Celebrating Podcast 100 with Joette and Perry

Joette: This is Joette Calabrese, and I’d like to welcome you to the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast. Women and men worldwide are taking back control of their families’ health and learning how to heal their bodies naturally, safely and effectively.

So, if you’re hungry to learn more, you’ve come to the right place. Stay tuned as we give you the tools — and the inspiration — you need as I share my decades of experience and knowledge using this powerful medicine we call homeopathy.

Joette: Hi folks, Joette Calabrese here.

Perry: Hi folks, Perry here.

Joette: We are doing something a little different today because this is our hundredth podcast!

Perry: Wow!

Joette: Because of that, we thought we’d celebrate with something just a little different because people ask me about this all the time. And I don’t know how much I want to reveal here, but Perry is my husband. So, I am going to kind of interview him, and he is actually going to kind of interview me as well.

We are not going to talk too much about homeopathy in terms of what to use or philosophy or theory or aphorisms, or anything. Instead, today we are going to talk about where we’ve come from, where we’ve gone, where we plan to go with Practical Homeopathy® and JoetteCalabrese.com.

So, hi, honey!

Perry: Hi, honey!

Joette: We are going to start by talking about, I guess … people ask me when did I start teaching. And I can’t believe people would be interested in this stuff! But they have asked me to … so, we’re going to do this.

Perry: We are going to give you a little bit of background on Joette and I because maybe that’s interesting. We don’t think it is, but let’s go ahead and try.

In the Beginning …

Joette: Okay. So, many people may know my story and how I started out with homeopathy, and I am not going to go over that because I have written about it on my blog, and it has been published, etc.

But instead, I will start talking about something that we never really talked about that much and that was that I used to teach many study groups in people’s homes and churches and church basements and schools, all over Western New York (which is Buffalo, New York area).

Perry: This was when the kids were a little bit older because I would go out at night as well. I owned a construction company. So, we didn’t argue about who was going to go to work. But I would come home from the day, have dinner, and plan to go back out again, and Joette would remind me, no, she had a study group to teach. I was staying home with the kids.

In many respects, I enjoyed that, but we needed to get Joette’s business up and going – or at least build her client-base — because that was what we were doing at that time.

So, she would go out, sometimes five nights a week!

Joette: Yeah, yeah. For years I did that. I would say it was probably two years where Monday night I taught in Black Rock (which is a section in Buffalo). Tuesday night it was Orchard Park (suburb). Wednesday was the West Side of Buffalo. Thursday was Amherst, New York (outside of Buffalo). Friday …

I mean it was really like this, and I was also teaching at the same time at Daemen College. I was teaching classical homeopathy. So, it was a very …

Perry: To the nurses.

Joette: Yeah, to nurses. Well, they were undergrad nursing school. It was a very busy, busy time in our lives, and we were living at that time …

Perry: In Colden.

Joette: … in Colden, New York, which was 15-acre farm that we had put together. And, we were homeschooling our kids. We had a lot on our plate.

Perry: Right. We did.

Joette: When I look back at it, I say, “Wow! What great years!” But it was a lot of work. We were very, very busy. We had two goats and 30 chickens, and you and the kids were raising bees.

Perry: Ahhh, we were raising bees.

Let me tell you about those goats, folks. We would try to pen these goats in. We had a 6-foot high electric fence. And these goats would climb up the side of the hut that I had built for the chickens and the goats, and they would leap over that fence.

Joette: And they were Pygmy goats.

Perry: Well, they were sold to us as Pygmy goats. Either the boys fed them too much, or we were sold a bill of goods.

Anyway, these goats would get out, and Joette would have clients at that time coming to the house during the day.

Joette: It was an office. It was actually my office connected to the side of the house.

Perry: One time — Joette could look out of her window, and the client was facing it in a different direction — and she saw the goat on the roof of an expensive car.

Joette: All four legs!

Perry: Like up on the roof of the car. And that was it.

At that time, I had one of my guys working at the house. They were fixing something — one of my construction crew. He ran out, grabbed the goat, dragged it — if anyone knows goats, they know what that’s all about — and put it back inside the fence.

Joette: But the fence was, I mean, it was six feet when you started, but because we recognized how grandly these goats could leap, we acutally … you built a higher fence! It went up to something like 10 feet!

Perry: Oh, my gosh!

Joette: And it was electric! They didn’t care!

Perry: They didn’t care.

Joette: No, they didn’t care.

