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IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

 

03:11    “Nourishing Traditions”

10:31    Learning is Key

16:50    Becoming a Matriarch

19:29    Polar Opposites: Complacency

22:38    Polar Opposites: The Savior

26:05    Pneumonia/Bronchitis and Ear Infection

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

 

The Antibiotic Alternative: Balance Your Bugs Without the Drugs

How to Raise a Drug Free Family

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Joette’s Cold and Flu chart (Developing a Homeopathic Brain – A Cold, A Flu, A Cough; Which Is It; Which Remedy?)

Feminopathy: How You Can Correct Female Ailments Using Safe, Inexpensive and Effective Homeopathy

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

 

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 99 with Joette Calabrese.

 

Joette:  Joette Calabrese here, folks. I’m happy that you’ve joined me for my podcast today. You’re in for a treat. From my virtual classroom, I’m privileged to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. Their successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep their triumphs a secret. I want you to hear the excitement my students experience, too. So, you can be inspired by their unique stories.

 

With the help from Kate, my reporter, I bring you a podcast series I call, “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity” or “Teens with Tenacity.” See how regular mothers and others — average folks who love healing those around them — have gone from freaking to fabulous by simply applying what they’ve learned using what I call Practical Homeopathy®.

 

 

Kate:  Hi, I'm Kate, and I would like to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast. Today, we're going to have a different type of a Mom with Moxie podcast. We're actually going to be talking about “the big picture.”

 

Jordan is a big picture thinker, and I can't wait for you all to hear what she has to say about the power of being a matriarch. So, Jordan, welcome to the podcast.

 

Jordan:  Thanks for having me, Kate.

 

Kate:  I am so excited because we're going to be changing things up a little bit. You are going to be talking to us about the big vision. Like, what is the big picture? Why are we doing this as moms? Why are we using homeopathy, and what does this mean to us, and how does it empower us?

 

So, before we get started, Jordan, tell us about yourself.

 

Jordan:  Sure. I've got five little ones. I have all the way from eight years old down to nine months old: Terry, Simon Peter, Elijah, Thérèse and Felicity.

 

I homeschool them. I've been doing that now for a couple of years.

 

But before I was homeschooling, I was a youth minister for about 10 years. That's kind of my other side passion is ministry, reaching out to teens. So that's really heavy on my heart.

 

This May, I'm celebrating my 10-year anniversary, so that's super-exciting.

 

I'm relatively new to homeopathy. This has really been only something I've been doing for now, like, maybe eight months. But I am just so passionate and excited to share what I've learned — and hopefully, to encourage those who are learning, too, along the way.

 

Kate:  Yes, I can't wait to hear what you have to say. When we talked a little bit earlier, I was very excited that you wanted not just to talk about those individual success stories or the struggles that you might have with homeopathy, but to talk about how this really can change our family's lives. How it can empower us!

 

You said that yourself, you're very new to homeopathy. But at the same time, I feel like you have a lot of wisdom in this. So, I want to hear about what led you to finding out about homeopathy. How did that journey come about?

 

“Nourishing Traditions”

 

Jordan:  I've always been suspicious of the allopathic medical paradigm for a long time, but I didn't know what to replace it with. I just kind of still went along with it for the most part, so gave Tylenol, Benadryl, things like that.

 

But then, I really, Kate, can boil it down to certain key events where something shifted in my thinking. And the first key event was when my mom handed me the book “Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon — and I would recommend any mom to get that book.

 

Kate:  What a great mom you had that she gave you that book! That's awesome!

 

Jordan:  She did! I think she was surprised I read it. Because literally, she took it and gave it to me, and I think within a month, I had read it cover to cover.

 

I was just on my way to Minnesota. I had a long, 12-hour car ride from Michigan. So, I opened it up, and I read it. My husband was driving, so I was sitting in the passenger seat and just reading, reading. And it opened a huge door that I didn't know was there.

