From Doctor to Healer

I recall a question to Professor Huston Smith, when he was speaking at the Mystics and Scientists conference some 20 years ago. Asked about his spiritual practice, he replied – composting. It is a powerful metaphor of transformation of decay into regeneration, and it is one used by Erica in this third autobiographical book to be reviewed in these pages. The mountain lion refers to an incident when she was sleeping out alone in Navajo country, and suddenly woke to find a mountain lion looking down on her – a moment both terrifying and exhilarating, but hugely formative, as an elder pointed out at the time.

Erica recounts in this book how an eccentric neighbour came round late for an unscheduled appointment. She reminds Natalie that she needs to pay for her services, and is offered an expensive pair of shoes as a trade. The following morning, Natalie opens the door stark naked, and Erica looks at the shoes that are not to her taste. Instead, Natalie offers a brief therapy session, where she is instructed to put her hands on her thighs, lift her head, open her mouth wide, and roar like a lion. Erica refuses, feeling ridiculous, but Natalie insists that if she does not roar like a lion, she cannot be cured. Erica is nonplussed and asks what she has been healed from. The answer is that ‘beneath your gentle, accommodating, and kind persona is a lion that needs to be awakened and stand up for herself, set boundaries, and state her needs clearly and firmly. That lion will protect you and remind you of who you are. You have absolutely no idea how powerful you really are.’ (p. 153) The point is that she needs to set boundaries, a lesson we all need to remember.

I might also have entitled this review ‘the wounded healer’. Erica describes a series of horrendous chronic health issues prolonged over a number of years, but these point her towards her calling of serving others. The first concerns a clinic in which she worked that gave her brain fog due to the widespread use of chemicals within a relatively airless building. We refer to this as neurotoxicity or multiple chemical sensitivity, but at the time it was hard to diagnose, and the authorities were reluctant to do anything about it (this was also in the context of a corporate medical job where Erica was urged to be ‘more efficient’ by processing more clients per day, even though she was the only physician against whom no complaint had been made). She is a rescued by an environmental physician, and in the process becomes an expert able to help her own patients and give lectures to fellow physicians. A further lesson here is her philosophy of empowering the patient, rather than setting the doctor up as the ultimate authority – she saw a lot of compassion failure while training – not the case during her stint in India, but there she learned different lessons in adaptability, even having to perform an appendectomy despite never having done such a procedure before. She also describes the beneficial influence of a visit to Plum Village with Thich Nhat Hanh.

At the age of 58, Erica takes up snowboarding, but on a Sunday morning in January 2007, she has a feeling of foreboding, wondering if she should stay in the car. Then disaster strikes, with a young out of control snowboarder crashing into the centre of her left leg. This is an agonising episode, but it does give her a chance to receive help from others – over 300 cards arrived from her patients with words of love and encouragement. In the meantime, her son Barrett conveys his sage advice that she can make it through any adversity. She agrees to have a stainless steel plate put into her leg, but this sets off an appalling auto-immune response, which culminates in a near death episode by way of a thyroid storm on a kayak trip. Eventually, she receives a diagnosis linking the steel plate with her condition, and has it removed. These symptoms are now replaced with pressure in her head and blurry vision – a symptom of brain damage - leading to a lengthy period of sleeplessness and eventually to thoughts of suicide as the only way out. Again, her son urges her to be strong – she has never been a quitter, nor does she want to abandon her patients.

She feels she just has to start practising again, giving her a reprieve from her own problems. One patient remarks that maybe she had a soul contract to experience these terrible things so that she could deeply understand the nature of suffering and gain even more tools for helping people get well. This is the strong heart and powerful medicine referred to by the Navajo elder. She eventually undergoes brain surgery, all the time receiving kindness and generosity in the middle of her nightmare (p. 265). She resolves to rewire her brain for joy, in spite of all this, speaking to herself in the mirror, even while continuing to experience sleeplessness and vomiting. It is a profound lesson in composting suffering and deepening her humanity. Erica has been completely stripped down, which also happens to many of her patients experiencing loss and dumping a lot of baggage in the process. Through her own suffering, she helps patients reframe their struggles so that such painful experiences are reframed as portals of transformation: ‘instead of limping through life in a trance, the radical collapse can awaken us to a new way of living – one that includes joy, gratitude, and an expanded consciousness about how we treat our bodies.’ She continues, ‘the shattering of my life cracked my heart open more than ever before.’ (p. 293) This vivid story is an inspiring one of wisdom and compassion that makes for compelling reading.