The Power of Healing through Story
We learn more readily through story than any other medium. Not just about skills, facts, moral values, etc, but also about one another as beings.
For example: someone could give you a ten page resume about a potential blind date, but you would likely still not feel like you knew that person anywhere near as much as you would if a friend of his told you a funny story from his life.
Stories make humans human. They form the very fabric of most people's identities, both individually and collectively as a culture.
Through story we learn how to be human - how we exist in our world, how we thrive, how we find joy, how we grieve, and most importantly for our purposes how we connect, find purpose, and heal--all of which intertwine.
As humans, we can experience very little with our senses without building a narrative in order to understand it.
And, in fact, most of the traumatic, disorienting, and anxiety-producing aspects of our modern culture are aspects that remain un-storied— those things which are built around logical, linear, concrete structures and numbers rather than narrative, legend, and myth.
Not being able to connect with our economy, our labor, our places of healing, our places of exchange, our educational institutions, our sources of energy and sustenance within a dramatic, storied context, leaves us feeling empty, confused, and disconnected.
Many of us long for a "Golden Era," where things made sense and people cherished a shared purpose, identity, and values.Cultural stories and mythologies built these eras.
Some common “Golden Eras” that folks tend to fantasize about (rightly or wrongly) include 1950s America, feudal Europe, classical Greece, ancient Egypt, or an idyllic hunter-gatherer past.
What these Golden Eras (and just how “golden” they were usually much depends on exactly who is doing the remembering) have in common is that they were all times of relatively strong cultural cohesion when things sure weren’t perfect, but at least people had greater shared context and stories for their experience than we do today in this fractured digital age.
Within the given bounds of their societies people knew who they were, what their goals and values in this life and beyond would be, who would support them, and who they would support.
This kind of comfort gives vitality and strength to a people like nothing else can. Even in times of great chaos and distress, a people can survive with their shared sense of purpose and identity intact as long as they maintain their stories and songs.
Think of how Native and Jewish people have survived incredible hardships with great dignity. They are strongly storied peoples.
Healers in these kinds of cohesive cultures are story-keepers and storytellers. Anyone can heal if they can step into a story where their journey is supported by community and environmental context.
The author Dr. Lewis Melmadroma has verified the healing power of changing one's story time and again his practice.
By integrating the Western medical model with his native storytelling healing practices, Dr. Melmadroma has created enormous shifts in peoples healing paths. He has created this healing not only in individual bodies but in entire communities of marginalized and impoverished peoples who had lost a sense of identity and therefore lost touch with their inner vitality.
Plant allies teach us how to form the kind of community that’s necessary to create a storied environment.
Plants constantly communicate with all of the other individual beings in their environments, making sure that balance and synchrony between beings is maintained.
Myriad mythologies from around the world show us how central the stories and teachings of our plant allies are to our own story of being human. Greek mythology abounds with Gods turning nymphs, heroines, and demi-gods into our most important medicinal plants.
Aphrodite grew Windflower/Pulsatilla from the blood of Adonis. Sunflower sprung from the body of a spurned lover of Apollo. Zeus saved a great healer from the jealous Asclepius (god of medicine) by turning him into the powerful healing plant Peony. Rose was birthed from the body of a nymph loyal to Artemis up until her death. West Wind, Aphrodite, Zeus, and Apollo made Rose the queen of the flowers to reward her service.
Similar stories appear throughout Native American mythologies. Cedar, in some traditions, reveals himself as the spirit of an old man who petitioned time and again for his life to be extended to help the people.
An angel that sacrificed herself to make the lives of the Ojibwe people easier after a young man vision quested and wrestled with her night after night up to the point of death, and this sacrificed angel became Corn.
The body a woman who gave her life to directly petition Creator to help her people during a time of famine became the great prayer-ally, Tobacco.
In their embedded cultural context, these stories touch, enthrall, entertain, and offer poetic meaning that help people to use plants wisely, with reverence, and also to live in a good way.
The stories give information about a plant’s personality, desire, context, its needs, the energies it attracts, how to approach it, and sometimes even how to prepare it.
It’s also important to note that as oral traditions, these stories grow and alter with each of their storytellers.
At this point in our culture's history, we need to make ourselves responsible for finding new myths and new stories for and from our plant allies.
Eight years ago, I walked over 800 miles alone across many states in order to “re-mythologize” my life and learn and “re-write” the stories of those kind enough to take me in along the way.
It was that walk and process of actively engaging in re-storying my life that led to me to leaving academia and engaging in my healing path “full-time”.
Since then I have watched my entire family line go through straightforwardly miraculous transformations.
I want the same for you and your loved ones.
And I’d love to help you along you the way.