One would love to write about the coming summer and what we will be planting in the garden along with some tasty recipes to try, and yet, that doesn’t seem as prudent as the topic of cancer. For several years, this topic of interest has grown through care and concern for loved ones, neighbors and friends. Now, these concerns seem to be everywhere and all the time. What’s happening? Is it truly on the rise? What can and should we be doing about it, no matter what our age or belief or how healthy we think we are?
This January, my beautiful Aunt Julia passed away to farther shores and will be greatly missed. This issue of NITE Light is dedicated to her and her incredible life of joy, optimism, spirituality and hope for a bright future. Aunt Julia was the first ‘employee’ of herbs etc back in 1995. Wow, twenty years ago! She was a delight to work with and well loved and appreciated by our growing customer and client base. Aunt Julia worked at the counter answering questions, looking up remedies and encouraging the public to come to our free classes. She was great with color, sound and healing touch work. When my oldest son Christian was born, she helped us to raise him in the store and keep all aspects of what was to become herbs etc, NITE and NCC growing and becoming.
Last year, despite a healthy and positive life-style that would put the average health awareness person striving to be more like her, she discovered she had cancer and was given a short and limited list of options. She believed in her body as a temple and began an incredible journey into healing using natural remedies. We completely supported her decision to remove the initial cancer by surgery; this was a wise step in her plan. From there, her and my beautiful mother, her sister, would spend the next year improving an already incredible diet, intensifying a great herbal and supplement program, including body work, essential oils, homeopathy, light therapy, enzymes, metabolic and blood type focused foods, magnets, bio-photons, prayer, positive imagery, the support of her family and everything else that could be utilized.
Aunt Julia wanted her story to be shared. How did this optimistic, clean living, spiritual woman develop stage four cancer in her early 70’s? Although no one can truly define and know the physical, mental and emotional path of another, there were significant physical clues. Aunt Julia was the first to agree that emotions play a part in health and being so very human, she shared hurts and disappointments like the rest of us on her amazing journey. All of these she handled with grace and without unnecessary blaming of self and others. In other words, she was balanced and graceful.
She did live for many years with a loving and wonderful husband who preceded her in death and didn’t maintain the same natural health principles as her. He did smoke outdoors, and even still, this probably played a role in her health. Far more interesting, however, was the fact that their home in Beal City, Michigan, was literally on top of farm fields that were heavily treated with fertilizers and more. When Aunt Julia’s water was tested, it was found to contain items it shouldn’t. For example, the US government suggests that drinking water have a nitrate level of 2.3 or less and hers was 12.0. Additionally, the arsenic level was extremely high. When we read the description of a person affected by arsenic, she was astonished to discover her late husband had every one of the symptoms before his death, and she had several. She immediately took action and had her water cleaned and purified by Owens Soft Water of Clare. The state of her water was so poor, it took 3 additional cleaning tanks to get the numbers down into what the Owner of Owens Soft Water would drink himself.
For several years prior to this, she had been buying her drinking water and bringing it home in plastic jugs. That, itself, can be a problem due to lacking standards in bottled water and the fact that most plastic jugs contain antimony, another toxic contributor to cancers.
Although she was not ‘drinking’ this high nitrate and arsenic water, she was still bathing in it, and your skin is like a sponge to toxins in your water. Aunt Julia was so motivated to share this information that she wrote letters and sent them to her neighbors. She knew that even 5, 10 and 15 miles from farm fields and other factors were a good reason to have your water checked. The sad news is that in the past few seasons, 6 of her neighbors have died from cancers.
As I am saddened for my grandmother, mother and all of my Aunt Julia’s family in her premature death, it is important to follow through on her desire to make people aware of two important things.
Even a person with a healthy lifestyle has to consider all avenues that affect their health: not just food, but water, personal care products, our jobs and what they expose us to. Also, the need to do regular cleanses and essentially all the principles that natural health has encouraged us to look at. Most especially, Aunt Julia wanted us to remember the importance of nourishing our spiritual life. Releasing and forgiving the hurts of the past, not just being spiritual but studying it, growing, and learning the layers of our beautiful creations from the inside out. She believed that spirituality is a continuous path of discovery. It was her stories of miracles and angels that encouraged me to seek a deeper and more meaningful understanding of spirituality when I first began my pursuit of knowledge in health and wellness. When natural health was thought of as “new age” as opposed to the forgotten wisdom of the past, Aunt Julia stood by my side and hoped for a more aware future. Now, look how many people benefit from using God intended remedies.
It is my hope that Aunt Julia has fully realized what an incredibly important role she played in the development of the Naturopathic Institute from which she graduated, inspired and spiritually influenced what it has become today: a beacon of hope. Thank You, Aunt Julia.
What about you and your family? Where are the degenerative diseases within your inner circle? What can you do to make a significant difference now? Here are our top ideas for preventing, reversing and healing the challenges that are certainly occurring around you.
