra complex”  Feeling that you are screaming messages of warning and disaster, and no one is listening.

A Sense of Humor makes all the difference in the world.

I am a mom, with adult children.  In my children’s generation, I know of two women in their twenties with brain tumors.  Each is benign.

“Benign”?

Benign!  How can ANYTHING happening deep within the miracle that is the complexity of the human brain be benign?

Anyway, that number of two, although anectdotal, is too high for me.

Back in MY twenties, I didn’t have ANY friends with brain tumors, much less two. I will not go on line and look up facts and figures to document anything that I am about to say.

I will just SHARE, from my heart, as a feral physician:

I’ve got a very, very bad feeling about the cell phone thing. I shared my concerns back in December of 2008, on my” boundaries” theme on Channeling The Muse.

(See www.ceremonyheals.com/radio2)

Now, here are some simple quotes and facts (easily found by me in less than 10 minutes of search time, on the internet) for the skeptics among you.

The quote below appeared at www.mercola.com on September 3, 2009:

Ronald B. Herberman, MD, Director Emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute has stated,

“Based on substantial evidence, especially from industry-independent studies that long term exposure to radiofrequency radiation may lead to increased risk for brain tumors, I issued a precautionary advisory last year to faculty and staff of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

Since then, my particular concern about exposure of children to radiofrequency has been supported by a report from Dr. Lennart Hardell. Some of my scientific colleagues have expressed skepticism about the reported biological effects, especially DNA0A damage by radiofequency radiation, because of the absence of a demonstrated underlying molecular mechanism.

However, based on the precautionary principle, I believe it is more prudent to take seriously the reports by multiple investigators that radiofrequency can damage DNA and increase the risk for brain tumors, and for industry-independent agencies to provide needed funding for detailed research to ascertain the molecular basis for such effects.”

This is a wake up call.

Pardon the pun.

This is a “no-brainer”

Pardon the pun, again.

But I consider this site and my blogging here to be your psychic weather forecast.  Supported with facts when easily attainable, otherwise simple channeled messages.

May I suggest you pay attention, and throw away your blue tooths, invest in wave shields for your cell phones or blue TUBES (google this, on line and DON’T get the two confused!) and stay safe.

We are upping the ante considerably, folks.

…and continue to make ceremony.

For over twenty years of my adult life, I led a rich and full existence, practicing as a conventional family physician. Then, in March of 2005, I crashed and burned. In an episode of deep despair (totally predictable to anyone astute enough to notice all of the signs and portents, but a complete surprise to most of my friends and colleagues) I made a suicide attempt.

Which was, thank goodness, unsuccessful.

What makes my story important and worth sharing is that you will not hear stories from women like me very often. Sadly, most doctors who attempt suicide succeed. More disquieting, most doctors who suffer any mental health/ spiritual health crises will be shamed, blamed, humiliated, and harassed into keeping their mouths shut. If they want to be accepted back into the fold, prodigal sons and daughters must repent, and agree to walk in lock step with the conventional values and attitudes of their brethren.

The religious overtone in the choice of words that I am using is deliberate. I was inspired to write this essay after reading “Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found my Faith” by Martha Beck. Some of the parallels in Ms. Beck‘s life with respect to her personal journey of awakening, and her church authority’s response to that awakening are frighteningly similar to my own experiences with my state medical board.

Three official groups offered me support in getting back on my feet after my emotional crisis: the state’s medical benevolent society, an organization called Physician Health Services, and my state medical board. These three groups have very different histories and motives. These three groups have very different levels of awareness of their effect on a fragile trauma survivor.

Historically, physicians in trouble have been able to go to their local medical societies for support.  The most common support was financial support offered to widows of doctors.  With urban mythology giving an average life expectancy for physicians of fifty-eight, I saw a certain irony here. I applied for financial assistance from my state Benevolent Society when my short-term disability benefits ran out. As I completed the paperwork for the grant, I thought to myself, “Well, I guess I am a widow to myself! Here I am, a woman doctor in deep financial crisis and in emotional trouble, but I am alive”. I was granted funds twice by this organization, and these funds were all that kept me going financially in that first year of waiting for clearance to return to the practice of medicine.

Physician Health Services is a corporation contracted by my state medical society to offer free services to troubled physicians I was happy to accept these services. This organization has become a gold standard for excellence in the management of impaired physicians. I signed on for a two years of behavioral health monitoring; accepting a standard contract which involved agreeing to an ongoing relationship with a therapist, a psychiatrist, a peer monitor, and with the regional director of the PHS organization.

