Dorothea Bull

In my basement, tucked away behind boxes is a small grey suitcase.  It belonged to my mother and is all that remains of a life of 89 years.  As my brother, Craig, and I moved her from apartment to assisted living to nursing home, I was mindful how each move reduced her worldly things until all that was handed to me on that last day was this small suitcase containing … I’m not sure what.

What remains of a life that can be held in a few handfuls?  What was so important to hand on? I haven’t found the day that I envision when I will make a cup of tea and open it to see.   But, one thing I know I will find, for certain, is her legacy to the world: the notes for her book on healing.

I don’t need to read those notes to be informed, impassioned, and motivated by her story.  Her story is the preface to my own.  I have been as much shaped by the history of depression, manic depression, suicide, and tragic separation as I have by her spirit, faith, wisdom, and pioneering courage in natural medicine.  This was the time when well trained doctors of integrity went to jail for their audacity in promoting health and healing through nutrition, vitamins, homeopathic remedies, physical manipulation, and the healing power of prayer!

At fourteen my mother, Dorothea (Dottie) heard her father call out to her.  Mom was the oldest of four, and closest to her beloved dad.  She ran to find him collapsed on the bathroom floor with his wrists slashed.  It’s a small wonder that: a) my mother would grow up to be a registered nurse and that, b) she would suffer from depression for most of her life. Growing up in a Fundamentalist Baptist family probably didn’t help much because there is little empathy for ‘weaknesses’. Any suffering would undoubtedly be shoved deep down – only to rear its ugly fearful head when least expected.

When I was born in 1953, my mother was already dealing with depression and it was a wobbly time with various housekeepers and hospital visits until I was three.  My first conscious memory is of my father – on a Sunday evening – walking my weeping mother down the stairs explaining to a tearful little me that mommy would be back when she was all better.  That would be nearly five years later.  In that interim my mother would undergo, the then experimental, electric shock therapy and insulin therapy, followed by convalescence for several years at a healing retreat and then to begin a new life in a faraway town before finally coming home to reclaim her family when I was nine.

My mom came home with resolve and passion.  Resolve to reunite her family – my older brother Doug had been sent to live with various family members from the time he was 13 as he was a boisterous teen.  My second older brother, Craig, a little boy, would run away to secretly meet my mom at my aunt’s home thirty miles away.  During her ‘illness’ it was part of the treatment to sever all ties with the family.  Fortunately my mother’s younger sister did not agree and made her home the refuge for mother and son. I was too young to be part of those schemes.   Her passion was ignited by her own suffering and her determination to spare others the same fate if she possibly could.

Mother lived at Hidden Springs, a rehabilitation farm where patients worked on the farm and received counseling.  Many new treatments were being utilized and spiritual practice was the very core of the program.  Vitamin therapy, hypnosis and perhaps other innovative processes – like psychoanalysis – were used.   At the end, the director, fascinated with the new LSD treatment experimented on himself and I’m not sure what happened, but he left his centre, his family and may still be in an ashram somewhere.  It was a blow to my mother and all the rest who looked to him for leadership – but it may have been the catalytic circumstance that pushed my mother out of the nest of safe sanctuary and back home.

My mom raised us on Adelle Davis  – liver, fish, greens, and grains.  Vitamin C and calcium, homeopathic sage pills for colds and viruses, and cider vinegar and honey to alkalize the body. Osteopathic and chiropractic adjustments kept the body in alignment and good flow and were the first response to illness.  These were the days of Dr. Abram Hoffer, proponent of orthomolecular medicine for the treatment of Schizophrenia, and Dr. Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Prizewinner, used Vitamin C and mega doses of vitamins for the preservation of health and the treatment of illness, including cancer.  My mother followed the groundbreaking research by these men – always seeking natural and effective resolution to her depression – rather than a drug, which created a dependence that lifted her up, but stole her joy.

