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Sheena Clarke “Here is my post from my own page this morning:
I have personally had kidney failure and cancer cured with a Heilkunst Doctor. Carter was diagnosed with severe Autism (scored 14/100 when assessed). The MD’s told me he would need life long care and would never speak or be able to care for himself. He is now a normal 3 year old, talking in long sentences, describing his feelings and others feelings, potty trained and interested in reading and superhero’s. Noah and Maverick both had mid range Autism and are now moving out of the spectrum as well. They are all brilliant and compassionate young men. Maverick also was born with severe Psoriasis. He bled through his clothes constantly. My MD said it was the worst case he had ever seen. He was wrapped head to toe in gauze and creams and I was told if his skin wounds became infected (where he was so young) they may not heal well and could lead to a life long battle of infections, wounds and skin grafts. After 3 months of homeopathic remedies my baby was free from the disease and it has never returned. My family MD is to the point that he is dumbfounded when we go to see him. Our Paediatrician is fascinated, she has never seen a child come out of the Autism spectrum (this is her speciality), they typically only get worse and become heavier care. She looks at us with awe and says “I thought I knew what was right, but you are showing me how much I still have to learn. Every time I research anything you speak of I am left questioning everything. It is uncomfortable, but I will not turn from it…because the proof is right in front of me. My heart broke when I had to tell you Carter would be disabled for the rest of his life. Now I see a child that is brighter than my own 4 year old! How can this be? Everything I thought I knew is falling apart. And what I now know, is that I know very little about the true nature of disease and cure.” To each their own, and thank God for the surgeon and the MDs as well, we need them. But we also need to compassionately admit how much we don’t know and drop the false ego act so that we can better understand the truth. All I am saying is that there is another way. There is also another way to vaccinate your child, and this way is scientifically proven more effective than our vaccines. Homeopathic vaccines! They are used world wide, especially in elite circles. But there is little known about them in the Western World. And it is up to each one of us to open our eyes and minds and research. Take ownership for your own life and health and stop worshiping false Gods and giving your power away to another human. Sometimes we just need to step away from the media and really do some research before falling into the fear and chaos we are trying to be controlled with. I can’t teach everything I have learned over the last 20 years in a Facebook post. And I also know only 2 or 3 people will ever read this. And that is okay. Because I am blessed with knowing the truth, and real truth is characterized by its unchanging nature. Like cures like…it does not suppress or palliate.”

When folks find out that I’ve tailored my life to live in Mexico and Central America while also writing, editing books and serving my patients on-line via Skype, they want to know how I got to be so lucky. I often counsel them that with a bit of planning, forethought and ingenuity, you can craft your life to live this way too.

Back in the late nineties, I had a very sick little boy suffering Autism Spectrum disorders (ASD). It was a nightmare, trying to solve the root cause of his ills while also meeting the demands of my corporate responsibilities.

I felt I was on a failing teeter totter trying to keep my stress levels under control while working as a financial advisor and looking after my challenged son. Back then, January to May year end were brutal often with a dedicated 12-14 hour days to work alone.

Often I’d come home late to look after my son’s supper, put him to bed and get back to work until well past midnight. The truth is that the stress and pull between family and work was killing me and I was showing significant health challenges of my own.

Thankfully, while off on maternity leave with my daughter, I did some major soul searching, finding some alternative approaches that really helped my son and I too, thankfully, was able to solve much of my own health issues. Interesting as my own life path took a serious jog to the left, as a result, in that I started to study alternative medicine, while researching and writing a book about how my son’s ASD issues were resolved. That book became a best-seller and audio podcast.

In those two small steps to write and study, my whole world changed. I became a Physician, based out of Canada, with a mostly international practice working by Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts or by phone three days out of the week. I’ve also penned thirteen books also writing monthly for another half a dozen publications related to my field.

My husband also does the same work I do and he runs the publishing arm of our holistic clinic. While it is true that we’re both busier than we’d like to be, we enjoy living and working in Mexico or Central America during the Winter months. Our biggest challenge has been finding locales that support our need for really stellar upload speed in the same timezone as our North American clients.

