Bringing Traditional Chinese Medicine and My Grandmother's Medicine to the Mix

I've changed the name of the blog and added a description to include some of the other healing modalities I will use during my postpartum celebration. While the books I'm working from are Ayurvedic, I have leveraged Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Korean folk medicine all my life. You see, I am hapa - that is a Hawaiian term that means mixed, so you would say that I'm a hapa-Korean or hapa-hangook, the other half being white. My mother and grandmother brought their very old, pre-industrial Korea medicine to the U.S. with them, and as a child I was nurtured (I used to say tortured, right up until about 2 minutes ago) with various herbs, poultices, and animal based concoctions (I still shudder). I like to refer to this as "My Grandmother's Medicine." Sounds romantic. I started to explore TCM in my late teens since I had left home and no longer had access to grandmother's medicine and really didn't know how to translate it into something I could ask for. In the early 90's I would sit on a step ladder at Powell's City of Books and learn all kinds of things about TCM in a single afternoon. Which reminds me, I did the same thing with herbology and naturopathy - read texts at the book store I couldn't afford to buy. Thanks, Powells!

Summer Collier of Green Leaf Acupuncture is my acupuncture doctor and I was happy to be on her table again this afternoon. We chatted a bit about the new blog and what my goals were. As she tapped little needles into my body I realized that I needed to change the title of the blog to include the healing modalities that are my go-to litter kit. As we continued to talk about my motivations, Summer explained that in the TCM model, it is said that the first 30 days after a woman has a baby will indicate how her menopause goes. During this time, a window opens that allows us to heal and/or neglect our bodies, and those actions will carry with us through our lives. It is possible to go back in after the window has closed, but it is very, very difficult. This thinking is, of course, aligned with the 42 days for 42 years idea (see blog post #1: The Challenge of Being Cared For).

A magnum of homemade soy sauce, seaweed, and dashida.

As another reminder to open the aperature of my musings, my mother arrived today with 50lbs of food. Yes, 50lbs of food. Granted 20lbs of it was a bag of rice, but I still think I may be underestimating the payload. I'm telling you, this woman doesn't kid. She brought turnips, cucumbers, bananas, apples (the fruit was for her, it is not a time for me to be eating fruit), homemade deng jung (fermented soybeans), ginger-lemon mash, fresh kimchi, sogogi and myulchi dashida (dried beef and anchovy stock), 2cups of peeled garlic, bundles of green onions, fish cakes, raw barley, 2 2ft tall packs of dried seaweed, I could just go on and on. Oh, but here's a noteworthy and awesome one - a full magnum of homemade soy sauce. I have explained to my mother (several times) that we are very particular about where our meat products come from, so she left 10lbs of bulgogi and chicken teriyaki at home for her husband and my youngest brother. We will go buy meat tomorrow and she will remake her epic proportions of these easy classic Korean dishes so that my husband can have something to eat too.

Side note: when my husband first read the Ayurvedic cook book, he put it down and looked at me and said, "I get it, and this is all good for you, I totally get it, babe, but what the hell am I going to eat?!" 

Much like TCM and Ayurveda my mother knows what is going to be drying, purifying, toning, and stimulating, though she doesn't use those words. She says things like, "This will help getting moistures from inside and cleaning out your woman parts."She is bringing me fresh mugwort for a postpartum steam bath of the girly bits.

And so, you see, there's a lot going on here. And I realize, we're just getting started.