A friend recently asked me if I’d done plant medicine.

I told her that I had been invited to ceremony several times at the height of undiagnosed Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), and though I often felt curious about it, my body said NO!.

Every. Single. Time.

I think my body just knew that it would have been too much on my system, and also I’ve often joked that journeying with CIRS a.k.a. “mold illness” is its own version of plant medicine 🍄 🕸️ ✨

After I shared this with her, she responded,

“Maybe that sacred NO! was your medicine.”

BOOM 💥

Sometimes these messages were subtle, when Grandpa would hold my face in his hands without asking and say, “Pretty,” each time we’d go over for spaghetti dinner - a sweet and tender moment, but he never asked, and I was never taught that I could say NO!.

This storyline repeated time and time again throughout my life, and several of the folks were not as kind-hearted or well-intentioned as Grandpa.

Around the same time in early childhood, I would go to my friend’s house and gag down milk at the dinner table because I learned to “be polite” and eat and drink what her family did. I didn’t know I could say NO! to a beverage I disliked.

How on earth was I supposed to know I could say NO! to any other violations of my physical, emotional, and energetic boundaries when I wasn’t even taught to say NO! to the small things.

This is not an email to shame or blame the adults in my life as a child. They were doing the best they could with the tools they had at the time, and likely unconsciously passing down unchecked generational patterns - like so many of us do.

This is an email to honor the lifelong journey to sacred NO!

When I cleared away all of the clutter and the noise, big space opened up to consider what I actually DO want and to learn how it feels in my body when something is an enthusiastic YES!

For many of us who journey with chronic illness (or really any other circumstance that changes our lives as we know them)… if we haven’t already begun this work, it is often an abrupt and sometimes shocking journey into cultivating our sacred NO!

Some of us find ourselves often declining invitations, needing to say NO! to taking on extra tasks at work and home, to say NO! to foods and substances that we used to consume, and on and on.

While this journeying can be harrowing and filled with grief, it can also be a stripping or clearing away of what no longer serves and creating abundant and hopeful space for something new…

Your sacred YES!

I’ve journeyed with this sacred NO! (and) YES! medicine for longer than I can remember, and am here to meet you and your sweet inner kiddos wherever you may be in your journey NOW.