One day, we got home from church, and it was summer. And the windows were open, but the screens were in place.

Perry: Right!

Joette: We came home, and one goat was on the piano — a baby grand piano. Again, all four feet! (It could have been the one that leapt up on the car. The other goat was on our sofa, and it was eating a page out of my repertory. Now, I freaked out because the repertory was an expensive book! At that time in our lives, everything seemed very expensive.

Perry: The couch was used.

Joette: It was my brother’s couch that he gave us.

So, anyway, it was eating a page out of the book. I know this sounds crazy, but it was actually a page that was in the section of the repertory under “stomach, appetite.” And it ate that page. It was so ironic, but that’s what she ate.

Perry: Did we tell them that the chickens followed the goats into the house?

Joette: Yeah. That’s true. Because once the screen … what happened was the goats had pushed through the screened window in the living room.

Perry: Leaped in!

Joette: And then, as a result of that, the chickens followed.

Perry: Their buds, the chickens followed ‘em.

Joette: Basically, we had a menagerie in our living room.

Perry: We had a barn in our living room.

Joette: How about the time … we just have to tell this story because it was so much fun.

We had a van, and we’d go out for the day or something and be with the kids. It was one of those slider-door vans, and the door was left open. We had emptied out the groceries. The kids had helped me empty them and bring them into the house, etc.

And I noticed a few hours later that the slider was open on the door. So, I directed one of the boys to go close the door, and he did.

The next day … and you know, every night the kids would put the chickens and the rooster to bed in their coop and close the door because otherwise the fox or possum would get in there. So, we had to be very careful of that.

So, they had put the chickens to bed, as we said, and then the next morning, they let them out.

But this morning instead of hearing the rooster crowing the way he normally did in a very bright and brilliant crow, we heard, <extremely muffled> “Cock-a-doodle-doo.”

“Something’s wrong, where is that rooster? It sounds like he is muffled like he is in a pillow or something.”

<extremely muffled> “Cock-a-doodle-doo.”

I looked out, and the rooster was in the car — feet perched on the top of the back of the driver’s seat — crowing! And we heard him off in the distance. I can’t tell you how disgusting that car was within less than 12 hours.

Perry: Yeah, but you know what, this didn’t teach us anything.

Because every year, we’d increase the size of our flock due to normal flock attrition. Joette found a breeder down in the southern tier somewhere that had a specific kind of chicken that she wanted the boys to experience. And so, she sent me down there in the car with boxes to collect these young chicks.

No, they were not chicks. They were …

Joette: Teenagers!

Perry: They were teenagers. So, I got about 20 of them in these multiple boxes in the van and closed the boxes up. Put them in the van — they were quiet — and started back on the thruway. And one of the boxes opened up, and the chickens came out.

Now, I am on the thruway, and they are flying around inside the car! People are driving by and looking!

Joette: Well, chickens make a mess in very short order — forget the feathers, that makes a mess — but the chicken poo is not very nice to clean up.

Perry: Horrible.

Joette: We had bees; we had ducks; we had a pond. We stocked the pond twice — because there was a crane that every time we put them in, the crane came and just gobbled up everything.

Perry: Ate the fish.

Joette: So, we just gave up.

Perry: We did.

Joette: We just used it for swimming and forget fishing.

Perry: Right.

Joette: Here is the problem. We are both city people, and we wanted to raise our kids in the country. And so, that’s what we decided to do. We really were green behind the ears. We really did not know what we were doing — even though we read up on it. We tried to do the best we could! It was an adventure. It was fun. There is no doubt.

Perry: It was fun. The bees, we have kept the bees for multiple years — through the winter.

Joette: Lots of honey.

Perry: And we did get a lot of honey out of them. We had a lot of experience.

One time one of our hives swarmed, went across the street and went into the eaves of our neighbor’s.

Joette: I don’t know if people know what a swarming hive looks like or sounds like. I had never seen anything like this. You see pictures in children’s books about a swarm of bees, but you have no idea how intense it is — the experience.

All five of us were outside. It was a Sunday afternoon, and we heard this “electric” sound, and it was really strong electric sound. And we didn’t live around electricity. I mean, we had electricity, but we did not have any …

Perry: Not high-power lines.

Joette: Perry, I think we looked simultaneously. We looked up, and there was this, what would you call it? A column.

Perry: Column. Black.

Joette: Black column that had to have been 10 feet wide and about 30 feet tall.

Perry: 30 feet tall.

