I. Grazed by fear

For two days I left her recent email unanswered, the forwarded kind, a stranger in my house: no greeting or words from her. Information line: from hospice to healed, video attached. A “holistic diet” advocate posts his interviews of patients like him. It was safe to open but not safe for me to watch. Her email missed the mark that day—why?

After diagnosis in 2022, I did something I had never done before. I called together an email prayer-group of my most trusted friends across the country. My well-meaning friend is part of this “sisterhood” of support. She has since had her own brush with cancer and subscribes to a new virtual support group’s “holistic cancer diet.” Was her email an invitation to connect? My heart contracted at the idea of hearing the distant stranger’s story. I thanked her and went for a walk instead.

I had no words to describe the crush of cancer. I staggered and failed to tell the group, what prayers I expected and needed. How could I ask when feeling so alone?

I never told them to pray that my fear of more responsibility, without more support, would vanish. I thought I had to discover my own responsibilities and limits. There was our taking into our home my rapidly aging mother. There was the running my full-time homeopathic practice. There was my profession’s leadership advocacy.

I never told them that I cannot bear “cancer survivor” stories. I loathe holistic anti-cancer products and the “miracle” methods attached. I dread promises by “anti-aging” hacks from self-proclaimed “experts.”

I never told them that reruns of Love Story or Terms of Endearment are now out of the question. My attention has long since been fried by the pseudo-emotional overload.

Deleting the video before watching it is a win for me. I could not tell my friend this. I am in hiding from a cure-obsessed, information-driven culture and am trying to distinguish better the difference between knowledge and understanding.

Before the COVID lockdown, I balked when “remote telehealth” became, not an enhancement, but a barrier in my client-centered interactions. During the pandemic, communities across the globe seemed to adapt to the warped exchanges between teachers, parents and students, clergy and parishioners, clinicians and patients, employers and employees, politicians and constituents.

“Social media,” an oxymoron in our global lexicon, masquerades “influencers” as hyper-connectivity. Flash floods of news media desensitize; emails contain bites or none. Texts taste like skimmed milk; reference “TMI” for translation. When I think about meaningful language, my phone or camera do not qualify. Screens distort the message and the messengers.

Over the seasons, I moved among New England mountains and moonlight. I talked to the trees, shrubs, grasses and gardens I planted as if they were my own children. Now, in our city flat, there is just enough light to house one small plant. I stroke her sun deprived leaves every morning and listen for her whisper. I repot her thinning roots when I long to sense fresh damp soil and wonder if her need to celebrate the mysteries of the universe may be as great as mine.

We city dwellers try to ward off the psychic numbing of sensual detachment from nature like a mental illness. In “food deserts,” gardening classrooms teach children how to grow and compost vegetables, herbs and flowers. For a fee, “eco-therapists” prescribe barefoot nature walks and restorative “forest baths.” In my city, new Bonsai (beer) Bars advertise “to connect with plants and each other at the same time.”

Clinicians constrained by impersonal, commodified health delivery can enlist in a “tending residency.” At Natura Institute for Ecology and Medicine, residents live offline in an isolated, communal garden setting. They participate in integrative, “core healing” programs while coached to tend the landscape.

Isolation is a baked in human condition, a catalyst to care—or to give up. Human growth generates our history with one another. Our post-pandemic lives continue to complicate our drive to build meaningful, face-to-face community again. Lately, the challenge to discern effectively through the warped speed of AI and “rage-baiting” is at a fever pitch.

II. Graced by community

I cannot know the future, but the call is desperate. Humanity needs a family intervention. I heard it said recently that the remedy for computer addiction is to shut them down and join an offline community. This noble leap needs individual lead time. I need to come to my senses before I act on behalf of others.

In homeopathy, I have often observed in children that after a fever breaks, their family, teachers and clinicians see a developmental leap, such as in speaking, reading and writing. When attended to, it is hard to constrain life’s vitality and motivation for new growth and sustained development.

Language is vibrational and non-verbal as much as it is verbal. Observe a mother’s response to her infant’s smell, touch, cry and movements and, in turn, her baby’s responses through their early hours, days and months of building trust. We begin to sense, feel and discover someone’s motivations most fully when in direct rapport—in the same arms.

Illness, like being fired from a job, requires personal problem-solving by us. Two years ago, during the autumn equinox, when I was too sick and tired for my routine yoga practice, I headed to Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health for a writing workshop, guided by the author of Memoir as Medicine by Nancy Aronie. She only permitted responses of praise to our writing samples and did not permit publicly giving personal advice. She blessed our first encounter; an abundant harvest resulted.

We, twelve of those women, continue to share our diverse stories of desire and need without our facilitator. Our annual, in-person reunion weekend amplifies the preceding 11 months we meet online to write together. Like walking steadier while holding hands, our dialogue expands the joys and laughter, sorrow and tears encircling our roles as daughter, sister, mother, partner, and citizen.

Mutual responsibility for life and each other tugs the conscience of my soul today, across cultural tribes. Nurturing union with others in the same room engenders care for community, bridging the gaps between knowledge and understanding, call and response, life and death. When I live in beneficence through the seasons toward the Earth’s womb—I emerge again.

Like the plant on my windowsill, my roots perpetually call for a light touch, a sip of water, an exchange of air to keep growing. I dream of preserving a soft-landing pad for myself and others. My need for in-depth contact, amidst the hard edges of logic, fear, confusion and survival looks to the coming harvest. Nature teaches me to dialogue and make space for others. If I observe and allow it. In the making of history together, humanity heals each other. All over the globe, we wait and listen, give and receive, grow and connect. If we dare to.

Only connect…Live in fragments no more. (excerpt from Howard’s End by EM Forster)