 

I got into raw milk first. As I was reading it seeing that was a big thrust of Sally Fallon's way of thinking, I was like, “Okay, let's do raw milk.” That was a huge step for me. I was really nervous.

 

I remember Anthony, my husband, going to get the milk from the farmer’s market and bringing it home. I said a prayer before we drank it. I was like, “Please, Lord, I hope this is the right call,” because I’d been given lots of mixed messages about the safety and the efficacy of it.” But I thought, “I think this is what we are supposed to do.”

 

We went ahead, and we have been drinking it ever since. Love raw milk. (This was probably about a year and a half ago, by the way.)

 

Kate:  Can we talk for just a second about how you grew up? Was your mom very much into whole foods and Sally Fallon growing up? Was that the culture of your household, or is this something that your mom just found recently.

 

Jordan:  This is more recently for her. Growing up, it was pretty similar to what most people were doing in terms of diet. This was a slow build for my mom.

 

We have a very interesting family dynamic. I am the second oldest and then down to my youngest sibling who is 11. My mom has had a chance to parent the older siblings (and myself) in a different way. Now she is doing those more holistic ways with my younger siblings.

 

But no, when I was young it was pretty much typical diet and, along the way, sort of discovering this other direction to take her family.

 

As a young mother, I'm benefiting from her discoveries enormously.

 

Kate:  Did she also learn about homeopathy with you?

 

Jordan:  My older sister and I are leading the charge, and she's following along, too. She's open to it. She is an avid learner politically, nutritionally now. So, he is definitely on board.

 

We are kind of filling her in, like, we're giving her remedies to try saying, “Hey, Mom, you got to buy this.”

 

She let me buy her a whole remedy kit. So, she's on board. And we're hoping eventually that she can start taking classes and really getting invested like my sister and I had been.

 

So, that was the first event.

 

The second one was my son's ear infection which doesn’t sound like a good thing. But one night he awoke in the middle of the night with a really painful ear infection. I was able to stave that off with an onion. Onion …

 

Kate:  Poultice.

 

Jordan:  Onion poultice. Yes! I had read that in that book, “Nourishing Traditions.” I thought, “Great! We're going to do the onion for Simon and Elijah.”

It worked for Simon. It did not work for Elijah.

It was really hard watching him writhing in pain, nothing was helping him. I even resorted to the typical Tylenol/Motrin alternating, and it was just not working. I remember thinking, “There has to be a better way. There has to be something I can do.”

That is the moment. I can pin it and say that is when the inner matriarch awoke in me, and I knew that I needed to start learning.

The morning comes, he's still in a lot of pain, but I'm still holding out hoping I don't have to take him to get the antibiotics. But then that whole day, he's not doing well. So, I relented, and we took him and got him the antibiotics.

But I just kind of made that decision in me that never again — I am going to find a better way.

So, that's the second key event that kind of spurred me along this journey.

Then, I would say another important event was a few months after the ear infection with my son, my niece came down with pertussis — which if anyone knows about that, that can be a very scary, serious illness. They, of course, gave antibiotics but that doesn't help the symptoms of the sufferer.

I remember thinking, “Wow!” That was a moment again where the insufficiency, the inadequacy of the allopathic paradigm was just smack in my face again. I kept thinking in my innermost thoughts, “I have to keep searching for something. I can't, as a mother, depend on this (in my opinion) failing medical paradigm.”

I kept searching, searching.

 

And then as I mentioned, I had gotten on to the Weston A. Price diet through the Sally Fallon book. So, I was doing raw milk. I was just starting to culture vegetables. I'm not a good cook. It sounds silly, like, how hard could it be to culture vegetables? But I was literally thinking I need someone to show me this.

 

So, I reached out to a fellow mom who had been doing that for a while. She came over to my house; we were chopping up veggies, putting them in the brine. We're talking, and we chatted for a long time.