Joette: It was loud, and the electric sound was the sound of the bees. They had all left the hives.

Perry: Bees. They were following the queen. There were two queens in the hive. And the one queen decided, “I’ve had it.” So, she left, and all the bees decided to follow her.

Joette: She needed Sepia, folks. She left the babies. She left her husband. She needed a couple of doses of Sepia 200, but it was too late because we didn’t know where she was.

Perry: She was gone.

Joette: So, we very carefully, without too much excitement …

Perry: Snuck back in the house.

Joette: We guessed, “Okay, come on boys, let us get in there. Come on, get the dog. Come on get the cat. Let’s get into the house.” We watched it, as you said, it travelled across the road.

Perry: It went into our neighbor’s eaves.

Joette: Yeah, we had to deal with that later on, didn’t we?

Perry: Yeah. Right.

Joette: We had to help them.

Oh, my gosh. So, we have lots of animal stories. You know, you don’t realize how interesting animals are, and how much they influence — how they used to influence — people’s lives until you’ve lived on a small farm like what we had. You know, lots of terms like “hen-pecked” and “ruler of the roost,” and so many … “sitting duck.”

Perry: “Sitting duck” and “dead duck.”

Joette: We experienced that! We experienced that a few times. We had some baby ducks. You want to tell that story?

Perry: Oh. No, that is not a good story to tell.

Joette: Yeah, it was kind of bad. Maybe we won’t do that … we won’t tell that. That’s not a very nice story.

Perry: Yeah, we won’t tell that story. No. No. No.

Joette: Alright. So …

Let It Snow; Let It Snow

Perry: Do we have any winter stories they might be interested in?

Joette: Yeah! Well, we lived on a ski hill.

Perry: For those of you who ski, you are thinking New Hampshire, Vermont, or maybe the West. No, no, no.

This was 750 feet elevation. It was longer to come up on the lift than to ski down the hill. But it was fun, and it was right across the street.

I taught there for, I don’t know, probably 10-12 years. Enough that all three of the boys went through the program; all three of the boys were teachers. It was a great experience for them.

Joette: Well, it gives them their social lives then because they were homeschooled.

Perry: Social life and teaching … the whole thing. Plus, of course, the reason I did it — it allowed us to have tickets for free for the season. Season’s passes.

The boys used to just basically put their skis on in our driveway, ski down the driveway across the street (in the wintertime it didn’t really ever leave the street) and then right down the hill.

We didn’t care. It was a small enough little area. It was a family-run ski area at that time. Everybody — the ski instructors and the ski patrollers — all knew my boys, and they would have reported to us …

Joette: So, they had lots of freedom; they just went off for the afternoon. Once they finished their schoolwork, they could just don their equipment, and off they would go for hours until dinnertime. It was a great amount of freedom for them and for us as well.

Perry: Right! No, it was fun, it was fun. Often, I’d come home from work, and I’d just don my skis, and I’d go over. Remember that one night I went over by myself?

Joette: I do. I knew what story you are going to tell. Go ahead, honey.

Perry: So, I went over at night, and it’d just snowed. So, there was a little, I don’t know, an inch or two inches of powder snow. If anyone skis, they know that’s pretty exciting. So, I went over night skiing.

Now, night skiing is a little bit challenging because the light causes the trails to become very flat. You can’t see the contours. You can’t see the bumps. You can’t see anything clearly. I was skiing on a particularly steep section of this hill. As I skied down, I came over the top of a little ridge where it dropped away a little steeper, and I am going too fast.

Suddenly, I realized I am in the middle of a slalom course! Now, “slalom course” means all of the slalom gates, all of the poles — and at the time they were bamboo poles — are all over this thing like an obstacle course unless, of course, you know the pattern. Well, I didn't know the pattern, and I'm in the middle of it and going too fast. Obviously, I fell — because I clipped the poll and fell.

In the language of skiers, when you make a terrible fall, it's called a “garage sale” because my skis were in one direction, and my poles were in another, and my hat and my gloves — gone.

I think what had happened is I had fallen forward and not done a complete forward roll, but instead landed on my shoulder blades with my head pushed into my chest — my chin pushed to my chest. Because when I awoke, I rolled over and sat up, and the natural thing you do, of course, is you start feeling — make sure everything works.

You feel your fingers; you wiggle your toes. Everything was working, but I had no idea where I was. I was totally disoriented.

