TEA

little blue pill in a cup

If you asked my oldest friends, the once young women whom I lived with in my 20s, about a quirky habit of mine they would unanimously say-

“Tea”

They would then tell you about how, on any given day, they would find at least two, often more, cups of half consumed tea.  One in the bathroom, another on the kitchen counter and often one on the living room floor where I passed out exhausted at 3am, in front of the gas fireplace after a long shift at the bar.

This habit was overlooked as an innocent oddity in my behavior compared to the many other habits that they endured while living with, and trying to unconditionally love, me.  Only when a habit, like eating their food, got to a point that it interfered with their lives would there be a little eruption.  Mostly they looked the other way as they understood that the deeper affliction was a pain that I endlessly endured, and that these little habits were not really me, but an expression of a significant hole in my heart that they did not know how to fill.  

~I need to interject here as some big feels of grief and gratitude are rising-  One of these women has stood by me with open arms, NEVER once has she turned away, since I was 14 years old.  I lived in her home a bit when I left mine in high school and to this day, even her mother and father who cared for me, only beam endless love.  I LOVE you my sister M.~

I drank tea because it was a stop gap in the incessant binge and purge episodes of the long battle with bulimia.  After each inferno raged through, up and out into the toilet, burning my esophagus, I would make a cup of tea.  If I was trying to focus on not focusing on eating food so I wouldn’t binge and purge, I would make a cup of tea.  I would make tea upon rising, right before bed, as I sat down to do my homework 15 times with no success at completing the task.   On the daily I made tea somewhere between 10-20 times. If I just put enough good inside of me then for sure this eating disorder thing would go away. 

“See sweet body, I am ok now, here is some tea-you don’t need to eat that, here is some tea- I know the despair about your life and what you’re doing, but more what you’re not doing, here is some more tea, see all better”

Tea service traditionally is/was held as a ceremonial practice.  The tea leaves themselves revered for divination and producing subtle energy shifts.  Tea is what we serve to soothe.  “Come on in and sit down honey, tell me all about, let me make you a cup of tea”  Tea is a space where all of the elements are distinctively present to enliven our senses.  Tea helped me negate the bad and, on a subconscious level, connected me to a timeless ceremony of presence, solace and reconnection to the Earth.  

Tea reminds me of evenings with my mother watching old Donna Reed reruns on Nickelodeon past my bedtime.  

Unfortunately, as I consumed this tea, the mantra playing in the background, the prayer I infused into the water and the plants, was “fix me”, which meant that I was broken- very contrary to the little inspirations that now come on almost every tea sachet.  And that mantra has impacted and impaired my life to a devastating severity.  One that I am finally cleansing from my DNA and the deep grooved impressions on the field of my mind through a loving and arduous recoding of myself on all layers

I bought tea that had specific herbal combinations that I prayed would heal me. Yet, often the teas would have herbs like cascara sagrada and senna, both herbal laxatives. I sought out teas with “slimming” effects that helped water retention- because it must be the water retention that’s the problem.

I learned every herb in every tea I bought, and thus at an early age, was teaching myself folk herbalism.  I devoured information on herbs, praying that one would eradicate the addictions.   Eventually, that turned into the obsession with, and vast knowledge of, all kinds of natural remedies and healing modalities- to fix myself.

Here I begin to paint to the picture of the- “how do you know what you know, how did you get to where you are?” From within the wound rises the wisdom by way of the seeker trying to free herself. 

The propaganda on products, mainly targeted at women who have been conditioned to hate themsleves, fix themselves, shape themselves for an evil eye, is a direct link to the severity of the eating disorder, addiction and health crisis, mental and physical, that we see widespread.   I was seduced into a belief system that something was inherently wrong with my body, which meant me due to our grave misunderstanding of body as identity, distracting me from the real etiology.  The entire health industry “natural” and not is corrupted by this complex.  My healing, which requires reclaiming my attention and focus on the truth within, is a pattern disruptor, a societal threat.  

So I am sitting here in India drinking a cup of tulsi tea with Jaggery that I made myself and is off the prescribed food routine served at this Ayurveda retreat. An innocent deviation from the guidelines, which I need so I don’t default into too much rigidity and the old restrictive “good and bad” mind and the “oops I broke the rule I made for myself” shame game-  and this whole flood of gratitude, memory and emotion came pouring forth and tea wanted a voice.  

Tea has been a steady friend. It was a gateway into the vast world of natural healing. Although the teas and the modalities are not what heal, plants boosted me enough to to stay bouyant until the real life raft came along.  This was no accident. There has always been an omniscient presence interjecting just enough, and as much as I would allow. That is the role of the natural world, and all the many helping allies available to us, to give us a lift as we hit a rough patch, or major detour, on the path of life.  

There is nothing that heals us that is not within us.   When we understand this we become intelligent Universal citizens by way of knowing how, when and why to engage in relationship with external remedies to assist our healing.  We are then in right relationship with our environment from the inside out and that fills any size hole in the heart.  

Blessed Be Tea.

Shira