Why Alternative Healing Is Important To Me
Let’s go back to where it all began for me . . . my childhood spent between an Air Force Base and a Mental Hospital.
Mental hospitals can be scary for children. No matter how an adult explains it will always be difficult for a child to comprehend being surrounded by mental illness. Unpredictable people making incomprehensible noises. Sad people. Strange people. Drooling people. Easy to exploit they often suffer alone.
They are entirely dependant on the decisions of those in control. They are well if someone else decides. They have no option to go for alternative medicine or healing in another form unless someone offers.
From the time my parents divorced I was raised in and around Lake Alice Hospital. Lake Alice was nowhere near a lake as far as I could tell. It is isolated from any of the surrounding townships which are about ten minutes drive away. The hospital had its own little community. It even had its own fire engine, Bedford Van painted red with a white roof affectionately known as “Little Flick”.
When I was old enough to fit in a fireman’s uniform, my father (the Fire Chief) and I would dress up in full kit and take Santa to see all the patients outside of NSU, the National Security Unit. That housed those who were considered dangerous in the extreme so it was heavily guarded.
No forms of alternative medicine healing went on here. They closest they got to alternative healing was an occupational therapist.
Since we are in New Zealand our Christmas time is in the peak of summer so this was something that was very draining very quickly. I often wondered why we bothered with most of it since it seemed to me a little insulting that this affection was handed out once a year and the rest of the time (from my youthful perspective) ignored.
There were two streets where staff houses were so we also drove over there for the kids lollie scramble. And then it was over for another year.
My father would come home and tell me about his day. Some of the stories made me cry, not because my father had a sad life, but because he interacted with people who had sadness on a daily basis, a different type of sadness when options you would otherwise have disappear.
Being at cause is difficult in such a situation.
There were people in Lake Alice who had arrived with nothing wrong with them at all. They were just children without family to care for them and somehow they ended up institutionalised even as adults. Intellectually handicapped were there too. I don’t know what proportion of the population had psychiatric problems but I know there were psychiatrists, psych nurses like my Dad.
My observation was that their spirits had disappeared under control of others.
So, back to Christmas the highlight of the year! As we went from villa to villa and giving out MacIntoshes toffees (for years these were the only Christmas sweets) sometimes patients were so engrossed in the television they barely looked at us or even cared we were there. To think of a human being like this day after day, year after year…. I had to ask myself why?
The obvious costs to the government are housing, medication, and care. The even greater loss that exists but is rarely considered is the loss of human resources and the purpose of a spirit here on earth.
I wont argue with anyone who says this was “meant to be” or that it was a chosen path or necessary karma which had to happen. I don’t agree but it isn’t my nature to waste energy in argument when I could put that same energy towards something that will produce an outcome, not agreement.
In sharp contrast I also lived with my mother and stepfather at Ohakea, an Air Force base about fifteen minutes away. This too had its own little community. Not sure about a psychiatrist (personal are screened on intake) but there was a full time doctor on base.
An air force base especially one in peace loving New Zealand is an uber cool place to hang out.
The people there had more money and travelled by “shuttle” between cities. Fundraising for air force kids was easy because everyone had money to give.
Then there were the facilities. A confidence course which was too big for us but we imagined the day we would conquer anyway, the full sized swimming pool, squash courts etc. All of which were free to use when the Air Force itself wasn’t using them.
Surrounded by mystery and intrigue we allowed our imagination to take hold over the summer and it seemed we had full reign of our base.
At Christmas someone would organise a Fire Truck (not a Bedford van) to hand out presents to the kids. They also organised a barbecue and games to play.
The really great thing about living on an Air Force base is that it is really safe. There is a gate under 24 hour guard. The people are disciplined as a result of the armed forces lifestyle.
Here there is a level of success that comes with being in control of your destiny. Human resources are valued and efficiently put to good use.
Two groups of people with me in common. Parts you might say of a bigger picture. On one side humanity discarded, on the other side a pedestal. And yet human qualities were there from the beginning in both groups.
This is where my love of alternative medicine healing and alternative natural healing began.
Blessings,
Keri Eagan
<a href=”http://www.kerieagan.org”>Anything Alternative</a>