 

It wasn't until the very end of our meeting that she just happened to say, “Have you ever heard of homeopathy? Have you ever heard of Joette Calabrese?” That was pretty much the end of our discussion. It wasn't like we discussed it anymore or delved into it, because it was at the very end of our meeting.

 

But that's all that I needed. As I say, if Weston A. Price opened the door, Joette blew it open!

 

Because once I delved into what Joette had to offer, I thought, “This is it! This is what I have been looking for. This is what my mother's heart has been aching for. Something that I can start learning so I can take care of my sick child. I can take care of their needs. I don't have to wait until nine o'clock in the morning when the urgent care opens, and I have to take them to the doctor — and all they're going to give me are harmful drugs with side effects. I have something that I can learn, and that I can do!”

 

That to me was the gift from God. It was something that I can totally see His hand in each step of the way. Every event, every heartache, every failure, led up to that “aha moment,” and I am so grateful for it.

 

Kate:  It offered you a solution. It offered you hope. It offered you the feeling of empowerment.

 

Jordan:  Absolutely. I don’t think I could become the mother I am supposed to become without homeopathy. I truly believe that.

 

Kate:  From that moment, you decided I am going to learn about this, and you went onto Joette's website? How did you learn then more about homeopathy?

 

Jordan:  It was a blur because once I discovered it, it was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. I couldn't stop.

 

I think I went on the website, and I discovered she's got classes! I love classes!

 

I'm kind of an academic by heart. I love learning. I love things being organized, as you know, Kate. I like things in an organized manner. I'm not a Google person that likes to Google things in kind of piecemeal information. I want it laid out systematically, comprehensively, intelligently.

 

So, when I saw Joette's list of classes, I thought, “This is for me!” And it had what I was looking for, Antibiotic Alternative — and that was the first class I took.

 

I have since taken also the Drug-Free family course.

 

But I remember just begging my husband, “Please can we find the funds to do this class? Can I take it now?”

 

God bless him. He said, “Yes, you can do this. I know that you need this. This is what our family needs.”

 

So, right away, I mean, almost within a week of hearing about her, I was signed onto her Antibiotic Alternative class and just gobbled that up.

 

Kate:  Then you started a Study Group, too, right?

 

Learning is Key

 

Jordan:  Right. So, learning is key. Self-education is so critical to this. But I think another huge part of this is relationships.

 

So, I discovered that as much as I was learning, I needed women around me to support me, encourage me — obviously be another source of information — but primarily, I was looking for community support. That is why I began my first study group. Again, this was only a few months after I had started learning. But I thought I learned a lot, but I think what we can offer each other is support.

 

Kate:  Jordan, let's stop there for a second. Tell us how you went about starting a study group because I know there are a lot of listeners that might be a little nervous about starting a study group. But they want the same thing as you, right? They would like a community of people to come alongside them and learn together and support one another.

 

So, tell us how you went about finding those people and starting the group.

 

Jordan:  The very first thing I did was to email. Remember that woman I talked to you about who came to my house to ferment carrots or vegetables? I reached back out to her, and I sent her an email. I said, “I'm so amazed, impressed with what you have shown me. What do you think about joining together and recruiting women?” Because I didn't really know a lot of women besides my sister who could potentially be interested.

 

So, I teamed with another person is what I did — you know, that was of the same mindset. She talked to some of her women in her mom's group. If any of you are a part of a mom’s group, a homeschool group? So, that's where she reached out.

 

Then I had my sister who I was close with and invited her to consider doing it.

 

Then another friend who had never heard of homeopathy, but we had talked about holistic things before … cod liver oil, colloidal silver … things that indicated to me, “Okay, she's probably somebody that would be interested.”

 

Then I sat on it for a while, and I would invite more people.

 

And then I did … I got some people back saying, “I'm not interested.”

 

And that's okay. I think those of us that start groups have to be prepared for that.

 

Then I kept sitting and thinking, “Who else in my church? Who would be interested?” And then another woman came to mind. She was somebody that I knew drank raw milk.