I don't know how long I sat there, probably for 15-20 minutes, realized that my stuff was all around me, collected it, walked back up to the top of the hill rather than ski down. I walked back up to the top of the hill and walked home, put my skis down and walked in the house.

Joette: He looked strange. His pupils were dilated, I think. Now, I don't remember, but you had a look in your eyes as though you were not there. It looked vacant. You looked drugged or something.

I said, “What's going on?”

You said, “I had an injury, and I think I may have injured my neck or my head, and I don't feel so well.”

So, you laid down. I think you laid down in my office because I had a window seat there that was a good place for people to lay down. And you laid down there, and you said, “Yep, ah …” Then you were mumbling. You were speaking in a strange way.

So, I knew that there was a spine or a head injury. The first thing I did was, of course, I ran and got Arnica. At that time, I was still using Arnica for head injuries, and I would still consider using it again, but I used it in a 1M. And then I also got Nat sulph, Natrum sulphuricum. I waited a little while to see how he responded to the Arnica. I may also have used Aconitum, also very good for injuries and shock to the system.

Now, today, I would use something different. I would probably use the Banerji Protocol of Cuprum metallicum with Arnica because head injuries can result in seizures. I never saw seizures, but I would say for about an hour, you were not with us.

Perry: Right. I had no idea, but I felt like I couldn’t speak clearly. I clearly had very little memory of what had actually happened.

Joette: The next day, some friends came over — ski patrol friends or teachers (ski teachers) — and they said they had seen it, or they'd heard about it, and they wanted to know how you were … because they witnessed something, or somebody had witnessed something that did not look good. It definitely looked like a garage sale on top of that hill.

At any rate, it didn't take long. You started to feel better within about an hour and a half. I kept administering the medicines. I really didn't want you to fall asleep until we could see whether or not things were … had been moving along. So, we stayed up for a good amount of the night talking, and I was trying to keep you awake and feeding you, etc.

And you came out of it the next day. You said, “Yeah, my neck hurts a little bit,” but you were clearheaded by the next day, which was very relieving.

But I didn’t stop the medicines. I think we continued with Nat sulph. I think we gave another dose. It was a very high potency. I think I gave another dose or two over that day and into that night, and then that was it. I think it was about three doses of Nat sulph that you got with Arnica montana in a 1M, maybe every 15 minutes at the first, at the onset, and then I dropped back on that.

Perry: Wow. Is that when you had the boys start carrying Arnica with them in their ski parkas?

Joette: Well, I don't know if that was the onset of it, but that is part of our family tradition was that each child had to keep Arnica 1M in his ski parka because they would, of course, ski together often. And if one of them was injured, they knew to get the remedy out of their pocket and administer it.

They never had to use it. Isn't that interesting? In all those years. We were there for 23 years, and they never had to use it. They just didn't get injured that way. They get injured on the property with the goats and beestings and those kinds of things. It wasn't ever ski injuries. Interesting.

Perry: Right. No, that worked well.

Joette and Perry’s Chance Meeting

Joette: Let's talk about how we met.

Perry: Yikes!

Joette: Well, first, let me say we were both previously married. We did not have children in our previous marriages. So, when we met …

Perry: We were both married for seven years.

Joette: Yes, yeah.

Perry: We were both married, Joette only a year or maybe two years before I was married. We both came out of our marriages about the same time.

Joette: Yeah, well, you were two years later. But by the time we met, we had both been divorced for some time. We didn't have children in either of those marriages, thankfully. So, when we met, we dated for a few years.

But we met through our friend, Louis. I was involved with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and Louis was a member of the organization, Friends of the Philharmonic. I was the president of it, and we became friends. We were not dating. He was just a friend, and he invited me over to his house for dinner.

We had just finished dinner, and there was a knock at the door, and there was Perry standing there! Apparently, Perry was Louis's next-door neighbor, and he came by to, I don't know, why did you come by? Do you remember? I guess you had just … Oh, you had just been at that race…

Perry: I have just come into town, and I was just checking with Louis to see what was going on — what had happened on the street while I’d been gone.

Joette: But you were … Perry had come in, and he was all perspired and had gear on, and it was summer. I think it was June or something, wasn't it? Well, you tell me, you know the dates.

Perry: I don’t know.

Joette: So, you had just completed the Bermuda race. Perry is a sailor. And he had just gotten off the boat.

Perry: Well, let us back up a little bit. We live in Buffalo, New York, which is about 500 miles away from where the boat was actually. So, it's not likely I would have walked into the apartment with my sailing gear on.

