Claiming

Medicine Woman

Boozhoo.  The other night we were having dinner with family that we don’t see very often.  I was asked what I was up to and I explained that I had begun to offer an apprenticeship.  More questions ensued and I was faced with explaining what it is I do that people would want to apprentice for.  They knew I was an herbalist but I knew that was not the full answer.  What is it that I do?  Who am I?

I was tongue-tied for awhile.  The problem was not that I didn’t know who I am or what I do but that I had not really claimed the title Medicine Woman out loud before.  I am an herbalist that works with trauma and uses herbs in spirit doses to help people heal their trauma.  I am a pipe carrier.  I am a water pourer for sweatlodge.  I renew my connections with spirit by going on vision quests.  I am a second degree member of the Midewiwin, the Ojibwe Grand Medicine Lodge.  I work in concert with the spirits of this land and the animal/plant kin that live here.  I am strongly led by my ancestral spirits.  I believe that all falls under the aegis of medicine woman, so why was this difficult to say out loud?

This has been my path for all of my life.  I was adopted by a white family and grew up in the suburbs but I never felt that I fit in.  I really only felt at home out in the woods.  The woods felt safe to me and I felt that I was not alone.  I felt that I was connected, a connection I definitely did not feel in the society I was raised in.  As I grew older and found that my birth father was from Turtle Mountain reservation I now had a focus for my longings.  With the help of my incredible partner I began the journey back.  We started studying the language, made connections and I was gifted my spirit name and clan.  I went to ceremony and found a home and acceptance.  So why the reluctance to use the title medicine woman?  Is this the remnants of old thought patterns of not being worthy?  I had admitted to myself and to a few occasional teachers and friends that I really wanted to be a medicine woman at different points along my journey.  So why shy away from it now?

There is no reason.  I am a 67 year old woman.  I have a right to define myself and my work.  I am a medicine woman.  This is what I do.  I walk the line between the culture of my ancestors and the dominant world culture of the people that I live with.  I try my best to be a hollow bone and to speak for those who have no voice.  We humans are at a crossroad.  We can continue to walk the way of the mind, technology and the earth as commodity or we can walk the path of the heart and connection to the land and all its beings.  What is a medicine woman but someone who shares her medicine?  My medicine is my connection to the earth and spirit.

Mi’iw noongom.

Lena