Next year, our goal is to become full-time international nomads joining the ranks of the few other suitcase entrepreneurs that we’ve had the pleasure of meeting in our travels along the way. Looking back, I’m not sure how I ever managed working daily in my corporate garb of heels and stockings with feet still sopping wet from trudging through 6 foot high snow banks just to be sequestered many hours alone plugging in Excel formulas in an 8 x 11 cubicle.

Now, we get up early to cycle in our flip flops to the local juice bar about 10 kilometres away down the bike trail next to the turquoise shores of the Caribbean Ocean, stopping to snorkel around the pier for an hour before getting back to serve patients in the early afternoon and evening. We love our lives and wholly count ourselves truly blessed to live in such a resonant way for our physical and mental health.

Thankfully my son is whole and autonomous, too, working as a trampoline acrobat and parkour instructor with a staff of twenty back in Canada. No one would ever guess that he’d suffered such prior limitations. Actually, when I think about it, I have him to thank for leading me to this way of international living and the freedom I now know everyday. Cheers!

I recall, way back when (around twenty years ago), when I was solely a patient of Heilkunst Medicine, feeling rather distraught right around the third round of my Genetic Miasms. I felt like I was holding a frayed rope, as there was so much carnage. It was the summer and I was finishing up the 3rd round (the CM round) to destroy the spiritual element of my inherited diseases. I likened it in my book, “The Path to Cure; The Whole Art of Healing” to feeling like bombed out London at the tail end of WWII.  

I felt gutted to realize that I had such a tenuous, broken sense of my essential self, realizing what I thought to be my true character was just a cobbled game of false ego charades. I was devastated at how bereft I was when I reached around inside myself in a Dr. Seuss-like pandemonium, “Are You My Mother?”  At that stage of abject chaos, there was no answer.

My soon to be husband had trained in Bach Flower Essences before he came to be a physician of Heilkunst Medicine, and he suggested backing away from the more male “C-scale” potencies for a bit. It was clear that I was in desperate need of  some nurturing and healing as opposed to more male-impulses in the destruction of my gnarly inherited diseases.

He was right. Also, my Heilkunst Practitioner did something quite out of the ordinary at our next follow-up session, when I appealed to him to somehow slow down and gentle the process of disease annihilation. He provided me with an LM potency based on Dr. Samuel Hahnemann’s more feminine “Q” scale for prescribing the remedies homeopathically.

This approach worked like a dream. In fact, I had crazy dreams as a result. At night, while asleep, women came to bathe and anoint me, angelic beings lovingly soothed me, stripped me of my pain, took me to the breast and let me linger in the most honouring states of rest and repose. I woke feeling wholly restored and cared for. I began to heal and feel like I was getting my feet under me for the first time in months. The dreams felt uncannily real and somehow of another realm, where matriarchy and care gently dominated. Within me, I found the archetypal Mother which was a relief, as my biological mother had not been available to me since I was eight years of age.

Fast forward sixteen years. At Arcanum Wholistic Clinic, we rarely prescribe a higher potency C scale remedy without an accompanying LM scale to hold the patient lovingly through the process. It feels more like a balanced waltz as opposed to a Ukrainian Cossack dance with lots of kicking, knives, and guttural yelling.

In order to prescribe LM potencies well, you have to be more deeply connected to the feminine gesture in nature, in order to intuit when these subtle potencies need to be succused and taken to the next level. It takes a bit to learn how to listen to the difference in the patient’s tone (how she’s expressing dissonance or irritability in her state).

It’s through this discernment that we can know when they’re ready for the next step-up in increased potency. It’s like a set of small stairs that we use to raise the patient vibrationally.  Suddenly, the music changes in a negative way and the hair on the back of your neck bristles with how they’re expressing the symptoms. That is when you succuss and give the next dose.

It can be within hours, days, or weeks that this irritable proving quality emerges. You’ve got to have your spidey senses softly alert to it. It will cause your organs of knowing to feel the butterfly effect in yourself or your  child; it’s an apperceiving.