Joette: Oh, maybe that was the romantic memory of mine.

Perry: Right. Literally, I had just flown into town. I was still probably dressed in a kind of grubby sailor’s “get-off-the-boat” clothing.

Joette: So, you came in.

Perry: I came in.

Joette: He started to talk to Louis. Louis, of course, introduced us and then Perry left.

I said, “Okay, Louis, here is the deal. He’s cute! I like that Perry. How about if we go out tomorrow night, and I bring my friend, and you bring Perry? And let’s all spend some time together!”

So, Louis did that. And indeed, that’s exactly what happened. The next night, Perry and I spent a lot of time talking and enjoying each other's company, and that’s where it all started.

Perry: Right.

Joette: Should I tell the story about at the end of the evening?

Well, I don't think it was that night. I actually think it was about two or three weeks later. I invited Perry up to my apartment. And my parents lived downstairs — it was their home, and I lived on the third floor.

So, I invited Perry up, and I said, “Why don't you come over, and we'll make flan?”

Now, I knew that he didn't know what flan was. Nobody really knew what flan was unless you were of Spanish origin. But one of my closest friends is Cuban, and she had taught me how to make flan years before.

So, I said, “Let's go to my apartment, and we can make flan.” So, I knew that he would misinterpret that, but I wanted to see how far I could take this little charade.

So, we went up to my apartment, and we very unceremoniously marched directly into the kitchen — and made flan.

I said, “Here are the eggs. You crack them. I'll get the milk. You whip. I'll pour. We will measure, and we will make flan.

So, for the longest time that flan has been a euphemism for many other words that I'm not going to use on this, but it really meant …

Perry: This is a G-rated podcast.

Joette: We were really going … we really made flan. That’s what we did!

Perry: I should add here, folks, that after that, then often, Joette would invite me over for dinner. She is Sicilian, as you know, and she would make pasta with meatballs. Well, I am not Sicilian. I am New England! We eat clam chowder and bland things. I would eat this spaghetti, and we would have a wonderful evening. And then I would go home, and I'd be awake all night long with agita …

Joette: The Italian slang word for indigestion — reflux.

Perry: … word for indigestion.

But I really liked Joette a lot. I didn’t want to destroy what we were building. So, I didn’t tell her. In fact, I really didn't tell her until after we got married.

Joette: That you were suffering horribly. You were out of commission the following day because of this red sauce and meat. Yeah, I know.

We fixed that though.

Perry: We did!

Joette: We did, Lycopodium did it. Lycopodium fixed that. We did not use something necessarily for indigestion, although that was part of it. Lycopodium 200 really made the difference in your life and so did Nux vomica. You’ve taken it on and off through the years for quite a long time. It has done a great job for your gastrointestinal tract.

Perry: Truthfully, folks, I loved the pasta and meatballs. I didn’t like what happened, but that doesn't happen anymore.

Joette: You can get away with it now.

Perry: I can get away with it.

Joette: I do not make it very often now, but that was what we used to do.

“I Have to Write a Book!”

Joette: Anyway, let us talk about when I was teaching these classes because I think that's interesting stuff. I know people might be interested in learning about how we integrated all of this with our family life, which was quite busy.

That was that I was being asked to speak on homeopathy. So, I felt as though I needed to build a skill set that would allow me to speak well professionally.

So, I bought this book by Dottie Walters, and the title — I actually wrote it down here because I wanted to remember — “Never Underestimate the Selling Power of a Woman.” It was an intriguing title. And I read the book, and it was all about professional speaking.

So, I read it and loved it. And then I thought, “I'm going to call this woman.”

She was in California, and I called her up, and she actually allowed the call to go through. I mean, she was an author, a professional speaker. If anyone knows anything about this professional speaking industry, she was at the head of it for many years.

She actually took my call, and she spoke to me for about 10 minutes. She said, “You must … if you're going to be a speaker, if you're going to be a teacher, you're going to teach in the college …” (At that time, I was not teaching in the college quite yet.) “You must have your own book!”

And so, I said, “Wow! All right.”

So, I turned to Perry when I got off the conversation, and I said, “I have to write a book. It's got to be, you know, about homeopathy and how to use it.”

Perry: Right.

Joette: So, that night, that night …

Perry: And the following day …

Joette: And the following day, that night, all night, all night …

We had dinner, put the kids to bed, and you and I sat in the living room. We had a fire in the fireplace, and you had your laptop on your lap. And I dictated to you, and you wrote feverishly. We banged out about maybe 75% of the book?