Early on in my contract with PHS, two things happened that I now see as little tinkling warning bells. First, in June of 2005 an article appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine (“Taking their own lives—the high rate of physician suicide” Eve Shernhammer, M.D., Dr.P.H, NEJM, Volume 352:2473-2476, June 16, 2005). This article calculated a risk of suicide for women physicians as one-hundred and thirty percent higher than age-matched peers.

In a meeting that I had with the national director of PHS (a step in beginning my two year contract), I asked him what he thought of that statistic in Dr. Shernhammer’s article.

“I don’t believe it” he responded.

That made me a little uncomfortable.

Second, there was that comment made by my regional director at PHS. My first question once we had settled into our initial meeting was, “Have you worked with many suicide survivors?” The physician, a man who appeared slightly younger than me and a lot closer in looks to a James Brolin than to a Robert Young, leaned back in his chair, pondering my question. “No suicide attempts” he responded thoughtfully, but I have worked with a couple of doctors that the Board may have driven to suicide”.

What kind of comment was that?

I was deeply disturbed that this man (in a role I assumed was care-taking) said that; to me, a suicide survivor, in the first year of recovery! In retrospect, I see that it definitely helped me gird my loins for interactions with my third official support group: my state Board of Registration in Medicine.

I soon understood that Dr. James Brolin-look-alike was not care-taking me. He was my parole officer.

My Medical Board began their support with an official evaluation by a forensic psychiatrist to assess my competency to return to the practice of medicine. My state Board continued their “support” by shifting their polite and concerned inquiry regarding my competency to return to the practice of medicine to other areas. Their “support” became a formal complaint, charging me with violating boundaries of a patient (sexual!), practicing medicine while mentally impaired, and undermining the public confidence in the profession of medicine.

The details of how a psychiatric evaluation for professional competency (and I was assessed as competent) became an official complaint of sexual boundary violations of a patient would take too much time and has too many bizarre twists and turns to easily describe in this article. A little more on this topic, later.

Sanctuary trauma is a term used to describe the experience of a trauma survivor going to seek sanctuary in a community thought to be safe, and experiencing further trauma at the hands of that community. That would be a good description of what happened to me, in the hands of my Medical Board. At a time in my life when I was extremely vulnerable and struggling mightily to get back to shore from this deep water crisis in my emotional and professional life, my Medical Board held out what looked like a helping hand, and then proceeded to push my head underwater, and hold it there.

I went from being helped to being persecuted quite suddenly and unexpectedly. It became my responsibility to find my way through this ordeal and maintain my sanity.

Enter ceremony, as the operative phrase in my life. I found a way through my professional nightmare by creating ceremony. Rebecca Well, author of “The Ya-Ya Sisterhood” speaks of little altars, everywhere. I created little ceremonies, everywhere.

My personal spirituality centers around earth based traditions (neo-paganism), and has for over twenty years. Ceremony, as defined on-line at wikopedia, means “an activity, infused with ritual significance, performed on a special occasion”.

I made ceremony at a pagan retreat center in July of 2005, using my five days in retreat space there to think about my professional life, my personal stressors, and the consequences of my desperate March actions. I sang, and drummed, and danced. I cried, and laughed, and experienced many epiphanies. I noticed coincidences, and watched for signs and portents. I promised myself that I would come down from the mountain (yes, the retreat really took place at a mountaintop) and continue to use ceremony to heal myself, and to help others, when I could.

As I opened myself to more and more possibilities of letting my spiritual connections inform and guide my day-to-day interactions, many strange things happened. Here are a few examples, from my two-year journey:

Twilight Zone, Episode One

My lawyer frantically chased me (electronically, through a cell phone) up the mountain, as I was on my way to my spiritual retreat. He had an urgent message, with an agreement from the Medical Board that I needed to sign right away. It was a legally binding statement that I “voluntarily” suspended my practice of medicine. The frenzy and frenetic communications over a three-hour period as my attorney faxed papers back and forth between his office, the Board’s office, and the sluggish fax machine in the main office at the Sufi retreat center at the bottom of the mountain were hysterically funny. A friend from New York City was carpooling to the retreat with me. She watched these goings on with increasing incredulity and amazement. She was my guardian angel of objectivity, as she waited in a garden across from the office while the fax machine whirled and hummed. She encouraged me to come and sit with her while we waited, enjoying the humming of bees and watching butterflies lighting on flowers rather than standing over a machine and waiting for something (anything!) to happen at the other end.