In the beginning, your Heilkünstler will guide you to the best of their ability with their organs of intuition in conjunction with the instructions below, until you get the hang of it. It takes a bit of getting used to the lack of rhythm, as our feminine organs of knowing have been mostly in the shop for a few decades or more. The presentation is so subtle, you may second guess yourself at first.

However, the wisdom of sophia (philo-sophia means love of knowledge) is presently incarnating more deeply in this present evolutionary epoch, and even in the last couple of decades, we’re seeing patients wield this more profound and powerful knowledge more effectively than prior. Even if there are no overt symptoms, there is a gut response to the change in the patient’s inner milieu or timbre. We liken it to hearing a key-signature change in music; you have to root (or perhaps route) below the level of intellect to properly hear it. You can leave your more mechanistic and materialistic egghead at the door, as you won’t be needing it here.

Below is a guide that we offer to our patients in order to effectively navigate the LM potencies, once you’ve intuited that the patient is ready for the next dose. Bon chance and let us know if you have any questions:

LM Potencies

The correct dosage of the LM Potency needs to be individualized on a case­-by-­case basis, however, there is a basic protocol which can be modified as necessary:

1) Potentize the remedy (success or hit against palm of hand 4-­12 times).

2) Stir 1 Tablespoon into a glass of water (approx. 4-­12 times).

3) Hold 1 Tablespoon from this glass in the mouth for a few seconds before swallowing.

4) Discard the remainder of the water.

5) If new symptoms arise, discontinue this Rx, and report this to your practitioner.

I was serving a brand new patient the other day and asked her if she eats a mostly organic diet. She reported that she finds it tough to make ends meet and that eating organically often feels outside of her reach most times. I smiled and replied, “I’m going to write a blog for you and share with you how I once fed our family of four for less than $100.00 per week on organic food.”

I’ll take you back over ten years ago, both of my kids were currently attending a private Waldorf school. My husband, Jeff and I had recently finished our four year medical degrees and were embarking on our postgraduate research at the time. We estimated that about $35,000 per annum was going out the door for about 3.5 years to educate the four of us. We were also still building our Clinic as we were just 5 years into our practice and we were working on our thesis and books simultaneously. To say the least, money was extremely tight.

While my kids were growing up, we had several boarders and international students live with us. My kids often bunked together when they were little because a fellow Heilkunst student/receptionist, Waldorf teacher, student from Madrid or Mexico was living with us for several months at a time. These folks became an intricate part of our family and would often help to make meals or watch the kids while we ran out to pick something up.

We lived on a farm on seven acres that we rented, where we leased land to city folks to grow their own food on. Folks would also rent a portion of the 7,000 square foot barn to paint in or practice music. We owned several horses of our own, and ran “Camp On The Farm” for local Waldorf and Homeschooled kids in the region for several weeks during the summer. The barn’s hay mow and our summer kitchen was great for them to do arts and crafts or to play in if it rained, but they mostly carried out spontaneous adventures on a portion of the two hundred surrounding acres. When they came in after being outside all day, they were hungry.

Now, I’d often been with patients, or I’d been studying all day. I only did either activities for several years unless I was weeding our gardens or shovelling manure; horse, chicken, duck, sheep or bunny poo was the other interesting side of my more sedentary life behind a desk. All this to say, I didn’t have gobs of time, let alone money, to be prepping meals.

Breakfast was our own farm fresh chicken or duck eggs. A bowl of homemade oatmeal with raw milk (we ran a 14 family raw milk co-op) or a shake made with fermented kefir and frozen blackberries picked in the Fall of last year with a raw egg and some hemp protein was a mainstay. Organic Bananas were always on hand as they’re cheap and can be easily cut up and added frozen to shakes, sliced on top of oatmeal or stirred into paleo muffins (made with almond and coconut flour … See Elana’s Pantry on-line recipes).

Our favorite snack was a dollop of almond butter, mixed with ½ a banana, a tablespoon of hemp seeds and a quick splash of real maple syrup. Another easy to make snack I made was homemade fruit leather from seconds (apples, strawberries, raspberries etc.) leftover at the healthfood store. I also made wild rhubarb compote with organic cane sugar. I canned all my own jams and jellies sweetened with apple juice and pectin.