Perry: Right.

Joette: What was the title of the book? I have forgotten. Oh! “Cure Yourself and Family.”

Perry: “Cure Yourself and Family.”

Joette: “Cure Yourself and Family.” It is my first printed book.

Perry: Right.

Joette: Look, this is not published by Simon & Schuster. We publish ourselves.

Perry: We self-publish.

Joette: So, it was all night. We drank coffee. Into the day, the kids got up, did their chores, took care of the chickens and the bees and everything they were supposed to do, and went into their business of what they were supposed to do. And we continued working all day long.

I would say that when I say 75% complete, it was pretty much done within three days. Then we hired an editor.

Perry: Mm hmm.

Joette: Took photographs. You took the photographs and printed them.

Perry: Right.

Joette: That had to have been, what, 18 years ago? Something like that.

Perry: 2009, 2008, maybe?

Joette: Maybe, something like that. Maybe it wasn’t that long ago.

At any rate, that's how we got it done. Because I am — we both are actually; we're very suited to each other in this regard — we live with speed!

Perry: Right.

Joette: I don't mean the drug. I mean, whatever we decide we're going to do; we just do it. And we do it quickly!

We married later in life. We married in our mid-30s. We had our children later in life. We had our third child, and I was 43. So, the lifestyle that we wanted to give our children was really hatched at a later time in our lives. So, we felt as though we needed to move faster.

But maybe that wasn’t the rationale. We were always — I mean, I was always like that, and I think you were too — always someone who liked to move along with velocity.

So, when we started to print that book (and we also produced a CD), we actually used to print it in the dining room, remember?

Perry: Yeah.

Joette: We had a big dining room table. Every Sunday, my parents would come over for dinner and my brother would come as well. So, there were seven of us. Sometimes if someone brought a friend, it would be eight, nine, or ten of us.

After dinner…

Perry: We gave them all jobs.

Joette: “Yeah, okay. You print these pages. You punch the holes in this group of books. You scroll the …”

What is that called?

Perry: The coil.

Joette: The coil — into the binding aspect of the book. We would assemble these books en masse. We were able to assemble maybe, I don't know, 100 in a day when everyone was working full speed. And that's how we got them out.

So, it was … everything was done in our living room!

Perry: Now, dear Audrey does it all.

Joette: Yeah.

Joette’s First Client — and Office

Joette: My office was … The first person who contacted me and said she wanted me to take her case — I didn't have an office!

I mean, I've been studying and using homeopathy for almost a decade, I guess, or something like that. I'd been teaching it, but I hadn't decided to actually practice.

So, this friend asked me — actually, she wasn’t a friend; she was an acquaintance — asked if I would take her case. And I said, “Sure.”

So, it was in about two days. We had this garage that had a little room off of the back end of the garage that was a bicycle room.

Perry: Well, it was utility room, but we split it in half. So, there was a little room that was 4 feet by 6 feet. It was chockfull of bikes and all that.

Joette: Right. And our potting soil and that kind of thing.

Perry: Right. Right.

Joette: So, I got the kids. I said, “All right, let's get everything out of here.”

The two older kids helped me — actually all three of them helped me! We painted the room. We moved all of the outdoor stuff out and put in a table. I put in my books of which I had many. I put a lamp in … a chair. I didn’t even have a file cabinet in the very beginning!

It was all scrubbed down nice and clean. It had its own door to the outside, so it was perfect. Two days later, it looked like I had been there for a while. The first client was someone who has now become a very dear friend. (It was Joanne, honey. I don’t know if you know that.)

Perry: Oh, my gosh!

Joette: I know, isn’t that something? Joanne is a very close friend now. She was my very first client in that little, tiny office. Well, I'm small, and Joanne is small, so we fit!

Perry: We expanded the office so that it was 4 feet by 10 feet and a little bit bigger.

Joette: We kept changing it, and we put in built-in cabinets and file cabinets.

Perry: How long were you there? You were there a long time.

Joette: A long time, and then eventually we just …

Perry: We moved the cars out of the garage and converted the garage.

Joette: And built a very beautiful …

Perry: In fact, many images you will see is Joette sitting in front of a very large bookcase with a window on her right. That was where the old garage door was. We actually put a window there.

Joette: Beautiful, beautiful, old window.

Perry: That was the garage.