 

I guess the way I did it was, number one, I teamed with another woman. Number two, I just considered those who I had seen developing what I think to be healthy lifestyle habits: raw milk, trying to use holistic things instead of drugs. So, that’s where I went with it. A lot of these women had not heard of homeopathy but were open once they were introduced to it.

 

Kate:  That's what I did as well. I reached out to a lot of homeschool moms and asked them. You'd be surprised. Even if someone tells you no right now, they may at some point come back. It just may not be their time to learn it right this minute. But usually, they come around and want to know, “Hey, what are you doing that seems to be working really well.”

 

Great advice. Thank you.

 

Let’s move on to how you walked forward in this. You've taken a class; you have started a study group. I like what you've said about what Joette has given you. So, tell us about that.

 

Jordan:  I think many of us who have been part of Joette's circle (I'll call it) for a while, know what a gift she is. I mean, I've taken other classes and other subjects before. I love learning. I love studying things. What makes Joette uniquely different is not just that she has good information — which she absolutely has amazing information — but I think with Joette, she is not just a teacher; I consider her a mentor. That to me is critical in learning any life skill.

We live in an age I'd call the “Age of Google.” We're used to “when I want to find something out, I just type it into my search bar. That's how I find out information.”

That is how you find out information, but that's not how you grow. That is not how you truly learn to acquire new life skills. That is not how we're built. We are human beings; we're flesh and blood. We need to be shown; we need to be mentored.

Even though Joette may not come into my home and make bone stock with me and be there to consult when I need, like, “Hey, my son has this, what kind of remedy should I give him?” but she has made herself available in other ways.

She has Facebook Lives, where you know she's connecting with her people. She loves her people. She writes blogs endlessly. She has these classes. She has a real presence about her, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. That's what I needed because I think mentoring is important.

As I mentioned, I was a youth minister before being a homeschool mom. And one of the things I learned in my years as a youth minister is that teens will not come to know God unless you walk with them. It is not enough for a youth minister like me or anyone else to get up there and preach and talk about God. “He is so amazing, and you guys need to read your Bible, and blah, blah, blah, and you guys need to pray.”

They want to be shown. They want to be shown by people who care about them.

That is how I feel about Joette. I know it sounds cheesy, but I think Joette cares about us. That is what has allowed me to really learn from her.

It has inspired me to want to continue learning because there are days where we are being pulled in different directions as moms, and there's information overload. So, who do you look to? Who do you trust for your information?

Because Joette mentors and she cares and she imparts wisdom — she imparts a mindset — I think that's what makes her approach so different than most people out there, even other homeopaths out there. So, I think those who have been learning under her would agree with me that Joette mentors, not just teaches.

I think, too, another thing to add to this is that motherhood can’t be Google. We need to be shown. Even if we’ve had good mothers or maybe we haven’t had good mothers, as we go through a mothering we need to be shown by other wise women.

How do we do this? How do we take care of our families?

We need to be inspired along the way. And I feel like Joette, once again, she fills that gap.

A lot of us are disconnected from the generations of mothers who have gone before us. We are really disconnected from the wisdom that many of these women knew. They knew how to take care of a fever or not take care of a fever — however you want to look at it. They knew what kinds of foods to give their kids. They knew that sunlight was important. They knew all these things that you would think that we would know now, but we've lost. We've lost that thread connecting us.

I feel like Joette kind of picks that thread back up and says, “Here's the wisdom that you've been looking for. Here is how you do it.” That has been invaluable to me because I want to be mentored. I want to be shown and not just told.

Kate:  Just like the fermented veggies, right? Yeah?

 

Jordan:  Exactly.

 

Kate:  You want to have someone to come along side you and help you walk this path and you go one step further and you say that she empowers to be a …

 

Becoming a Matriarch

 

Jordan:  Matriarch. Yes! Like I said, I think that that moment for me of realizing the difference between a mom and a matriarch was when my son was really ill with that ear infection. How awful it was watching him, and I could do nothing.