On Sundays, we would cook together … all four of us. We ate a lot of crockpot spaghetti with beef, lamb, or turkey purchased from my friends who were local farmers way out of town with lower overhead. Burritos were a favourite. One of our farmer friend’s food was cheaper than the non-organic stuff at the grocery store. We’d go out and pick it up over an hour away when we went to get the milk from our cow share. We had two apartment sized chest freezers we got from Kijiji (like Craigslist).

The other crock pot had some form of soup. Squash was typical, and cheap. I peeled and diced it, adding carrots, sweet potatoes, a green apple, chicken or turkey stock (left over from pan drippings from a roast and frozen in little individual serving cups) and some curry. After it was cooked, I whizzed this all up with my hand blender.

Often a whole organic chicken went into the crock pot in the morning with celery, onions, carrots and dill (Martha Stewart knock off) and by supper we’d be peeling off chunks of hot meat with broth and vegetables into bowls while someone ran outside to harvest lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas and whatever else was ripe from our gardens for salad. If I was on the ball, there would be rice or kamut noodles for the soup.

One of our favourite meals is still chunks of stewing beef, onions, a ton of mushrooms, and a can of Guinness with some fresh thyme, sea salt and fresh ground pepper thickened with a bit of organic flour. This all served on champ, which is mashed potatoes with butter, cream and green onions. Yes, I come by the last name “McQuinn” honestly.

One year we had a bumper zucchini crop. No kidding, the zukes were the size of our legs. We groaned each time my daughter picked another one and brought it in the house. We were giving them away to patients strong enough to carry these monsters to their car. I made dozens of paleo zucchini breads and froze them. We had a massive crab apple tree on the property as well that we often made into jellies. One Fall my daughter found a plum tree that was mind-blowing but that darn tree only fruited once even though I whispered sweet nothings to it every Spring!

We grew raspberries and foraged for wild strawberries and blueberries as well. We often went to pick our own fruit at local farms. Blackberries were wildly plentiful and we knew all the best spots on public lands. We’d even take the cat with us in a gunny sack as he hated when the kids left him at home, so off he’d come to pick berries too. Silly old Oliver.

I also harvested dandelion leaves, sorrel, lamb’s quarters, wild spinach and wild raspberry leaf for tea. I also loved Chaga mushroom from wild birch trees for a really nourishing tea high in antioxidants. You can look it up if you like keeping in mind that you need to know what you’re doing when foraging for mushrooms as some can be lethal if you’re not careful.

We also loved to make our own candles out of beeswax. Both of my children can knit and my daughter could crochet anything you could imagine while on long drives in the car. All of our clothes were bought second hand from the thrift store. Funny as I still love to shop this way as I can’t justify spending over $15 for a new outfit! That’s just me!

I’ve learned to milk goats more recently, and cows when I was younger, and always appreciated that my family comes from the largest dairy community in Canada. These life skills have served me well all these 50+ years. Last summer, I connected with an herbalist in my local town who offered nature walks on her property to show us even more wild foods that can be harvested and prepared into amazing meals that don’t cost a dime. I love pine needle tea which has more vitamin C than some fruits! Who knew?! Yes, even these foods can be found in urban centres or in places not too far off the beaten path.

If you’re an urban dweller reading this and you think my granola lifestyle is beyond your scope or imagination, I know lots of city folk who’ve traded their skills as IT specialists by setting up a website for a local farmer looking to sell their goat’s milk soap. It is brilliant to have a skill that you can work on the basis of trade for. I’ve traded Heilkunst Medicine sessions for massages, live blood analysis, bowen therapy, reiki, chiropractic care, music lessons, art lessons, horse riding lessons, and even organic food.

My 90 year old Scottish grandmother on my Mom’s side has prepared food for a single Dad and his family for a decade or more. Last year, she was still making a few thousand dollars selling handmade dishcloths, jams and pickles at a local hospital bazaar. We Scottish Canadians are cheap and very resourceful. It seems that it runs in my family!