Joette: I loved that office. It was loaded with light. It was facing south and east, and because we're on a ski hill, I had a very pretty view. It was a great place to work for many years.

Perry: Yeah, remember, we put in the heating in the floor.

Joette: Yeah.

Perry: Which in Colden, in New York — they don’t name it “Colden” for any other reason than it gets very cold in the winter. So, the heat was great. The dog loved it. He came in; laid down on the floor. But anything above your knees was cold.

Joette: Well, because we had old windows, and then eventually, we replaced those, and the office was updated.

Perry: It wasn't insulated that well. So, we had supplemental heaters.

Joette: Yes, it was great.

So now, now, life is different. Our children are raised, and we've left New York State. We left that three years ago.

Perry: Yeah, beginning of 2018.

Joette: We moved to Florida. We now live in a townhouse. We like it here. We're very happy. The weather is fabulous.

Everything is remote. Shannon, who used to work in the office with me, and Audrey and Eileen used to work in the office with me and others — we were just stuffed into this … it was a good-sized space, but we were all in one room for quite a long time. And then it all went remote. That was one of the smartest things we did.

Perry: Smartest things now in today's day and age, in the current events — because our entire team now is each in their own private home, and it works really, really well.

Joette: It was seamless …

Perry: It was seamless.

Joette: … for us because there was no change for us during the lockdown. So, everyone works in their own home. We have people who work for us — they’re actually not employees; they’re self-employed. But they work for us in our work on a day-to-day basis, and it's wonderful. We have a great team of people.

Perry: We couldn’t do two things. We couldn't be what we are without you, folks — you, the followers of Joette, the students, the study groupers …

Joette: My clients …

Perry: We are so appreciative of you all and then our team members.

Joette: Yeah, we couldn't do it without …

Perry: We couldn't do it without them either.

Where is Practical Homeopathy® Headed?

Joette: So now, Kate said, “Why don't you talk a little bit …” (You know, because Kate usually conduct these interviews.) She said, “Why don't you tell folks where you're headed?”

So, let's talk a little bit about that.

Right now, we've got several projects in the works. It's not me — as much as I do the writing, some of the writing, and I have someone who helps me with my writing. It's a big, collaborative effort between a wonderful writer and me. But my focus is mainly on my clients and students.

But the rest of it is pretty much in your hands, Perry. You're the one who makes sure that things are put up properly and runs the events, and does the research and the marketing to find out what people are looking for.

Perry: Yeah, all the ideas spin out of Joette, and I just come along and hold them all together and figure out how we're going to get this out to you folks. I don't know, I'm kind of like the janitor with the broom. I kind of sweep it all up, hold it all together.

Joette: Makes it sound like I'm messy.

Perry: No, she’s not messy. I'm running to keep up. It is a great, exciting relationship — plus the fact that I like her.

Joette: So, yeah, I like you, too, honey!

What we have in the works now is we're putting together a children's curriculum. Perhaps by the time this is broadcasted that will be out. We try to put out at least one course per year. We are starting a …

Perry: Membership.

Joette: … yeah, a membership. We are going to be putting out a membership site. So, that's going to be kind of fun!

Perry: That'll be a great way for everybody to stay connected to Joette. We've got some exciting benefits from that.

Joette: I’m loving this. I am loving putting that together.

Perry: A lot of this is an offshoot of what we've been doing during this COVID-19 with the email we've sent out every day. The responses we've gotten from you, folks, have been incredibly heartwarming and motivating.

Joette: It really touches us; it really stirs us — daily.

Perry: So, we're going to keep it up behind a membership site, and we're going to create a force. This membership will become a force that we can really start to effect change, hopefully at a legislative level by supporting charities, by supporting mother's organizations.

Joette: Mothers and grandmothers. You bet.

Perry: We haven't even come up with a title yet. One of the titles included the word “partnership.” We're not sure how that's going to go. We’re not sure what the final name is going to be, but we're pretty darn excited about this because we love adding value to the experience. We love seeing — well, Joette can speak better to this than I can — but we love seeing you all grow and expand your knowledge.

[Editor’s note: The membership site — Joette’s Mighty Members — launched this week. Learn more about it at: https://joettesmightymembers.com/]

Joette: And have the opportunity to do what I was able to do. I hear about it every day from students and clients who have learned how to use a protocol here, a protocol there and are taking control of their family and their own health. It is heartwarming.