There were many urgent deadlines given by my Medical Board on ridiculously short notice in the months that followed. I made frequent trips to Federal Express offices miles from my country home; my attorney and the Medical Board never did quite seem to comprehend of a person who really lived miles away from any fax machines or corporate business supports. Each trip, I created a small ceremony in honor of that first time at the foot of the mountain, and my choice of remaining calm rather than choosing a panic and adrenalin rush response as my professional chain was yanked.

Twilight Zone Episode Two

The interview with the forensic psychiatrist went beyond weird, into the realm of The Outer Limits. First, there was the moment of clear disconnect and hostility, as he (a white man in a position of power) asked me (an African American woman with my professional life in his hands) about the topic of my college thesis. While I wasn’t exactly clear on the relevance of this twenty-seven year old project to my competency to practice medicine, I shared that I had written about the relationship between black women as patients, and the white male doctors who often were their caretakers.

“And what, exactly was your point? He asked, fingers poised to record my answer on the laptop he pecked away at throughout our conversation.

I remember answering as politely as I could, just as his computer crashed. His computer crashed in an unfixable way. His computer crashed in an unfixable way at that exact moment, and he was unable to flex into pencil and paper mode, and had to re-schedule me for another day.

This experience—hysterically funny, like Twilight Zone episode number one—inspired me to create ceremony for every encounter with potentially hostile interviewers and evaluators.

I had many experiences in interviews and evaluations where I got through using ceremony. My favorite involved a three-day remedial ethics program in New Jersey. This program called Pro-Be (I kid you not; it is pronounced PROBE and I was mildly rebuked when I pronounced it incorrectly) fulfilled state requirements for me, as an “ethically impaired” physician. We were all doctors with Medical Boards that had judged us to be in need of ethical education. I agreed with the Medical Board judgments regarding some (e.g. a Christian doctor from a Midwestern state, tangled in a web of sexual dalliances involving several patients, and staff); I did not agree with the Medical Board judgments regarding others (e.g. a Jewish doctor from the Northeast whose termination letter to a patient led to a revenge driven complaint of absolutely no substance). I created sacred space within the constraints of the seminar by writing a prayer of support for each of the twelve other doctors on a piece of origami paper that I brought with me, and folding it into a paper crane. After the seminar was over, I took the cranes and created a mobile. It hangs in my living room today.

Twilight Zone Episode, Three

Dr. Forensics of the crashed computer couldn’t seem to figure me out. He spent three months gathering sufficient data, and needed to interview not three, but five of my peers to assess my medical competence. He had me meet with a psychologist for more testing. She flashed lots of pretty, multicolored ink blots at me, and asked me to tell her what I saw. I remember I asked her how many answers she wanted, and she said, “Oh keep going as long as you see different images”. About 20 minutes into this test she scrutinized me carefully. “Are you an artist?” she asked. I did not respond, “Isn’t everybody? As I wanted to, but said, “Are you asking me if I draw? Yes, I draw…” She looked triumphant, and jotted something down. I think I just got placed in an acceptable box.

Twilight Zone Episode, Four

This example is “the clincher” for me, regarding my relationship to the Board of Registration of Medicine. It represents “irretrievable breakdown” and “irreconcilable differences”. It represents the moment when you know your marriage cannot be saved.

In late June of 2005, I invited friends to a public event in the Boston community where I had practiced medicine for the previous twelve years. In 2004 I had moved a ninety minute drive away to a rural location in the Western Massachusetts, but continued doctoring in that Boston office up to my March crisis. The public event was a dance. It was a dance in a church, in a drug-free, alcohol-free environment. Included in the invited guests were several former patients. It was in this environment that I was judged to have violated the sexual boundaries of a female former patient. I was reported to have performed an erotic dance (my attorney got the language of the Board’s complaint changed to “provocative” from “erotic”) in front of her.

It sounds as if I must have performed a strip tease or at least a pole dance in front of a bound and gagged woman, unable to flee the pornography before her. What I actually did was I performed a ceremony. At this weekly Friday night dance space, community members take turns providing some alternative entertainment during the twenty minutes of a formal break, halfway through the evening. It was my turn that week. In fact, that was one of the reasons I had invited friends to come to this space to say “goodbye” to me; because I would be doing a ceremony of closure with my Boston community. My ceremony during these twenty minutes involved the singing of a Sufi chant (“We are Opening Up In Sweet Surrender to the Luminous Love Light of the One”), holding hands, walking into a spiral circle and out again, ending with the tone “ohmmm”

Erotic dance?

