My Weekend with Abuela

I don't really know how to start writing about my experience this weekend with another alternative healer, because it was kind of surreal. I have participated in nearly every alternative healing practice I know about to try to get pregnant. I did acupuncture and herbs, I saw the reiki lady and the energy guy and the shaman. So when my friend Gladys recommended I meet her husband’s grandmother, Abuela, a curandera/sobadora from Oaxaca, Mexico I thought, “why not.” 

I googled both curandera and sobadora and learned that a curandera is basically a healer, and a sobardora specializes in massage, and often massages the tummy—from the outside and the inside—to get all the lady parts in the right place for conception. It seemed kind of legit and kind of scary. Healing methods in other countries have been a around a long time, and though they may seem crazy, they also have histories of working.

Abuela came up from Mexico this weekend, and healing me, getting my body prepared for the Lone Ranger, was actually one of the reasons. She embraced me the moment we met and said she was able to see or to sense that I had past trauma as a child from a fall, which left my body to develop out of alignment and my insides to be "spooked" for lack of a better translated word. There was something deeply intense about Abuela. She had an ancient face, skin the color of molasses, and the strongest hands I've ever seen or felt. At 80 years-old I would bet Abuela could lift a car if she had to. Or even if she just wanted to.

I'm not going to get into too much detail because this blog would be twenty pages long and I wouldn't be able to do the experience justice. It would all sound completely insane. And it was, but it also wasn't. But just as a little snap shot: there was the most painful massage I've ever felt, there was being hung by my ankles from Gladys's staircase with the help of her family so Abuela could pound my heels with a rubber mallet to get my insides into the right place, there was soaking in a special herb bath, and having an egg wrapped in basil leaves rubbed over my body, there was being whacked with branches...hmmm...I actually had a pretty eventful weekend now that I think about it.  It was extensive and strange, but more than anything I felt the love and determination of Abuela and Gladys and her family, which filled me with so much...I can't even find the right word. 

Noah and I have somehow turned baby making into a team sport. While we often feel super alone and misunderstood and isolated, there are times we feel so much support and energy and love from others. Gladys's in laws don't know me, but after this weekend we are now definitely related. Even though Noah and I are having such a hard time making a family, we seem to be gaining an extended family that we appreciate so much. It's moments like these where I remind myself to shift focus from what I don't have to what and who I do have. 

Hoping everyone out there can take a moment to do the same. To count blessings rather than tears. 

Comments

[Laura]

So... This was three years ago?? What was the outcome? I have two friends, both in their early thirties who have been trying everything to conceive to no avail. One is considering this type of treatment.