I really believe that homeopathy can change the world! I do believe that if we could get it out. But it has to be grassroots.

You know, Perry talks about legislative action, and that’s really, as far as I'm concerned, more to protect the industry of homeopathy. But I see this as a grassroots movement from woman to woman.

I always say, you know, I say, “mother and grandmother,” I don't mean that someone has to have a biological child. A mother can be someone who is tending wildlife. A woman can be someone who has a motherly instinct towards her pets, or her neighbor's needs, or her nieces and nephews, etc. So, although I use the word “mother and grandmother,” I use it a little bit more loosely than one might think.

So then the other project we've got is the Academy.

Perry: Right.

Joette: I don't think we're ready to disclose completely what we're doing there because we don't really know exactly what we're doing yet, but it is in the works.

Then we have another course coming up that we're pretty excited about. I don't know that we're ready to quite disclose that yet because we don't know when that will be. I don't want to drive everyone crazy.

But every year we'd like to put out at least one new course. Then of course, the other courses are all “evergreened” as you always say.

Perry: Right. Sometimes we add special, live Q&As to make them even more valuable for you folks. We love doing that kind of stuff.

So, this academy … that's … that’s goosebumps! That's exciting, and that's how exciting that's going to be.

Joette: That will include, of course, the kids’ curriculum. So, my vision of what we want to do is, you know, I'm in my late 60s. I plan on working to the last day that I'm capable of doing so.

I don't know that I'll always be at quite this velocity, but that's my goal. Because this work, meeting with clients and students, is my nourishment. It's an extension of mothering.

I took mothering to heart deeply as most mothers do, and I loved it. My children are now in one state, and we're in another. Although they come to see us pretty frequently, and we spend summers up north with them, this is an extension of my mothering.

To be able to help other mothers gives me such pleasure that I can expand this information so that people are not beholden to synthetic drugs and to a synthetic way of life.

I believe that the family is the mainstay, the structure, the fabric of society. And so, I think it's very important that we protect that, and we protect the mother's position of tending to her children and having full ability to do so if she so chooses and have the tools.

Perry: Right. The homeopathic tools.

Joette: Right. Perhaps it is a representation of my age. So, I offer no apologies, but I’m old-fashioned! So, a big part of what I do is, the mother is at the hearth, and the father is usually off in the world.

Now, it doesn't mean that we can't have a mother who's working.

It doesn't mean that we can't have a father who's at home.

But however, those roles are played out — whichever one decides to do the nurturing and the caring for the children on a day-to-day and all-day-and-all-night role — I want them to be equipped. So that the one who's outside of the house working can do their job and protect the family and protect the finances and ensure that the family is financially stable. Because the children and the mother — or whoever it might be, as I said — taking care of the hearth and home.

So with that, I think we've given you a little glimpse of our lives. We'll say good night or good afternoon.

Perry: Thank you again, all of you.

Joette: Thanks for listening.

Perry: Thanks for listening, thanks for being there.

Joette: God bless all of you.

Perry: God bless all of you.

Joette: Bye everyone.

Perry: Bye-bye.

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.

I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you. 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.

I am a homeopath with a worldwide practice working with families and individuals via Zoom. I'm also a teacher and most importantly, a mom who raised my now-adult children depending on homeopathy over the last 31 years. I lived decades of my life with food intolerances, allergies, and chemical sensitivities until I was cured with homeopathy, so I understand pain, anxiety, and suffering. You may feel that your issues are more severe or different than anyone else’s, but I have seen it all in my practice and in my work in India. My opinion is that nothing has come close to the reproducible, safe and effective results that my clients, students and I have achieved with homeopathy.

Call today and learn how homeopathy might just be the missing piece in your health strategy.

Joette is not a physician and the relationship between Joette and her clients is not of prescriber and patient, but as educator and client. It is fully the client's choice whether or not to take advantage of the information Joette presents. Homeopathy doesn't "treat" an illness; it addresses the entire person as a matter of wholeness that is an educational process, not a medical one. Joette believes that the advice and diagnosis of a physician is often in order.

We've provided links for your convenience but we do not receive any remuneration nor affiliation in payment from your purchase.

The Author disclaims all liability for any loss or risk, personal or otherwise incurred as a consequence of use of any material in this article. This information is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

In the Beginning …

Let It Snow; Let It Snow

Joette and Perry’s Chance Meeting

“I Have to Write a Book!”

Joette’s First Client — and Office

Where is Practical Homeopathy® Headed?

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