Our work, women’s work, stays cloaked in invisibility. The divine feminine lies beneath the more heroic methods of Western Herbalism, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic Practices we read about online, yet we do not see and is not talked about. When something is hard to see or we don’t have a name for it, you cannot “hold it” and it becomes invisible.
Capitalism, an underlying force that permeates nearly everything you read online is a heroic, masculine tradition that wants to “name it”, and “prove it”, and “standardize it”. It wants to patent it and package it and sell it.
Nourishment, Women’s Work, the work we do, is hard to grasp for two very good reasons
It is not immediate and measurable.
Nourishment takes time to show results. It works by building up little by little until equanimity is reached and symptoms simply disappear. When fully incorporated, these methods become such a habit that they seem like nothing. We then give credit to something that seemed immediate that may have a little to do with it it or nothing at all. But that is human nature—we look for the correlations in order to make sense of our world and have something tangible to grasp.
It cannot be replicated again and again.
In order to sell something, we need to make strict guidelines that can be packaged and distributed. This means applying the same “treatment” for the same “problem” again and again and having it yield the same “results.” Though this is possible, it is rare that the results are actually effective and desirable.
But here’s the thing: When you are coming from a place of nourishment and improving the way the body is functioning, there are many paths and no two look exactly alike. This is why:
1. Conditions that look similar often have different needs to be met in order to relieve the symptoms.
- Example: Any number of issues may manifest as red, itchy, bumpy skin but (as many of us have experienced) there is not one thing that fully resolves this issue for everyone. That is because the source of the irritation/inflammation/infection may be different, but the immune response is the same.
2. Conditions that seem to be nothing alike may have similar needs to be met in order relieve the symptoms.
- Examples: PCOS and hypoglycemia can both find relief in self-care to support metabolic harmony. Eczema and asthma can both find relief with self-care to reduce inflammation overload.
3. There are many ways to get these needs met, not just one. When the body is experiencing chronic conditions, it is possible to reduce the symptoms using a variety of methods and just one “change” is usually not enough for long-term satisfaction.
- Example: If your goal is to reduce level of need while increasing the ability to deal with inflammation, you have many options for reducing the level of need (removing physical inflammatory aggressors, reducing stress, seeking metabolic harmony, etc.) as well as many options for improving cellular communication and reminding the body how to use inflammation in a beneficial way (Examples: Improve digestion, transdermal mineral absorption, Facial Point Stimulation)
The hard and humbling truth is that when you are doing this work well, you will get no credit for it. As history has demonstrated so profoundly, we have very little mention of Women’s Work because whomever it benefits will have come to the real solutions for self-care on their own. Otherwise, it doesn’t fully transform them.
Disease Makes a Disappearing Act
Just because it can’t be measured doesn’t mean it isn’t working. When people truly get it and follow through, it is so easy and works so completely that they can hardly believe it had anything to do with the little nudge we gave them. When the symptoms simply disappear, it is suggested that the person who was once suffering from a condition “grew out of it.” I agree, the condition certainly helped them to grow!
And even though you cannot repeat what you did the exact same way for two people and get the same results does not mean that you can’t make this process work for any issue that you may come across. When you are building towards equanimity, each individual’s path may be different, but the apex of health they are climbing towards requires the same needs be fulfilled.
In this method, the practitioner is not acting as the healer but as a provider of knowledge, a catalyst for growth, and a conductor for activating the body’s innate healing power. Perhaps we can say the same for the herbs that we are working with. We are subtle and supple. We thrive in the shadows and the moments between words.
Take heart in recognizing that all of these ideas have been handed down by our wise woman ancestors and never really belonged to anyone. Until Thomas Jefferson wrote it into the constitution, the idea of “owning” an idea (Intellectual Property) was not a thing!
Between You & The Moon
The name for our product line was chosen to honor the ongoing path of nature and reflect the idea that when we keep intimate matters intimate, true wisdom may be authentically revealed in a nurturing, loving, respectful place. It is here we can respect one another’s competencies in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration, not competition. Though this work may not attract those who want us to “name it, prove it and standardize it,” our hope is that it softly calls out to those who are drawn to go deeper.
“The Second Rule of Between You & The Moon…Somebody Must Have Talked…”
Despite many, many attempts to hush the Wise Women throughout the ages, we find each other and share our knowledge. There is nothing exciting to see here, but those who are looking for what we offer appear. These methods have been handed down through generations upon generations. The goods we craft are made by hand with gratitude, compassion, and generosity. There is no need or desire to cast away our invisibility cloak. We can wear it as we do our work: With a quiet boldness. We recognize that the loudest voices are not necessarily the wisest and that what our authentic self-care is not for public consumption–it can be kept between you and the moon.