I feel that we are going to come into some interesting times ahead, moving away from traditional economic systems. Bitcoin, trading our skills for food, services and resources are going to come more into vogue and necessity. Personally, I’d prefer to have these relationships plumbed with my local food providers and know how to effectively live off-grid before I have to out of necessity. Emergency preparedness websites in North America are recommended two to three months of water and food supplies stored in your basement. That is a fairly long time!

The next thing I want to learn is how to set snares and hunt for larger game. I already know how to fish and gut a trout since they were plentiful in the streams we used to farm on when I was a kid. I’m also pretty handy with a rifle as the bloody gophers used to dig holes on our fields where the horses grazed. I never tried eating a gopher though!

When I was first deciding what values and ethics I wanted to raise my own kids with, I decided that they were pretty close to how I’d been raised. Have a close kinship with nature, be thankful for what you have, treat your neighbors with compassion as you never know when you’ll need to rely on each other, make sure you can make a living without the use of electricity and gadgets, and eat as close to the way God intended, in season, and through the hands of those who love and care about you. Never eat the crap from a box or fast food establishment. Trust your gut in all things and always stop to gaze at a sunset. That, basically, is how I live organic, and also on the cheap … which, really, makes me feel incredibly resourceful and also very rich!

Many of you know that Jeff and I live out of a suitcase, literally, one suitcase and a carry-on. We’re digital nomads with an online boutique publishing company and a wholistic, Heilkunst Medical Practice serving patients all around the world.

Over six months we travelled across Canada last summer, from Saint John’s, Newfoundland to Tofino, British Columbia we’d pull up to campsites right on the water, store our suitcases under the car, leave the hatch up on our SUV and sleep under the stars, listening to the loons (or ocean waves) while sleeping on our Ikea mattress in the back of our car. It was like a dream come true, as neither of us had ever been west of Toronto.

I’d once been on a trip to Victoria, BC. For five short days I’d showcased courses for the Hahnemann College for Heilkunst at a health show. The thing was, I’d never seen the middle guts of Canada. I wanted to see her portfolio at “see” level. This was my chance to fulfill that bucket list and more. We started in St. John’s, Newfoundland and started to head, by car, across the Trans Canada Highway.

On days that we served clients (three days a week), we’d check into an Airbnb. Our criteria was good wifi and two separate rooms for us each to serve our patients by Skype. At the end of each day, we send our prescriptions to our pharmacists in Canada and The States.

In some cases, we stayed a few weeks or more to stabilize ourselves. We called this ‘slow travel.’ On this longer sojourns, we were able to do research and write in between serving clients. We figured out early in the process that it did not work well for us to see clients and then travel right after. We’ve gotten good at what works best to preserve our personal and couple ecology in good stead.

We’ve loved this expedition so much, that we’ve made it a permanent lifestyle. We’ve lived like this for almost three years; taking periodic, sabbaticals. We can’t call them holidays anymore! We continued, travelling down through the eastern United States and into Mexico for the Winter.

Folks ask us how we can afford to live this way. Our answer is how can you afford to live where you are? Think about it, we sold everything off so we have no debt, no mortgage, no bills, or house/car maintenance. We live in Mexico half of the year with one third the cost of living in Canada.

For the first time in our lives, we’re socking money away. We’re investing in IBC (Infinite Banking Concept) and Bitcoin more than we ever did before. We’ve hit the jackpot as far as lifestyle goes!

Let me explain in point form what our general costs are. If you know me, I’m not shy as we’ve found something that works well for our health and mental/emotional well-being. I also write on the side for International Living. I’m used to divulging what it takes to live this way for others exploring similar options:

• A campground spot in Canada and the U.S. for a car costs on average between $25 – $40 per night. We’ve also found spots for free in truck stops but this was only a couple of times out of sleep-deprivation. Others park at designated Walmarts. We eat one meal a day plus a keto snack of organic beef jerky, nuts or vegetables that we keep on board in a cooler. We’ll generally stop for salad and some form of meat dish for supper. We stock up at great health food stores in towns along the way.