 

The way I see it, Kate — and some may disagree with me — but you are a mom by birth. You don't have to grow into that. That’s what you are when you have a child, you are a mom. In my estimation, a matriarch is somebody now who has taken being a mom to the next level — a mother who has acquiring skill; who is seeking out the knowledge; who is making it an art to be a mother.

 

I looked up in the dictionary what a matriarch is. There are a couple different definitions, but one that I thought was super-poignant and that speaks to the way I'm looking at this is this:

 

It says, “An older woman who is powerful within a family or organization.”

 

And the word powerful caught my attention because I think a lot of us moms have abdicated that power to, in this case, let's say, the medical field.

 

“Well, they know what's best. They know what our child needs. We need a doctor to help us take care of our children.”

 

And not to say that there's never a time for that. But I would say that for the most part, a lot of moms nowadays have given over the responsibility of mothering their child to the medical industry. And I can say that because that is where I was a year and a half ago. I was waiting for urgent care to open up when my son was sick because I felt like I couldn’t take care of him.

 

And that’s what didn't sit right with my matriarch heart. It didn’t sit right with me.

 

Joette and her knowledge and her wisdom and her mentorship has given me back the power. In a sense, she has given me back that ability to be a matriarch.

 

I don't know everything, for sure, but I'm learning. And I've already been able to take care of certain things in my family where I’d have been running to the doctor.

 

Now Joette has given me that ability to say, “No, I'm the one taking care of my child now. I can trust my judgment. I know what’s best.”

 

But again, as Joette says that that then puts the responsibility on me to learn, of course. But what a freeing feeling to know that I have that power as a mother now that I didn't have before, and now I can be a matriarch.

 

Kate:  I love what you're saying, Jordan. I think that is an amazing revelation. That is why we all love homeopathy, right? Because we feel empowered. We feel that we don't have to fear. We feel like we can do it. We can be the healers in our family. We do know, we have an instinct as a mother that is built in.

 

So, now, we've gotten this big vision, right? We know what we can be, and what we want to be. But sometimes there are things that stand in the way of that. I think you have some good insight into that.

 

Polar Opposites: Complacency

 

Jordan:  As I reflect on my journey with homeopathy, I've come to see the different attitudes that can really halt us from pursuing this.

 

The first one that I would say … I call them the polar opposites. The first polar opposite I'll talk about is the complacency — or maybe just the resistance to really getting into this. Complacency can come from several different places … maybe just that feeling of comfort because we feel comfort in maintaining the status quo. It is hard to break outside what you are already doing.

 

I was reminded of “The Truman Show.” Have you seen “The Truman Show”?

 

Kate:  No.

 

Jordan:  Okay, so, maybe our viewers haven't seen it either. But if you haven't, it's a great movie. I would rent it, watch it.

It's Jim Carrey, and the whole plot is about this man who has grown up from infancy to adulthood under the camera lens. He doesn't know he's being filmed and that his life is basically being broadcasted live to the whole world. But the whole world tunes in to watch Truman everyday doing his normal stuff, and he has no idea. He literally is put in a bubble where his city, his hometown, his job, everything is there. The whole movie is about them trying to keep him in this bubble because if he ventures outside of that bubble, he'll realize, “This isn't real, I'm not living in a real life.”

Then one day, he gets so fed up with the bubble, and he sets off to go across the ocean. It's stormy, and he presses through the storm, and he gets to the end of this bubble, and his ship penetrates the end of the studio.

The end of the movie is — sorry, this is a spoiler alert, but … I just ruined this movie but it's such a good analogy! The front of the boat penetrates the bubble. He realizes, “Wait a minute. This isn't a real sky; this is a wall!”

There is literally a door to go outside of this bubble. He has to make a decision. “Am I going to open this door? Am I going to leave what's comfortable? Am I going to leave the reality that I'm used to? Because I don't know what's on the other side of that door.”

