Advent: a Clear-Eyed Gaze of the Stranger

This is such a fun process.  There's a LOT of behind the scenes I do for Lumigrate, but THESE moments, when I go to look at Lumigrate.com and see a gold star indicating something is new since the last time I visited (all registered users have that function, I'm not special in that way as an administrator of the website).... are GRATE!  

I had emailed back and forth with Beth about what Lumigrate is, suggested she read some particular areas, and then late last night she emailed saying she had posted something.  But I didn't see it, so I emailed her that it wasn't there. It turns out my browser is just slow sometimes, so it was there, I just couldn't see it for a while. So I woke up today to read this WONDERFUL piece (again, thank you, Beth), and checked out the links to be sure they were correct and worked.  Not only do they work, they take you to marvelous blogsites! Wow! 

I was so interested to see the piece about spirituality and cauliflower!  (About food bringing you life energy and how that then gives more energy for spiritual learning (and everything else, I might add), and to see the writer reveal her own food allergy/sensitivitiy 'thing', it was really neat.  Lumigrate is a bit different than most websites where I actually WANT people to come here and then leave -- out to sites the experts that we have selected at Lumigrate share with us through the links they provide.  In theory, you'll come back here sooner or later, and hopefully a LOT, like a starting point, to streamline your Internet time/energy and increase the quality of the information you are presented with.  Or I should say 'increase the likelihood that you're going to a valid, helpful, ethical website. 

I realize I'm feelling like it's too bad you no longer live around here so I can sit in person with you and get to know you -- not for three days, even for three hours! Due to the amount of time I use Facebook to get the word out about Lumigrate to people who can benefit from what we provide in terms of our experts and format, I am trying to work that into my life as much as possible.  I also am making an effort to 'go back to' using the phone more, as I find the imbalance of living at the end of one of the threads from the Internet has it's downside.  

You point out that you consult with people via phone and Skype if they are not in your area physically -- these can be really nice gifts to ourselves or others at the holiday season, or any other time there is a need or want.  In our days today of so much understanding of materialism, experiential gifts are a wonderful variation which can really serve to offer people something of benefit to their wellness and life. Particularly when it is given to someone who could use the time to help with their wellness/illness, I think it's a wonderful idea. So it is of great value to me and those using Lumigrate as a resource that you offer the service and payment structure you do!

Mind/Body/Spirit/Social/etc. 'integrative' medicine is a core concept we promote at Lumigrate. Spiritual stress contributes to illness the same a physical or mental stressor does, and conversely, spiritual enlightenment and well-being contributes to wellness in the same way that physical and mental well-being translate into wellness of the person.

Lumigrate launched in 2009 with the 'full barrel syndrome' model to demonstrate this concept as it was what the 'new' ND provider at that time, Christopher Lepisto, utilized in ALL of his seminars and consultations with people. I thought it was just a brilliant way to show wellness/illness by draining/taking away the harmful things  from our lives and out of our bodies and replacing them with things that are beneficial is basically what it is about. 

I often find it's also beneficial to show people in different analogies or models -- by thinking of it wellness/illness as a continuum, or a teeter totter or scale, for instance.  So THANK YOU so very much, Beth!  I have already had the sense I've found a new inspiration spiritually right here at Lumigrate, and I hope it will be the same for people who utilize Lumigrate as a tool for lighting their paths to health and well-being!

~~ Mardy

Thanks for your very kind words, Mardy!

FaceBook -- I know that as much as I enjoy it, I am sometimes weary of it as well, and wish that I could sit and have tea with those same friends, and now with you!

As for the Cauliflower post on the Virtual Teahouse -- I am glad you enjoyed it.  There are multiple bloggers on the VTH, and that particular one is by a woman, Tania Crawford, whose spiritual path is food right now: making soil, growing, harvesting, storing and cooking.  Powerful stuff. 

I will be posting again soon--thanks for the warm welcome to Lumigrate.  I look forward to becoming more a part of this community.  And as for western Colorado -- even though I no longer physically live there, it's never far from my heart!

I think many people have experienced the upside and drain that comes from Facebook, and it's a matter of everyone deciding where it fits in their lives.  And for whatever reason, a lot of people I have long been friends with were even slow to get into emailing.  Some have put up Facebook pages and just said 'this is NOT for me'. 

Which makes it a separate step for me to let them know about something on Lumigrate, as I then block and copy a topic provided by someone and then email it around.  I've done that with some professionals, such as when I wrote a piece about the head injury task force here in Grand Junction and their end project on concussions in young athletes -- many medical providers who focus on one-on-one local consultations/patients have not found it as necessary to have a Facebook presence, so it's kind of a 'mess' of how to get the word out to people, I find.  Just part of the technology evolution.  

I'm very pleased that Virtual Teahouse includes bloggers who are so congruent with the concepts on Lumigrate.com! To have someone at VTH writing about food allergies and the spiritual connection and energy of the food, the soil and ultimatly what affect that as on your cells and what resonates around you will be valuable to reinforce the more 'physical' and 'mental' aspects of our nutrition/foods education. So it's like you come with bonus bloggers!  