A violation of sexual boundaries?

What must that unfortunate woman have seen, to have even mentioned that dance at her next visit to her current doctor? She was reported to have described the dance as making her “uncomfortable”, and asked her current doctor (my replacement at that Boston office) how I was doing, because I “seemed kind of manic” at the community dance, and had mentioned my suicide attempt to her.

By the time the telephone game had replayed the scene from the dance, through the former patient, to the replacement doctor, then Dr. Forensics, then a medical director, and finally a Medical Board prosecuting attorney, I was a figure who had Undermined The Public Confidence in the Profession of Medicine.

When a formal complaint was filed against me in June, 2006 not by the former patient, but by the Medical Board on behalf of the former patient, I woke up to my real crimes. If I was confused at all when charges of professional ethics violations started being waved around, I became clear as more and more psychological testing was ordered for me. The same psychologist who labeled me “artist” informed me that my mid-Western way of running my practice was in and of itself in conflict with the stricter, Banned in Boston standards of professional medical distance. Boston doctors do not have friends who are patients, or patients who are friends. They do not make house calls. They should, in an ideal world, not run into their patients at all on the weekend in the local grocery store. If such an unfathomable thing as shopping in the same store as your patient should accidentally occur, the appropriate response for a Boston Doctor is to go down another aisle, before you are seen.

I loved my patients. I had done well by my patients for fifteen years of work in the Boston area. I had never in my career been sued for malpractice. I came through my mental health crisis and spoke and acted as my authentic self (which apparently looked “manic” to a former patient). I showed my clay feet through a suicide attempt, and dared to speak about it. These were the behaviors my Medical Bard claimed undermined the public’s confidence in the medical profession.

I am guilty.

I practiced medicine while mentally impaired. Damn straight, I did. I commuted eight- six miles each way four days a week (including Saturday) to eight-hour work days. I did this for over a year, after moving to a more rural community to get my teenage son away from drug influences. I did this while looking for position as a doctor in my rural community. I did this while becoming more and more discouraged with the managed care/ corporate medical scene that I would have to embrace, for my livelihood. Funny how my medical practice’s management did not seem to be concerned about this crazy lifestyle as long as I was keeping up with the number of patients I was assigned to see each day.

I am guilty of having been crazy enough to allow myself to have an untenable work schedule That Shernhammer statistic about female doctor suicides had shocked me, but I had an epiphany when I read it. Yes, I was crazy, with my workaholic (and culturally sanctioned) lifestyle and behaviors. But in my moment of despair and my suicide attempt, I had succumbed to an occupational hazard, not to a basic character flaw. And from all I could see, the level of toxicity in the culture of medicine was going up, not down. Medical care-takers were being asked to do more and more schizophrenogenic behaviors, in the name of Managed Care. My experience with my Medical Board left me deeply disgusted with the current practice of conventional medicine in my state.

Two years and three months into this ordeal, I Just Said No.

I stopped looking for a medical practice with monitoring criteria that would satisfy my Medical Board.

Because I care about my emotional health, I completed two years of official monitoring through PHS, then terminated my contract. Because I care about the lies that were perpetuated about me and my “unethical conduct”, I took a course in ethics, and had myself “certified” as ethically sound.

And where does this adventure leave me?

Taking inventory on what is left of my work as a healer, I see myself evolving into a space beyond the conventional medical practice that taught me how to diagnose physical illness, think through the options for treatment taught to me in medical school, and prescribe treatments (mainly pharmaceutical) for these illnesses. My medical Board has forbidden me to give advice or use these pieces of my education to support clients. How appropriate; I see my talents have progressed to providing education and support regarding spiritual health issues, and I am becoming an expert in this rich and rewarding way of healing. All of those coping skills that I was forced to use to keep myself sane through my ordeal are gifts that I now bring to others.

Physician, heal thyself, was the starting point. Now, I offer with confidence healing for the soul and spirit of clients. I help people create space in their lives to remember the sacred. I help create ceremonies of spiritual healing, using the right-brained “artist” pieces of who I am.

I am deeply satisfied that these “healing artist/ ceremonialist” pieces of me not only survived my confrontation with my conventional medical colleagues, but have actually been polished into gems of creativity that will allow me to serve clients with compassion and caring.

ALisa had the vision, first.