 

And so, he has this conflict, this moment of decision. But he ends up opening the door and walking out.

And I feel like that's for me, homeopathy. Taking this door that was opened. It is scary! It's scary to step outside the normal, medical, allopathic paradigm because there's a false sense of security there. But once you realize there's more beyond this, it's exciting, but it is scary. It definitely takes you outside your comfort zone.

 

That's something that I think we have to be aware of in ourselves, that “Yes, we have to press beyond that storm … that door.”

 

That is good for us to keep in mind, too, when we're sharing it with other people because it can be a little bit scary to think, “Hey, there's this paradigm. It's amazing, but you’ve got to take responsibility; you've got to learn; you've got to grow as a person to use this.” That's a big challenge that we as moms can and should take, but it's difficult. So, that’s, I guess, important to keep in mind.

 

Kate:  That's why those Study Groups come in handy, actually, because you have those other moms, those other women, to walk alongside of you.

 

Jordan:  Right. I think that's why the relationships are so key.

 

Kate:  Jordan, you mentioned the polar opposites. Tell us now the other extreme of the complacency.

 

Polar Opposites: The Savior

 

Jordan:  Right. So, we can be complacent or resistant, but then on the other side, we can go to the other extreme where we take this, and we become in our own minds, “the Savior.” We're going to fix everything! We're going to fix every ill that comes our way.

Not that that eagerness, that enthusiasm, is bad — I guess I'm speaking about myself here — when it becomes a compulsion to fix everything, or that there's this idea that I can fix everything, that can lead to burnout. It can lead to frustration.

The reason why I say that is because I was starting to experience that earlier on when I had been introduced to all this wonderful information.

Just like “The Truman Show,” I had opened the door and stepped out. There's this whole, brand new world! Like a kid in the candy store, I'm going around just grabbing up all the information that I can hold.

Then my kids started to experience these coughs. I thought, “Great, I'm going to tackle this. I know what to do.” And, I will tell you, I pulled out Joette’s Cold and Flu chart. I was looking on all of her blogs. I was looking on the student Facebook page. I mean, I tried so many remedies: Kali bich, Pulsatilla, Rumex, Spongia, Drosera. I mean, I was just like at my wit's end, I could not get these coughs to go away.

I had come to this realization of I can't put all of this pressure on myself to save and fix everything.  

Homeopathy is a wonderful, life-changing paradigm, but it can't make me a savior, in a sense, I guess, where now I'm the one who's going to fix everything in my family. Like I said, it can lead to burnout. It can lead to frustration. We are learning; we are growing. Sometimes failure is part of that growth.

I'll be honest, my first experience of homeopathy wasn't win, win, win, win. It was kind of a string of failures as I was learning how to use these remedies. I could have been easily taken off the path if I had allowed that frustration to kind of overshadow the excitement that I initially had.

So, I really had to temper myself. I had to kind of talk myself down and say, “You know, I need to give myself a break here. I need to give myself permission to just learn and grow along with this paradigm.”

Matriarchs are not formed overnight. I am still young, and there’s lots of years ahead of me. So, even these failures I can use to put in my toolbox. Put that down as, “I remember going through that. I remember what that was like.” I think wisdom goes a long way in determining, “When do I act?”

I remember Joette — I don't know where it was because I listened to all of her podcasts, have read all of her blogs. So, I don't know where she said this, but I remember her saying, “When you don't know what to do, don't do anything.”

 

That was a big “aha moment” because I'm a Type A, get-it-done type of personality. And it’s hard for me to sit back and not do anything. But I agree with that — unless it's a true emergency — sometimes the wise matriarch says, “You know what, I'm just going to let this ride out. I'm going to comfort my child. I'm going to observe my child. I am going to be there for my child, but I don't know what remedy to give. And that's okay.”