These men risked their very reputations to speak out on their beliefs and findings.  Dr. Royal Rife who had advocated and proved electric frequency for the elimination of viruses and pathogens died in prison, discredited and broken in 1977.  His laboratory was destroyed and all his papers reputedly made their way to Canada where they were held in secret until recent years.  Even today when so much more has been proven and utilized – to wit – frequency devices used extensively for diagnosis like  MRI, CAT Scan and Ultrasound – are still referred to  as ‘pseudomedicine’ for therapeutic use.   To this day – lopsided legislation and agendas driven by the juggernaut of pharmaceutical corporations and medical associations continue to radically censor what the public hears.  Simple effective therapies are strangled in the demand for scientific evidence – while misdiagnosis and improper prescriptions of ‘legitimate’ treatments account for deaths – by some statistics – in numbers greater than cancer!

One of many doctors victimized by the medical association and supported by my mother’s efforts, was Dr. Josef Krop. Dr. Krop continues to practice today to heal environmental illnesses through natural procedures.   But then he was targeted and spent several years and over a million dollars in the ‘70’s to reinstate his medical license and his right to prescribe ‘alternative’ methods.   A few years ago, I found another doctor who was a contemporary of Dr. Krop’s.  He remains in hiding – literally – told by his lawyers, when he could not afford to fight for his lost medical license for practicing natural medicine, to ‘lay low’ and never speak out or set foot on a podium for fear of death!

When Carlton Frederick’s came out with Low Blood Sugar and You, my mother’s life was transformed.  In a way it was heartbreaking to realize that so many symptoms that had for decades immobilized her and taken her from her family were the result of a simple chemical imbalance. Debilitating psychological symptoms can be almost immediately remedied by a low carbohydrate diet and trace minerals!  Hypoglycemia is something that can catch up even the most nutritionally conscious.  The culprits aren’t as obvious as Twinkies. Minerals are so depleted from our diets – natural and otherwise – that replacing them in ways is the body can assimilate them is very difficult.

In the late 60’s, John Cade had discovered the use of the trace mineral lithium for bi-polar disorder.  It was finally approved by the FDA as a prescription drug and this set my mother free. It is interesting to note here that the ancients used alkaline waters which have a high level of lithium to treat depression.  Mineral water spas which for centuries have been the destination for wellbeing have also been proven to have high levels of this mineral.  One wonders why lithium must be prescribed when it can be so easily be taken by simply processed water we drink and cook with.  When elements are in their natural whole and complex state the body more easily absorbs them in the levels required.

Mother’s was a lone voice with near evangelic passion for natural therapies for wellness in a world where the GP was quickly being superseded by the specialist – experts – with prescription pad at the ready.  As a result she was considered a little bit nuts, by many, and harmlessly dippy by friends and family. I must confess when she gave my niece a bottle of Vitamin C for her seventeenth birthday while her ‘normal’ grandmother gave her a hand knit angora sweater; I thought my mother had gone too far.  That was before anyone had really heard of vitamin C and using optimum health as a defense against illness.

Tetracycline and penicillin were for infections, colds, and viruses!  And now we have super bugs, the threat of pandemics, autoimmune deficiency and environmental illness.  I was just told a story last week, that in some countries where antibiotics are rare, patients are given a course of penicillin and then, because penicillin goes through the blood with no change, the urine is collected and re-administered through IV – giving the patients a second dose!  The question that is begged is, “What is the chemical soup we drink in municipal water where identified contaminants are removed, but hormones and chemicals remain in tact to be ingested, unaware, by thousands?!”  I look back and realize Mother gave the most valuable gift she could – a gift of health and awareness. Today, my niece is a registered massage therapist who cares for her family homeopathically.

The year my mother came home, my dad bought a house two doors down from her sister in the country (now a suburb of Toronto).  My mom came home in the summer, we moved just before Christmas and one February morning I was wakened by my older cousin running into the house, past my bedroom shouting. “Mom has hung herself!”  My cousin Anne, three years older than I, was sent down to be with me.  We spent the day in my bed reading Anne of Green Gables out loud, unmindful of the enormity of the horror of that moment and its fallout that continues to echo today.  The children were all sent to relatives, who we did not know, for a week to ‘get over it’ and like good little Christians we jam packed our emotions and memories deep inside.