She saw a need for women to be able to take time away from our busy lives, and to have “down time”. To relax. To receive a massage. Or do some journaling. Or sit in a corner, knitting, and making a connection to a new friend…

Inspired by Anita Diamant’s description in the book “The Red Tent”, ALisa’s September tent in Baldwinsville was fantastically beautiful. The yurt in her back yard had been decorated with oriental rugs on the floor, and materials in luscious shades of red draping the walls. In a space that could accommodate about forty women comfortably, a few tricked in, for an afternoon of quiet, of connection, and nourishment. There was freshly brewed herbal tea, and yummy soups: a hearty vegetable and a brilliant crimson red “red tent soup” that Alisa’s sister invented for the day.

Now, six months later, there are at least 22 red tents that happen throughout the country, on a monthly basis. Some last for a couple of hours, housed in a church basement or a community meeting room. Some last six hours or longer. Most include a formal opportunity for woman to sit in circle, and speak from their hearts.

In the Red Tent, we weave our science into our intuition. Studies have shown that women prefer to respond to stress in their lives with a “tend and befriend” response, rather than “fight, fly, or freeze” . We feel good when we take care of people. Life is becoming increasingly stressful. We can learn how to caretake OURSELVES, so that we can better care for our clients/customers, our families, our lovers…

Find a Red Tent near you, (see www.Alisastarkweather.com) and give yourself a special treat. Then make it into a regular practice.

Here we are again, at that MOST AMERICAN of all our holidays—Superbowl Sunday.

I have a personal axe to grind with this day, as I am a Capricorn, with a January 17^th birthday.  I suffered quietly from that common indignity of December/ January babies, receiving combination Christmas/birthday presents as a child. But it was Superbowl Sunday that I came to loathe. My father’s already limited emotional presence would withdraw over the month of January, getting displaced deeper and deeper into a television set.

Deeply scarred by the silliness of being jealous of a football game, all of my life I have chosen men who were not avid sports fans.  But Superbowl Sunday day has gotten bigger and bigger over the past twenty years, becoming more and more difficult to ignore.   When the New England patriots played in 2002, I’ll admit to a magical bonding moment with my then thirteen-year-old son.  We were at a hotel for a weekend conference, and I kept the hotel room for an extra night, as a treat to him (we have no television at home). I caught up on blessed sleep while he watched the game, and I told him to wake me up, “if anything interesting happened”.  So I got to see that amazing field goal of Adam Vinatieri’s that won the team the game.

It was a miracle we needed as a country, “post 9/11” with the New England Patriots taking the full hit of our national dreams for a victory…Somewhere… ANYWHERE.

Now, six years later, the nation’s former Cinderella team is behaving like a bunch of thugs. I am not surprised.  With so much money involved, why shouldn’t they be doing everything within their power to win? That is the American Way, isn’t it?

And if you can’t win legally, WIN ANYWAY. That is what I have learned, watching the Bush administration and corporate consolidation of power both before and since 9/11.

 
This Sunday, millions of Americans will stuff themselves with junk food (better than Thanksgiving), work themselves into alcoholic frenzy (better than New Year’s Eve), bet on the game and on the Biggest and Brightest Commercials (better than casino gambling and the Academy Awards, combined), and beat up their women.

Superbowl Sunday is the day when more women get battered than any other day of the year. 

I am drawn to a gentler, kinder community venture this Sunday in the form of a concert in honor of Black History month at Southern Vermont College, in Bennington (see www.svc.edu).

 Next rant: “Super Tuesday”

Hello, everyone. I call myself a feral physician, because “feral” is a term used to describe a domesticated animal that has escaped and returned to the wild, like a feral cat.

I am a physician who was once domesticated, but now I have returned to the wild. I practiced as a conventional family physician for about twenty years, from 1985 to 2005. That domesticated lifestyle was a seriously out of balance trap for me, and I am happy to be wild, again.

I used to be a doctor. Now I am a healer, and an artist.

I will be writing blog entries two or three times a week, which I hope will give readers a chance to examine where in their lives they too, might want to consider a Return to Their Wilder Selves.

I turned fifty-one on the seventeenth of January. Most people who look at me are surprised when they hear my age. Often they go on (and on, and on…) about how “I don’t look fifty”. I like to paraphrase Gloria Steinem’s quip of a response:

“This is what fifty OUGHT to look like.”