 

Like I said, it's part of learning. I think that's important for a lot of moms out there, maybe who might be experiencing failure with this and thinking, “Maybe it's not for me. Maybe I'll never figure this out.”

 

Don't think that. That's part of the journey. It's part of being a matriarch, quite honestly. Just to stick with it and be encouraged and keep learning.

 

Kate:  You know, you're right. We don't always get it right. No matter how many years of experience you have with homeopathy.

 

Let's jump now to some of the ways that you've used homeopathy. Tell us just a couple quick stories about your family, and what you've done.

Pneumonia/Bronchitis and Ear Infection

Jordan:  My first big win — and this was an exciting one for me — was my son Simon when he had been having this cough for several weeks. He was starting to get better. This was right around Christmas time. I remember it vividly because it really impacted our ability to really celebrate because he was not feeling well.

 

I remember he woke up the morning after Christmas Day. He was not doing well — heavy chest coughing really heavily. He's six years old. He's a little guy … sort of. In my eyes, he's little. My husband looks at me, and he says, “I think we need to take him into the doctor.”

 

And all of my training (I had read Dr. Robert Mendelssohn's book like Joette recommended), I'm thinking, “Oh, man, I don't know. I think we should really keep trying these remedies.” 

 

Anthony was like, you know, “I don't know. We really got to change something.”

 

Then I thought about it, and I remembered in the Antibiotic Alternative class, Joette talked about those really bad chest colds that could be bronchitis, could be pneumonia, but certain remedies work for all of those. So, I went back, and I listened to that.

 

I googled “Joette Calabrese bronchitis,” “Joette Calabrese pneumonia,” and just comparing notes and seeing kind of what remedies she had used for these conditions.

 

That day I started administering them to him. Within four hours, he had a huge shift. He had been lying in his bed earlier, and now he was out playing and running in the yard — still had the cough, but huge mental shift, huge behavioral shift.

 

Kept administering the remedies. And then that night was big. Because up to that point for about two weeks, during the night, you'd hear him coughing, coughing, and it was really concerning to me. But that night, no cough! That was huge. I knew, “Okay, this is the right way; this is the right direction,”

 

You know, the convalescence period took a little bit. But, man, I could really see a difference within, like I said, four hours. And then by 24 hours — significant shift. I was less worried. I was not as concerned. He was doing great. I was doing great because I was feeling better. It was a huge win for me because I didn't have to take them into the doctor.

 

Had I not taken Joette's class, had I not been reading her blogs, I would have been dragging him in the day after Christmas into the doctor. That was just so freeing to see, “Wow, this is what it could be like. I can really do this!”

 

So, that was my first big win.

 

The other one that happened shortly after that was my daughter. She had, lo and behold, an ear infection very similar to the one that she and my son had the previous year. As I mentioned that previous year, both had to be on antibiotics. But this time, I was ready, I had taken the class.

So, that night, she woke up in the middle of the night holding her face. At first, I did not know what was going on, but I reverted to my training: observe, observe, observe. I'm just watching her trying to figure out, “What is it?”

Because I think that's important, too, for us moms … is that sometimes we need to just spend some time observing, to really get the full picture of what's happening so that we know what remedy to choose. I sort of didn't do this here. I observed for a little bit, but because my anxiousness to help her was so strong, I thought, “She has got a sinus infection!” (The way she was holding her face, describing her pain — and she's not really describing it. She was three.)

So, I started administering that protocol to her and no change after three doses.

 

But I kept observing her. I kept looking to see, “Okay, is there a shift in her symptoms? Is there a shift in her behavior?”

 

She was still pretty much doing the same thing. It looks like she was still in a lot of pain. But then I noticed she was holding closer to her ear. That reminded me of what she was doing last year when she had her ear infection. I thought, “That's what it is! It's an ear infection!”

 

So, after several hours of misdiagnosing and mistreating it, I reverted to good old Pulsatilla for ear infections — administered that every 30 minutes because she was in quite a lot of pain. As I mentioned, I had already been giving her the wrong remedies for a while. So, I kind of wanted to see if we would get some improvement.