• An Airbnb in Mexico costs between $450 – $675 U.S. per month, including wifi. Our groceries are about $30 – $45 a week for the both of us. We also eat out several times over our four day weekends for anywhere from $5 -$20 a meal. Our cell phone plans are unlimited calling and texting for under $25 per month to the U.S., MX and Can. with 1 gig of data. We have no other overhead expenses. We’ve used only two tanks of gas ($38 Cdn each) in four months given that we walk everywhere in Guanajuato, MX. We’re fit from these cobbled alleyways.

• Our entertainment expenses are $8 for the symphony on Friday nights. We pay less on Thursdays and Sundays for concerts at smaller venues. Sundays you get a class of wine and tapas bar with your concert ticket. Sitting on a park bench or lounge chair in the Sun. with a book from the English Library costs nothing.
• On occasion we take the bus which is $.35 cents and cabs or an Uber are around $3.50 Cdn. which is harder to calculate in U.S. dollars as it is next to nothing. Sometimes we drive and park in a parking garage which ranges from $40 to 98 pesos ($2.50 – $5.00). A full day at the local hot springs is $150 pesos or $9.50 Cdn. or $7.23 U.S. at the time of this writing. At the spa, we get brunch served on our poolside deck chairs with fruit, omelette and carrot juice. All that for under $10 for both of us combined! At the dam down from our casita, they rent boats by the hour for 37 pesos about $2.50. … cost of Jeff rowing, while Ally takes close-ups of ducks? Priceless!
• Travel inside of Mexico may include an overnight at a local town at an Airbnb. Those rooms in someone’s home range from $16 – $24 Cdn. a night. One two day excursion we took to the local pyramids, tequila making rancho came to $190 Cdn in total. This included 5 meals and 2 nights stay in a 500 year old hacienda. This was our biggest expense, other than our rent, in the 5 months we’ll be here.

• We cook a lot from home as we’re on ketogenic diets. We love shopping at the local markets for our meat, vegetables and fruits. There’s a good selection at the health food stores and the items are reasonable unlike back home. Most street food is delicious. Get a taco, loaded with meat, guac., vegetables and eat just the fillings. A large carrot and beet juice runs less than $2 Cdn for the drink and the food.

Many of you have also wanted to know what we have in the way of stuff. Here’s our list of items, excluding our 5 X 7 storage container back home. It’s stashed with extra camping gear, artwork, art supplies, and a bicycle. We’ve also go 7 years of stupid tax receipts (stored on behalf of our government). One day, we plan to have a Tiny House so I kept our stoneware pans and kitchen supplies. There’s also 2 rubbermaid boxes of photo albums and kids’ artwork.

Here’s what we’ve got with us that fits into that one large suitcase and a carry-on.

• Undies, shirts, pants, dresses (mine, not Jeff’s), blouses, work-out clothes, 2 sweaters, poncho, rain jacket, and 5 pairs of very practical shoes stuffed with socks. All clothes are rolled fitting into one and a half suitcases. Camera bag with multiple lenses, underwater camera, toiletries, art supplies and 6 paperbacks for reading on beaches/park benches where I don’t take my i-pad fit in the other half of my large suitcase.

• Neuro-scenar for sore necks, stiff mucles from hiking (http://www.scenar-therapy.co.uk/scenar_therapy_faq.html), toiletries, epsom salts, bath bombs, towels, bathing suits, essential oils, little satchel of jewellry, hairdryer and supplements in use fit in my carry-on, 3 mgs of Melatonin on occasion if I’ve been overscheduled and “Experience” capsules on occasion for helping to keep me regular).

• Small box of Simply Organic Spices (https://www.amazon.com/Herbs-Spices-Seasonings-Simply-Organic/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A16310281%2Cp_4%3ASimply%20Organic)

• Box of back-up toiletries including Earthpaste toothpaste (https://www.amazon.com/Redmond-Earthpaste-Toothpaste-Peppermint-Ounce/dp/B0080L9G9C), bamboo toothbrushes (https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Bamboo-Toothbrush-Individually-Numbered/dp/B00UYFH6YO), handmade deoderant by The Natural Deoderant Company (https://naturaldeoco.com/) and 3 bottles of Flora and Fauna Skin Elixir (http://florafaunaskincare.com/products/facial-serum), razor and hairbrush, 100% Pure Make-up (https://www.100percentpure.com/) in my Make-up Bag, and all natural hemp shampoo and conditioner brought from Canada, however, I’ve found a honey version just as chemical-free here.