I had a few decades to go of my own mindless (unconscious) living and growing up and the eventual suicide of my beloved older brother, before I made two vows that I continue to keep:  First, the deep unconscious anguish that is as pervasive in my mother’s line as the blue eyed gene will stop with me.  And, second that what my mother began to discover for herself about natural healing that frees the spirit and heals the body must be the new ‘main stream’. Through LightBeam, I intend to open all doors for the light to shine into dark corners and for the breath of truth to blow away all that does not serve a whole life.

And what is a whole life?  It is a Life of health, happiness, productivity, creativity, kindness, love, vitality – of Well Being.    A life where we are exactly who we were created to be and have access to all that supports that: clean water, clean air, quality food, access to natural therapies, products, and excellent practitioners. Where ancient ways that have stood the test of time are respected; where science and technology are used to expand on what truly serves health and that those new sciences are freely available and supported by our government.

It takes courage and lots of support for anyone to stand up against outside influences to follow our own drummer – especially if we are not clear on what that tune is.  How do we get there?  By starting on the inside and working out.  There are many gentle therapies and practices that will help clear the debris of a dysfunctional script and help us discern our true purpose. The important thing to understand is that we are ‘whole’ and many memories are held in our very cells. As we release them it is important to clear their energetic influence from our bodies.  This is where any of the body work therapies can assist.  Access to nourishing and health enhancing products strengthens the core and fends against the unknown and unseen toxins in our environment.  We cannot be in control of every influence, nor can we ever be ‘perfect’.  Holism is the harmonic balance of all aspects that make up the human experience: body, mind, spirit, environment, society, and relationships.

LightBeam is the fulfillment of my vow.  What started as a personal journey toward healing has led to my commitment to share my experience with others.  Over the last twenty-five years, I have benefitted from many therapies – both common and esoteric.  I have sought out the unusual and new as well as the ancient. I have met therapists who I admire and love and those I wouldn’t let near me.  I am particularly fascinated with the technology emerging in energy medicine.  With the maturing boomers, natural health has become a trillion dollar industry.  That is good in one way and dangerous in another.  The individual needs discernment now more than ever.  And for the perpetuation of excellence in healing trends, that discernment must remain in the purview of the individual and never legislated!

The LightBeam wheel of websites is the forum for information: to hear stories of successes, to discover new products, find a practitioner, and to develop the criteria to discern fact from fiction.  It is the call to all who desire wellness to take charge of their own wellbeing.  It is the call to all who serve the wellness industry to become a unified voice against legislation that would thwart our freedom and access to health giving practices and products.  It is to inform as many people as can be reached that a life of health and happiness is our right and in our control.

My mother slipped into dementia ten years before she passed.  I know she was a woman away ahead of her time and she just let her light go out.  She got frustrated with a society who preferred to ‘take a pill’ rather than get well; angry at the system which denigrates wisdom and favours science – at any cost; and finally, weary of being a voice in the wilderness of those who could not hear.

Here we are thirty years later.  Thankfully much has changed and, who knew, Vitamin C would show up in milk and toothpaste as a sales feature!  Natural, holistic, and organic are the new buzzwords.  Now we have to be careful of excess.  What is the fine print on natural, holistic, and organic that warns us of those who would trade on our emerging sensibility.

And still:  legislation is pending at this moment that will curtail our freedom to choose natural therapies and products; natural therapies continue to be suspect by the medical mainstream, and forward thinkers in health continue to be remonstrated against.  Our health – yours and mine – is still governed by the corporate and institutional influences that make money on our illness and dependency.

LightBeam is created for you so that you can take charge of your own health and wellness. Make educated and qualified decisions and find products and services to support your choices.  LightBeam, like a windmill picks up velocity with greater activity – your activity. Take a moment, now, and create your profile on the LightBeam Community http://lightbeam.ning.com and begin to change your health and happiness destiny!

Blessings,

Marilyn