 

First dose, second dose, third dose, no change.

 

I was thinking, “Man! Really? Come on! Why isn’t this working?” I was kind of starting to have that panic that I think a lot of us moms can relate to when maybe it's not working.

 

But I thought, “No, no, no. Four-dose rule, four-dose rule. I got to stick to the four-dose rule,” because I knew I hadn't gotten to that four-dose yet to really see was this the right choice. I gave her that fourth dose, and I kid you not, after two minutes, fell right to sleep for rest of the night. No pain the next day. It was gone; it was finished.

 

I point that out because number one, it's important to remember your training in those moments of fear of panic.

Even taking a step further back, to know your training, you have to be trained. So, reading as much as you can, listening to the podcast, taking a class. When you make it second nature to you, those facts, those thoughts come more readily to you when you are distressed.

If it's kind of still like a second language to you … homeopathy, because it is like a second language — all these words, all these ways of thinking, it is like learning a second language. Like, anytime you learn a second language, you have to be immersed.

When we immerse ourselves in this world of homeopathy by listening to it occasionally throughout the day or whatever, it becomes second nature so that in those moments that’s where our mind goes when our child's really not doing well, and it is easy to abandon and panic. But that kind of staid me in that moment when I didn't see a shift in her yet, and I was starting to get really concerned. It took me back to that time where I was not able to help my son when he was really sick. And I thought, “No, I've got to stay the course. I've got to see this through.”

It did, it really worked.

Now that doesn't happen every time. But it just showed me how important it is to, again, be trained, remember my training and stick to it in those moments.

Kate:  Jordan, those are some really great examples and really wise words that you said in those success stories that you have. I love how you said to observe, and that's key.

 

And how change … there may not be a shift in the physical thing that's going on, but there's an emotional shift.

 

Then the other thing that you said with your daughter was that four-dose rule, and how when it worked, she fell asleep, and she slept. Both of them — you talked about them sleeping well that night.

 

Those are great things to look for because sometimes we don't see that physical shift like we want to, but the emotional is really the first thing that seems to change a lot of times. So, really great observations, Jordan. Thank you for sharing that with us.

 

I want to wrap this podcast up by just having you give us some words of wisdom. You have so many great things that you've shared, but just give us your ending thoughts.

 

Jordan:  I want to close by repeating a quote that Joette has in her Feminopathy course. It's by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. He says, “To a great extent, the level of any civilization is a level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice and goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”

 

So, if the kind of women we are impact society, how much more do we impact society based on the level of mothers that we are or that we become?

 

Are we moms by birth? By just happenstance? By going through the motions? Or are we aspiring to be powerful matriarchs? I know some of what we've talked about today can seem daunting or challenging. It can be because it requires that we step outside the norm, our comfort zone, what we've been used to what most people are doing around us.

 

But I would say you have it in you. You have been built to be a matriarch. So, grab hold of what Joette has to offer.

 

Joette:  As I hope you know by now, on my blog, podcasts and Facebook Live, I offer as many protocols for simple conditions as I can — for free, without affiliates or advertising.

 

But let me be clear. When it comes to more complex conditions, it’s key that you learn how to use these medicines properly. I want you to be well-trained. So, I save discussions of the more involved methods for my courses in which I walk students through each method with step-by-step training.

 

In these podcasts, I focus on those students of mine who have already tunneled in and learned how to take care of themselves, family, friends, and pets, and even livestock using homeopathic medicine. Many of these students began their education by participating in one of my Gateway to Homeopathy study groups. And now, after taking one or more of my courses, they’re well-trained to use my specific brand of homeopathy.

 

I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you to follow in their footsteps. With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

 

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, and iHeartRadio.

 

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit for your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

 

These Moms with Moxie podcasts are designed to be inspirational, not specifically educational. No Remedy Card is provided.