Mana for the Doctor's Soul

I have some planting beds in my backyard, and can grow tomatoes and other delightful treats. The lettuce and basil this year have been wonderful so far too. Only I went away recently for a homeopathy meeting. During my few days' absence, our Arizona summer arrived with a vengeance. Seriously, you might leave one day with temperatures in the 80's, and return a couple of days later to 100+. It happens that suddenly here. The air shifts from inviting and warm at noon, to searing the skin from your face. Imagine you are a tomato plant, trapped in your spot . . . and the drip irrigation fails . Your human isn't there to know it, and the sun beats down full force too. You are toast in short order. So that is what greeted me when I returned. Dead, brown, sad tomato plants -- yet still bearing some tomatoes. It was eerie; it was as if with their dying gasp, the plants gave up their last red, shiny progeny. "Go forth, make seeds, let us be remembered," they might have been...

Much of my daily work involves people who, for one reason or another, really don't care for themselves very much. This includes people in the role of "healer", "doctor", "nurse", and "therapist" as well as "patient". Some may even feel extreme self-loathing and self-hatred -- but for most of us this is masked. Some escape these painful feelings through non-stop work, figuring that even if we aren't worth loving, we can at least be admired through our accomplishments. It's a compromise. Other escapes include addiction to substances, or chasing after others to supply the love we feel we're missing. None of this ever fills our bottomless need. Theories about how we arrive in such painful, desolate places are plentiful. More fruitful questions might be: "What can I do about this? How do I learn to first care for -- and eventually love -- myself?" The short answer is that it takes a decision, and then moment-to-mom...