My Bias: I Hope Medicines Help You See Your Life-Force

The more I do medicine work the more I feel the purpose is NOT to be able to adapt better to the current social constructs and systems of industry that exist. Yes, true, we all need to eat and in these capitalist systems earning income is part of that. And it feels good to have purpose and be part of bigger pictures via work. But, do we need as much stuff and belongings as we have been told and at the heartless expense or neglect of others and ourselves? Is what we are doing together when we live by linear time and pursuits of money sustainable or enlivening? And is our worth actually based on what a certain item, advertisement, research-result, religion, job, family dynamic, or group has to say? On a deep level I want us to look at what we have deemed as “the real world”, question possibility, and live into and create new ways of co-existing. The real world is actually what we make it, not solely what is presented to us. And even beyond that, the real world is nature who is of and around us even when concrete and pollution smother us. My bias in life and medicine journeying is that I want more of us to feel out living as authentic counterculture creators and connectors. The earth and so many hurting people need more individuals to live alternatively and shift the status quo from exploitative productivity, violent heirarchy, and empty achievements to actually living, breathing, and being with what is. I am thinking about the act of living in terms of connecting with one another, our feelings, the food we eat and grow, the art and skills we want to share, and so on. We need more intimacy with literally every possible relationship to so called “inanimate” and animate beings rather than fast-paced consumption and reward that satisfy immediate hunger but leave another hunger for soul-knowing even more empty while discarding those who cannot keep up or who served their use. A lost soulless succubi of a culture that is dependent on our failed holistic health is not worth our or earth’s fuel, energy, and sustenance. When I hold space for you I hope I get to help chip away at least a little at the constructs, beliefs, and labels you and I have been sold. I hope who you are can feel safe to emerge, play, see, and create in ways that you have perhaps hidden or forgotten. I look forward to sharing in the process of remembering what and who else exists in, outside of, and as a part of you. I look forward to you getting to know your worth beyond the trauma that is part of certain experiences you have had and the trauma that is inherent in colonialist culture. It is absolutely worth noting that life can get more tricky when we no longer take what is culturally given as the standard. Our values can get re-organized. When we can no longer fit without additional questioning there are real physical and emotional risks around belonging and work in the world. Grief, anger, compassion, and creativity are all waves we can start learning to ride more when we begin to look at and engage alternative paths.

Jai Reese