One reason that I look younger than my stated age might have to do with having been a doctor. I took an online quiz www.realage.com, and scored 7 years younger than my actual physical age. I know why some of the lifestyle issues and behaviors are important to a younger appearance and a longer lifespan; that website is a good place to begin examining how your behaviors and lifestyle affects the prognosis of living to a ripe old age.

I won’t be talking much about the issues presented in the real age test in my blogs.

There are some really great websites on the internet that give medical and health information that would be useful to readers interested in holistic health; www.mercola.com is one, www.lef.org (site for a great magazine called Life Extension), and www.holisticmedcine.org is a third.

I won’t be talking much about the medical issues presented at those websites, either.

I believe that we human beings living out our lives in the Western world (particularly the United States of America) are FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES in an extremely toxic environment. I don’t mean air pollution, carcinogens, and heavy metals. I mean spiritual and emotional toxicity.

Being a doctor gave me the factual information to know what to eat, and how much to exercise to stay looking young and healthy. But being a doctor also locked me into a lifestyle that almost killed me. Then, after a total breakdown and a miraculous survival, the very system that tried to kill me insisted on “helping” me in my recovery. All I had to do to re-establishing myself as a practicing physician was to crawl back into the box from which I had escaped.

But I have said that I am feral, now. Feral animals tend to be somewhat skittish, and mistrustful of domesticated spaces.

I like the air a lot better, out here on the fringes of the medical world.

I begin blogging with an intention to share my personal practices with readers. I have developed practices that allow me to feel really wonderful about my life, most of the time. I have practices that allow me to recover quickly, when stressed. I have practices that allow me to find the humor in the moment, when the moments are ridiculous, and compassion in the situation when the situations are horrific.

I figured out these practices over the past two years despite— not because of—the “help” offered to me by my state’s conventional medical professional organizations. That is when I realized that a lot of us are getting “help” from a system that is actually shaming us, labeling us, and seeing pathology where there is “dangerous opportunity”.*

So the feral physician blog is launched. I promise myself that I will share my practices here, no matter how crazy or “woo woo” they might sound. Something is working very well for me, as I enter the second half (that’s right, I intend to live to be a hundred) of my life, and this “something” is worth sharing.

So, as Maurice Sendak would say, “Let the wild rumpus begin!”

* the Chinese pictogram for “crisis” is “danger” and “opportunity” combined…

.

Happy New Year to everyone. It feels right to launch my blog at Ceremony Heals with a story of ceremony, used to dance a community through fears and anxieties.

The video on my website featured a still photo of myself and my family, in front of a beautiful model of the Earth. This Earth globe was the culmination of a special weekend retreat, and was designed and executed by a community of thirty-two people, ages three to seventy two!

Back in the fall of 1999, people were becoming very worried about a potential computer crisis that became known as “Y2K”.  In the fall of 1999, no one could really say whether or not the theory that all our computers would crash at midnight December 31, 1999 was valid. In retrospect, it is easy to downplay our concerns. But at the time, our fears were real; and we weren’t seeing much on the news or in the media to allay our anxieties. 

I had participated for years in a women’s support group.  We six decided that we wanted to offer our spouses, our children, and our families something constructive to do with all the anxiety we were experiencing. We called this our “dreaming a world” project.

We reserved a lovely bed and breakfast in Plainfield Mass over Thanksgiving weekend, and invited our loved ones to join us in creating a three dimensional prayer for our world. The globe in the photo is the result of that weekend. 

The youngest member of our group requested that special white sparkles be placed over the South pole area.  My brother carefully pasted flowers all over the area of the Ukraine poisoned by Chernobel’s radioactive fallout. Other children present glued food stickers all over Africa. In between prepping the PT ball (covered with canvas) and painting and waiting for the globe to dry enough to add the sparkles and the stickers, we drummed together, sang together, played games together, and had a fine old time making ourselves a huge thanksgiving feast.

Inspired by our weekend retreat, we decided to meet whatever might come at one minute past midnight on New Year’s Eve head on. Most of us—fueled by our weekend retreat in November—decided that attending First Night Boston that year was as good a place to be as any if the grid came crashing down around us!

We reserved a couple of rooms in a downtown hotel, just in case we couldn’t get back to our suburban homes easily. We even asked for rooms on one of the first seven floors, in case elevators didn’t work after midnight.

The completed globe was hung over the stage in an auditorium as part of First Night Boston 1999. 

And then we partied, like it was 1999. Which it was!

And we survived to tell the tale!

Our Dream for the World currently hangs at the Emerson Umbrella in Concord, Mass (see www.emersonumbrella.org) .