The green is almost too vibrant to process. So much beauty surrounds us this May in the islands. It is easy to forget about all of the politics and climate crises, gun violence and racial discrimination in the world. I find it valuable to pay attention, and also valuable to be able to relax and be in nature. Perhaps I will even allow my mind and body to relax to the point of blissful forgetfulness. Not ignorance, not unconsciousness, just being one with the human animal that I am and sorting through my thoughts as well as allowing my emotions to bleed naturally from my body to the point where I find mindlessness and true relaxation.

Of course, I have the added help of a new anxiety medication. I asked for this because in my efforts to cut back on smoking, I found myself commonly in a state of anxiety. Luckily, as these symptoms sprouted, I was only a week away from seeing my Psychiatrist, who was more than willing to intelligently adjust my medication to my current needs. I also have had continued issues with interrupted sleep, so hopefully this new anxiety medication as well as a slight uptick in another medication I take, will help me sleep better.

As a mental health consumer, it is important to constantly remember and remind ourselves that the medications are working for us, not against us. They are here to help us and aid us on our paths of recovery. It is so tempting to resist this readily available help because we are surrounded by a culture that leans toward becoming more natural, trying natural remedies or therapies over medications, and the leaning in this direction seeming to be the more enlightened, progressive path. This can be true, and I do see a naturopath that recently prescribed a probiotic treatment in place of antibiotics for an issues I was having. In this case, taking a gentle systemic approach to my treatment seemed to make the most sense. But it is important to remember that taking medications can also be the gentle solution to our delicate beings, as experiencing and suffering with symptoms such as anxiety, mania, depression, compulsive behavior or psychosis ultimately ends up being and feeling very violent. I am no expert, but I believe and have always believed that there is a balance to western medicine and wholistic or herbal remedies, and that there is definitely room for both in our world. Years ago I learned and wrote about, how allowing for both of these systems to marry and compliment each other was being coined as The New Medicine. Specifically marrying western technologies with eastern philosophies. But, I believe this is just one narrow way to describe what the New Medicine could actually be. On one hand this looks like western medicine opening their minds to all of the amazing discoveries of more “natural” practitioners, but it is more so the seamless working together of both systems. Mental health psychiatry is one of the best examples of this, I believe, probably because it affects my life so significantly, but also because in treating the Mental Health consumer, psychiatrists are required to look at the whole life of the person, and essentially ends up applying very wholistic practices to a diagnostically specific circumstance. At least it is thus in the best case scenarios where the consumer is getting accurately prescribed.

Back to this amazing community I live in, I found myself flowing with the day and having several synchronistic and serendipitous moments, wandering through the village on my usual route of errands. I can feel the definite birth this May is bringing, not just with the plants, trees and flowers, but with the people that I cohabitate with in this often sleepy island community. It is like we are constantly weaving and reweaving our lives together without being completely aware all of the time of this process. And then one day, things just slip into place or feel like home, and you do not even know how you achieved it or arrived there. Medicine can be like this as well, as we marry all of the various treatments and therapies we receive into our full and complex person. We are made of thoughts, dreams, cells, atoms, biological systems, bacterial environments, a soul, our philosophies and our psychiatry. What is beautiful, is when we have nurtured these various elements, and then the lines eventually become blurry as we sit back and just take in the mindlessness, the awareness, the relaxation, and the healing.