Insight from a student
01 January 2006 at 15:26
Student at the School of Homeopathy
Jan 2006
Deborah Caroline Turnbull
25 years old
Being a young Mum is great for me because it has woken me up to who and what I deem to be important at an earlier age. Of course, the experience that age brings would have been a benefit, but I can bring the great gusto of youth! I have never found Motherhood easy but every bit worth it; to watch my beautiful girl grow.
Poppy is who and what puts a smile on my face nine times out of ten. She is a total delight. Full of mischief and bare faced cheek and giggles. Her presence seems to demand that I am true to what I want to do, to not shy away from things. I want to show her a Mummy that is happy and fulfilled so that she might go for what she wants too.
For the majority of my employment past, to give it a generic name I've been a "care support worker", and spent most of that working in a children's home and a Special Needs college. I loved it and found myself at ease persuading teenagers by whatever means I could conjure that they should return to their English lesson! By the time I left to have Poppy I realised I needed something where I could work on a one- to- one basis with people rather than a crowd all wanting my attention at once. That was exhausting. Having Poppy brought me to Homeopathy while I was pregnant- I was treated for various pregnancy discomforts and felt an immediate inexplicable YES. One of those lovely rare moments of clarity.
It satisfies the bit of me that loves to feel things fit together and make sense, like a cog system. The remedies are extraordinary and fascinating and I can't imagine that pull running out.
My main hope for the future is to keep finding the grounds on which to lay all my new found commitments. To build a nurturing, solid home for my new family.
One of the most inspiring things I have ever heard was when I was a child my Mum said to me that there is something out there to cure every ill. That's exciting to me. It seems to say that everything is possible. Homeopathy offers that. I imagine it is rare and unlikely that a patient is told "there is nothing we can do". There is of course the excitement of seeing a patient recover. It must be wonderful to witness someones's health and happiness genuinely blossom
I have not, since I was a teenager, much liked taking painkillers or antibiotics. I have always thought that the pain is still going on somewhere, that I'm just not aware of it. Problems can worsen beneath the guise that everything is okay. This is another reason that I love Homeopathy- it doesn't conceal or suppress. Better out than in, I say. I think that is a more confronting and scary way to live as who knows what is going on inside until you look? But that fascinates me. Learning Homeopathy is as much a journey inwards as it is a process of being taught it seems. Uncomfortable at times, yet incredibly personally fulfilling and thrilling.
The School of Homeopathy is something of a haven and I knew immediately it was the place for me. The last thing I wanted was government issue posters adorning the walls and those awful grey plastic chairs. I need to first feel comfortable in order to feel receptive. Because the school breathes Homeopathy, even if I daydream on a painting my attention is gently coaxed back. Concentration is not a problem though as the discussions sometimes fascinate and behold me so that I feel I've taken in too much.
My greatest challenge, one that I have yet to overcome, is the ongoing application to the assignments. Never my strong point! There is a word in Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism- sansoshima- that means the functions inside us that try to sabotage your efforts to be happy and this is mine. I am trying to learn a steadfastness somehow where my desk is the port in the storm. I get caught up in other aspects of my life that I find it very difficult to return to my desk everyday, again and again: "How can I possibly work when all this is going on??!!". The workload is not impossible, it just requires constancy. Something I am trying to cultivate.
At this point my brain involuntarily disengaged completely, hence the abrupt end!