• Box of backup supplements like Zinc, tub of Greens for shakes, flax seeds, hemp seeds, Vitamin D3 for days the darker/colder months when we’re still in Canada and Himalayan rocks salts to make up Solé brine.

• Flat of medium mason jars for fermenting for gut health/probiotics.

• Our high powered blender and a ceramic water crock for dispensing spring water from bottles.

• Ikea mattress, sleeping bags, pillow and lighter cotton blanket for warmer/colder nights. Propane cook stove, dish soap, basic dishes, pot and pan, cutlery, BBQ tools for open fire cooking.

• Computer bags and one box of work supplies including a modem, Vonage Phone and Charger, Apple Time Capsule for backing up our computers and wire-like electronic thingys that you’d have to ask Jeff about, one inbox (I try not to have one or people will put stuff in it!).

• One bottle of Dr. Bronner’s all purpose cleanser as there are only toxic options available in Mexico.

And that is about it. The car has to be packed like a game of Tetris. Yet, that’s everything you might want to know about living on the road to Mexico. The reason I put that latter bit into the title is that when you have little stuff, you don’t spend anytime servicing it. When your stripped bare of luxuries and nefarious responsibilities, you feel free. The doing is gone, so all you’re boiled down to is being.

We only need to clean our car/or Airbnb apartment a couple times a month, total, a couple of hours at the most. Otherwise we’re working at what we love. The rest of the time we’re out playing, studying Spanish, walking the colonial city, or grabbing a bite. We love to spend hours reading, photographing, drawing, or off at the local hot springs. When we arrive anywhere, we unhook the TV right away and shove it a corner or out the door. Neither one of us have had one in over 25 years so why start now in any language!

We decided that we love our life too much to ever retire, so we’ve crafted a healthy lifestyle in our 40’s and 50’s instead. One day we may grow up and build a Tiny Home on our two acres in New Brunswick, Canada. Mexico also has our heart so swinging back and forth each season will work for us. Our savings will love us! That alone feels generative and rejuvenating!

I have no desire to write this article at all. Do you ever have to do a thing that you really don’t want to because it will be like holding up a magnifying mirror in order to see all those ugly pock marks on your face? Yup, like that. Here I go anyway, despite the squirmy feeling in my belly.

When my son was suffering labels like ADHD, autism and just good old fashioned neurotic and psychotic tendencies, I didn’t realize the extent to which I was part of his problem. While he was stimming, lining stuff up and being some kind of crazy OCD boy, I was suffering the exact same gestures without knowing it.

You see, I wracked my brain anxiously every waking hour with, “How am I going to fix this kid … how am I going to fix this kid … how am I going to fix this kid?” Although I left the hand-flapping to him, I was stimming the same thought patterns over and over and over again. I lived in terror that I was never doing enough. That I was NOT enough.

I lived in terror of the realization that somehow I’d damaged my most beloved son and now I’d better bloody well fix this mess that we were in. I was constantly at the hospital (seven times that I counted), desperately wanting them to help me get his bowels operating with milk and molasses enemas; one time they even put him under general anaesthetic to manually remove the two-week old impacted stool from his body. Still I stimmed, “I’ve got to fix this kid if it kills me!” And actually, it was doing just that.

The fact that he’d bite, hit and scream mostly at me was a result of the repressed rage that I had successfully armored below decks in my own nether girl, leaking out in neurotic tendencies. My house had to be just as orderly as Jordan’s lined up matchbox cars, or I’d feel entirely out of control. The laundry always done, the sinks spotless and the food prepared like some kind of messed up Cordon Bleu chef.

In fits of desperation I took my son to every therapist imaginable, hoping against hope that this one would shed some light on the cause of his disorders and help me solve his issues outright. Nothing worked! Decades later, we see an entire autism industry built on this desperate cry from desperate parents.