Western Colorado is a special place indeed! I was in the process of getting hired for a full time job here 7 years ago this week. It all kind of came up 'coincidentally' and one thing unfolded after another and, well, now I'm here and here on Lumigrate.com via the Interent.  It's a wild and wonderful story for another day, perhaps over tea! 

On the weekend after I hurriedly asked for and was hired for a permanent job here, I rushed around finding an acceptable place to rent and then had my friends in the Springs help me pack up my place on 'Boxing Day', the day after Christmas, then drove back over the mountains on the 27th.  I was the first move for the movers in 2004, and prior to Katrina, it was their worst move ever due to one of those big snowstorms.  I only brought the things in my car they wouldn't -- propane tank, computer stuff, etc, and not the snowshovel. Literally came less than a foot from being hit by a car that went out of control on black ice 1/3 of a mile ahead of a crash where someone was needed to signal oncoming traffice to forewarn them -- it's the wild west still in some ways, as you know if you've driven through on Interstate 70. 

In order to have the walk and steps into my new home ready for the movers when they arrived, I scraped my walk for them with my car's snowbrush/icescraper.  I mean, what are the chanced that of all the moves a company does, yours is the one they say for YEARS to come was the hardest ever?

Ironically, if I have your history straight, you were working for the Hospice of Western Colorado at that time. I'm giving the link to their website here as it has a wonderful photo on the banner area to show what I'm talking about for readers who are interested enough to go look.  www.hospicewco.com/i4a/pages/index.cfm [14]

The SNF that I had come here to work for was/is located just across the road and down the hill from this, so from the parking lot I could see what is now the tan brick 'old house' that is the coffee shop, but before it was restored it had been painted pink or stuccod over or something.  It was pink, and a house.  

The SNF had been a really good one, I later found out, but I happened along when it was starting to go into a down cycle, I again, later found out.  Anyone who has worked anywhere or been part of a family or relationship or even with their own life as a single person knows that things are sometimes better than others.  

The construction had just started on what would become the coffee shop on the Hospice's new 'campus', adjoining the Primary Care Partners complex that was in it's final stage of construction. I honestly had been so new to the area and the stories of all the factions and medical entities in town were kind of muddled in my mind, and all I knew was the new building that looked like a fire station was a medical building and the little pink house was part of what was donated to Hospice by some family and that I had a good paying job with benefits in the nursing home at the bottom of the hill.  

I'd gotten a cup of coffee (Starbucks) on my way to work and arrived at the parking lot and John Cougar (Mellancamp's) Pink Houses was on the radio, just as I pulled in and parked at the SNF.  As you know the old house that was donated with the land, which was being turned into the coffee shop was pink at the time the remodeling started, and I just sat there in my car thinking of the IRONY that the song and what I was looking at were 'coinciding'.  I confess, it was the only day in my career as an OT that I really felt that I couldn't go to work.  I was dressed and there, and I just didn't want to go inside, the facility was feeling so 'unstable' to me.  

Just then, in drove none other than the Hospice Social Worker, who I'd overlapped on patients with and really liked a lot.  "Mardy, what are you doing?" I was just standing there hanging on the door of the car, drinking my coffee with music perhaps blaring that he could hear.  I told him I just couldn't walk in the doors.  He said 'we all have days like that', he said.  (To which I thought "Isn't that ANOTHER song by ANOTHER artist?"  He kinda took my under his wing -- nudged me along with a head nod, and in we went.  

It turned out that my radar was right.  Something major was going on with one of the key staff members.  Other staff members were so stressed out by the end of the week they left without having their work done to allow for safety of the patients and other staff.  They had all tried contacting the administrator and managers on their cell phones and there was no direction coming so they came to me.  I had experience that allowed me to help them problem solve the issue for their safety and the patient's, but I had pushed my 6 pm dinner date to 7 and completed the 'emergency repair' just in time to get where I needed to be by 7.  

I'd not done a couple of routine things that are ideally done each day but can be done retro-actively as long as you state in your note that you are writing it on the day you do.  But the place was so much like a 'powder keg' that on Monday morning that little detail was where everyone put their focus.  Eventually the administrators and managers and building were dealt with by the corporation, but I was the first one to be pushed out; the building was sold to another company the next year I believe it was.  I was very upset, at the time, but now I see that it was simply part of the plan, the part that started with talking me into a 3 week job that looked okay to take full time, that really wasn't meant to be for more than that purpose.  

The dinner date friend took me the next week to get my car at the repair place and wanted to go to a particular restaurant and we ran into someone he new there, whose wife told me that the new PCP building's PT business wanted to have OT now that they were in the medical complex.  That is where I met the psychologist up on the top floor who had a background in military medicine; I'd done my internships at the Denver VA and it had so many advantages over insurance (including Medicare)-based medicine. We created a successful patient education group that have about 10% attendance of the people who said they wanted to come, due to busy-ness, tired-ness, cold-ness, hot-ness, dark-ness, bright-ness -- and I said "I wish I could create a website and put videos and written information on it, that way EVERYONE could access it eventually in the time / energy they have."

And the rest, as they say, is history!

So it's very nice to be having this conversation here with you today, Beth.  Thank you for stopping by, and for your eagerness to integrate here at Lumigrate! May we have a cup of tea together sometime, virtually or otherwise ~~ Mardy