The Story of Healing in 2020

Since the last time I wrote, our whole world changed. Life is “not normal”, it will never go back to “normal”.

Health has now become a political topic instead standing on its own. People are arguing over screens about things that are out of our control. Our happy hours are now Zoom meetings and people can decide if they want to wear pajama bottoms when they go to work meetings.

There are no more hugs but fist bumps. Everyone became a formulator of hand sanitizer, even though they had no clue about the chemistry to do it. My colleagues were furiously writing articles about the dangers of this, and they went unheeded until the FDA eventually got involved.

People couldn’t see their doctors, or they started doing tele-health, which if you have a sore neck doesn’t do much without being palpated to see what may be going on. So an MRI would just be ordered with a prescription for a muscle relaxer, when in reality a few days it would heal on its own.

Our health care workers, especially those in the hospitals who were working triple shifts, putting themselves in harms way while people on the internet were judging them and telling them how to do their job. 

Meanwhile, here at Faeve, we were supposed to open our first retail store. I woke up the morning of the opening, full of hope and vigor, excitement and trepidation...only to look at my phone and see an alert from our Governor that the whole State of Florida was shut down.

Swell. I rolled over and went back to sleep. The next few weeks were handling employees, playing let’s make a deal with banks to get the PPP loans and doing what we could to stay afloat.

Not to mention having to all of the sudden home school two kids….whaaaaaat? 

My story is not unique. Not in the slightest. 

But something weird happened, I all of the sudden got very busy. People couldn’t get into their PCP’s and they needed things for stress, anxiety and depression. Everyone’s emotions were (and still are to a point) running high.

Some days I had 3-4 internet consults a day. Some clients even showed up in masks so we could meet face to face.

It was then I realized that we were moving into a new phenomena...we were regressing in some ways. Back to the days of plant medicine of natural healing because people needed something and this is what they could get their hands on.

All of the sudden the new Kate Spade bag didn’t seem as important as having food in the house. (And toilet paper, ha!)

In the midst of a global pandemic, some of us were learning to heal. Heal ourselves naturally, using herbs and oils and food to get us through this. People cared more about vegetables than Burger King. 

I spent a lot of time talking to clients about essential oil safety. About herbal interactions with western medications. Adding different foods to help boost mental and physical energy. 

During this time helping people, I had gone through a lot of personal changes of my own. Some good. Some not so good. It was during this time I realized how much plant medicine helped me.

My teas at night help me calm down. Oils in my bath helped me fall asleep soundly. Cooking with fresh herbs from my garden gave me more energy and sustenance. Using my “tools” I was able to make salves and soaps with my kids to keep them busy. 

I used to be a person that needed to do everything yesterday, with a to-do list miles long. I realized my co-workers, clients, friends and acquaintances were in the same boat.

We threw everything into the “chuck it bucket”. It didn’t matter anymore. Health mattered. 

As a country we learned if you don’t have your health, you have nothing.

So that’s what I am concentrating on now. Really using my herbs in everyday in teas, tinctures and salves, and in my cooking to support my everyday wellness. Making inhalers for when I travel to the store. Using my body butters and lip balms to protect against side effects of mask wearing. 

Eventually, we opened the store. Not the grand fanfare we wanted but all the same. We were greeted with open arms and I knew that what we were doing was working. People started coming out again, making their own products for their own ailments, using our products to support themselves. It's been fun!

I don’t know what the next few months will bring as I sit in my store with a mask attached to my ears. But I do know that this is the start of my story of healing, with my plants at my side for positive ways of moving forward.