We moved him from classroom to classroom, from teacher to teacher, from doctor to doctor, from homeopath to homeopath, to no avail. We tried every diet out there, switching from GAPS to ferments to combinations thereof. As a result my son hated mealtimes, often refusing to eat. What a bloody power struggle!

We took my son to speech therapists, occupational therapists and cognitive therapists. We consulted with a variety of chiropractors, energy workers, and naturopaths who charged us small fortunes and then let us examine their frayed ropes with regard to a true diagnosis and faulty treatment plans. It was a nightmare, until one day …

Finally, we came to Heilkunst Medicine and learned the underlying causes of Jordan’s ills. It was part miasmic and part environmental and the sequential timeline was a clear, definable protocol that we addressed each month when we met. I learned how my unresolved issues of anxiety, grief, rage, terror and fear were also part of Jordan’s autism issues. This realization was difficult for me, but I committed to the process to get at the underlying cause to get us both well.It was scary, unnerving, embarrassing and it is true that early on, I hated the process. Who loves a cheval mirror turn around for you to see every pockmark, ugly belief, and rotten pit of intellectual stimming, anxiety, feelings of violence, hate and terror brought up for their viewing pleasure?  God, it was so brutally painful.

However, over time, Jordan got better. First he became sick, really sick, with fevers, vomiting and diarrhea. The progress that followed every month was astounding – he started to make eye contact, stopped stimming, and began to speak. He was passing stool regularly and he was even eating a small variety of new foods. After just 12 Heilkunst treatment sessions, he’d gained 12 lbs and 4 shoe sizes. I was elated! It was like living the Pinocchio dream; I finally met my real boy, for the first time, at four and a half years of age.

In turn, I also experienced massive healing reactions that you can read about in our FREE audiobook here. I wailed, grieved, exposed my hate and squirmed with unresolved childhood issues like my mother’s suicide and my father’s early death at 43. I hated my life, was suffering PTSD, and while Heilkunst wasn’t easy, at least it was productive. Over time, I gave birth to my essential self; I stopped the intellectual stimming and became a real parent, a motherly version of Gepetto.

I stopped running wildly to every therapist, cleaning my home like a maniac, and making a different meal every single night (yes, part of my intellectual stimming and ADHD patterning meant that I never prepared the same meal twice … ever!) My kind of crazy was also tied inextricably to Jordan’s kind of crazy. Guess what my own mother had been diagnosed with before she turned the car on in the enclosed garage at 32, when I was eight? Schizophrenia and manic depression. Can you see the hereditary link?

In my case, it did not “skip a generation.” I was her and she was me, and Jordan was embroiled in more than four generations of a Syphlitic hell (my grandfather was committed before I met him). In my son’s case the MMR shot, laced with mercury (thimerosal), triggered the deeper issues associated with this genetic disease, spawning symptoms such as OCD, bone pains, ADHD, anger, hostility, blaming, hyper-vigilance, aggression, hate, and stimming. I presented with many of these same tendencies, which is why my Heilkunst Physician insisted that I also be treated.

It is also why, as a Heilkunst Practitioner of 14 years, I too insist that the parent(s) be treated with the child labelled in the spectrum with ASD issues. Part of the cause lies in the environment and the child cannot get better if the parent’s issues remain at large. I know; I’ve lived this phenomenon in my own experience as a parent, and have borne witness to hundreds of parents and children that my partner, Jeff Korentayer, and I have served.

It has taken me 20 years of looking full-on at myself in that mirror. My son, thankfully, has long since been out of the spectrum; he lives a full and whole life as a trampoline acrobat and teacher, and trained Bowen Practitioner. He and I are really close and there is a deep, abiding love for how we helped each other to resolve the underlying cause of our ills and shut down the genetic miasm(s) that had us both pinioned with gestures of OCD, stimming and a primal fear that held us hostage.

It is isn’t easy when a new patient comes into my practice, describing their autistic child and how they’re taking them to every conceivable therapist, guiltily trying to rescue the child to the exclusion of themselves. Just so you know, I will be turning around your mirror, my friend, and I will also hold you through the process of remediation as I too was once held. Some days you also aren’t going to like the process but you will love its reliable outcomes and efficacy. Just as I did too!