A Message For The Sick
Real talk about chronic illness, urban living and herbalism
I’m typing on my computer in a state of disrepair. The screen is blank or close enough and I’m supposed to summon something deep inside me to inspire others. I’m supposed to talk about plants, even though I’ve been struggling to leave my house to interact with the world around me. I’m supposed to write about something that seems so far removed from my current life of city blocks and electric screens.
I’ve been in a state of grief. Over the year, finding it more and more difficult to move around in. I’ve found these changes in mobility in my twenties to be devastating. Each time I find myself accepting my chronic illnesses, I find something new to grieve over. I’ve accepted the pain, I’ve accepted the fatigue and now I have to accept the barriers to the outdoors due to mobility issues.
For years, I’ve taken for granted the ability to garden and hike. When I was first diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, I believed I would eventually get better. Instead, it feels as though new challenges continue to emerge, both from the disease itself and now with my recent diagnosis of fibromyalgia. While depending on life-saving allopathic medicine and alternative healing modalities. I no longer believe suffering automatically makes people wiser. Illness does not purify.
I’m asked how I can still believe in herbalism living in a state of chronic illness, one which can not be cured with plants. But do we ask the same question for those who believe in the allopathic medicine system? Do we ask them if they believe in allopathic medicine even if they can’t be cured. The world does not exist in black and white.
"Don't Let the Forest In" by Andrew Perrault
I find meaning in the plants and a sense of companionship. I seek comfort, beauty, and relief wherever I can find them. Herbalism was never meaningful to me because it promised a cure. It was meaningful because it taught me the importance of relationship with the living world and allowed me to be an active participant.
Even now, when my world has narrowed and my relationship to the outdoors has changed, plants continue to offer something medicine cannot. It offers me a way of understanding myself as part of a living world. A cup of tea, the scent of dried herbs, the sound of birds while sittign on a park bench are all small encounters remind me that healing and curing are not the same thing. One may be impossible, while the other remains available in countless forms.
Plants have taught me this much, life is rarely a straight ascent toward flourishing. It is cycles of death and rebirth, even being born in itself is a death. There is no finish line waiting for me. No version of myself restored to some imagined state of perfect health.
So I am writing from this state of disrepair, after all. Not from abundance or certainty. Just from an apartment where the screen still flickers and the city hums outside the window, where a stubborn little plant keeps leaning toward whatever light it can find. May this article find those who need it.
Thank you for being vulnerable with us, and your honesty 🫶
I’ve lived with autoimmune illness (Hashimoto’s disease, and now also joint deterioration) for a couple of decades. At first, i threw everything at the illness, drastically modified my diet almost to the point of orthorexia, trained as a nutrition coach and a mental health counsellor, rattled with supplements and hoped for a complete cure because i was working so hard at it, and deserved it, dammit. And shook my fist at the gods when a cure did’t come. Sigh…
Now, finally with the wisdom, experience and relative patience of elderhood, i’ve reached the point you so beautifully describe, of understanding the difference of healing vs cure. My daily meds keep me functioning, a careful diet keeps me well, daily movement keeps me mobile, my gardening and herbwork keep me sane, animism connects me to all that IS. I will never be cured, but i have found significant healing in the process of finding balance and meaning in my life.
I’m still a broken toy, but like you, i’m a little plant leaning into the sun.
Wow, this is such a moving piece. What touched me most is its honesty. You don’t try to turn illness into a lesson or a triumph, and that restraint gives the writing a great deal of power. The distinction between healing and curing is especially beautiful and feels like the heart of the essay.
I also loved the image of the plant leaning toward the light. It captures something resilient without becoming sentimental, which is a difficult balance to strike. There’s a quiet wisdom here that I think will resonate deeply with anyone who has had to grieve a version of their life while still finding reasons to keep reaching toward what sustains them.