Because there are a few things that happen when you’re in pain. There’s the physical sensation of it (OW…among other things). There’s the mental chatter (how do I fix this? why is this happening). And then there’s the emotion that comes with the thought that creates your experience of the pain (anger, anguish, anxiety, astonishment…).

And these three things all point to the remedy that is going to help you when you’re experiencing pain.

I like to think of choosing a remedy as match making - but in this instance opposites don’t really attract and like cures like. We want a remedy that mirrors your experience so that it can help your body in lifting you out of it. It’s like the two similar energies cancel each out out and you are left feeling much better for it.

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Now I’m not here just to rattle off a bunch of remedies and why to select them. I will give you my list, of course. But I want to share my embodied clinical experience with them. How they actually show up in real life - not just on ChatGPT or in a book. This way they will stick with you instead of it being a bunch of random remedy facts.

When picking a remedy that is going to be the best match you want to use all of your senses to tune into how you feel - starting with what is most stand out. Whats loudest?

Is it your mental state? (angry, anxious, leave me alone, want company?). If you are trying to prescribe for someone - how does it feel to be around them? (do you want to give them a hug or are they being a bit whiny for your taste - this is all information not judgment).

Is it the sensation of the pain (what is it? shooting, burning. pinching, sore, bruised, unbearable?).

Is is that you feel cold and want warmth or warm and want a cold compress?

Are you suddenly thirstier than usual or craving something that is out of your norm?

These are all little hints to your remedy state (what will be the best match for your symptoms.

Now let’s get to the remedies!

Arnica

Arnica is just one of these remedies that has such a broad scope of action it should be the first remedy you try - especially if your symptoms feel non-specific (IDK…it hurts???). You’ll notice the remedies below have very specific pain pictures whereas Arnica is just the OUCH and I’m sore and bruised and maybe in the case of an accident or injury a little battered. (think sprains, concussions, blunt trauma, or just a hard workout!)

If there is soreness+bruising (or a bruise sensation) Arnica can be taken internally (30c or 200c if severe) and applied locally to where it hurts.

It’s the first remedy to think of to help recover from any pain after surgery or birth. It addresses the physical trauma as well as the pain.

It’s also a remedy for emotional shock - and there can certainly be a quality of shock from experiencing an accident, injury, or surgical procedure (even dentistry).

It’s one of the best remedies for a bruised sensation in the pelvis after labor.

The interesting thing about Arnica is that they typically DON’T WANT treatment. I’m sure you have some people in your life who are always “just fine” no matter whats really going on. There is a stoicism. They don’t want their pain to be assessed or looked at in any way. “Don’t touch me!”

There can be irritability and they may just want to be alone when they are in pain. You might try to come in and help them and they just seem annoyed at you. Give them Arnica anyway ;-)

They will likely have trouble getting into a comfortable position. The bed feels too hard and their body too sore to rest. But they are also worse movement.

Hypericum

You’ll know when you need Hypericum. It’s very specific to nerve pain. When there has been an injury to nerve sensitive areas (the tips of the fingers or toes, the spine, the neck) think of this remedy first. It can be combined with Arnica if there is also that sore/bruised picture.

I see a lot of clients with hyper mobility or chronic structural issues that get flares every so often when they get chiropractic care. Hypericum can help settle the nerves after treatment (though make sure you are seeing a gentle non-force chiropractor).

There is a lot of shooting pains in Hypericum. Nervy sensations. Burning sensations that move about. Neuralgic pain.

There is a general anxious and wound up feeling because of the nervous system being activated.

You will find that mentally the picture is the opposite of Arnica. A person needing this remedy generally craves company, reassurance, and safety. They want to feel “settled.” They become oversensitive because of the nerves being on edge.

Affinities: Spinal cord, coccyx, concussions, puncture wounds to nerve rich areas. Stings, bites, and ticks that activate the nerves.

I’ve used this remedy even years after an injury where the nerves have never quite settled (usually needs a higher potency in these cases).

Colocynthis

The pain in this remedy is quite intense and again it will be quite obvious when this remedy is called for. It’s one of the biggest remedies I give when I have a client who is prone to acute digestive pain.

Colocynthis is for cutting, cramping, spasming, contracting pains that make the person double over. There is a bit of relief that comes from putting pressure on the area (hence being doubled over).

You’ll find the person just kind of sitting there, doubled over in pain, praying for it to pass. Time seems to be the only thing that typically helps.

You’ll find this picture in acute GI issues but also when the picture fits in acute menstrual pains, ovarian pains. They want pressure on the affected part.

The pain is intense and makes them angry and irritable. They feel very impatient and you can offend them quite easily in this state. Think of a colicky baby who cries and cries and is inconsolable.

There can be vomiting and diarrhea but sometimes the pain is all there is. Paradoxically, there can be quite a bit of hunger despite the pain!

It’s also one of the best remedies for sciatica that is cutting, searing, very painful. I’ve seen more and more sciatica in my practice over the years and this is one of the remedies that can bring relief. Theres a feeling of a shortening in the tendons along with stiffness and at times numbness. It’s like a lightning shock down the limb. Right or left side.

Bryonia

Bryonia is the “I’m in so much pain I can’t move a muscle and if I do it’s going to hurt even more.” They can be a bit restless with the pain but they need to be still otherwise they aggravate. Even taking in too big of a breath can hurt (and will make them cough if they are sick).

It’s a remedy I recommend at the beginning signs of getting sick along with Aconite when the symptoms are non-descript but you feel “off” and maybe a bit achy or have the beginning of a sore throat. It has worked wonders for many cases of COVID in my practice over the years.

Like Arnica they don’t really want to be touched or looked at. It’s the child who is sick and just wants to be left alone in bed or the baby you pick up and they start to cry. They just want to be comfy and left alone.

They are super thirsty! This is one of the biggest hints I see. Their throat becomes dry and they keep asking for drinks.

It’s the remedy that follows Arnica in an injury. Every movement makes the injury worse and you just have to stay off it. It can speed up the healing process. There can be stitching and tearing pains.

Bryonia is also better from pressure or the painful part being wrapped up. They might even lay on the painful part because the pressure makes it feel better. It’s a great headache remedy and you might find the person wrapping their head, pressing on it, or wearing a hat.

In terms of mental aggravations, I see this remedy come up after people experience a shock around money or finances. There are a lot of financial fears in this remedy. Fears about security. The fear can bring on the pain or illness.

Rhus Tox

After Bryonia in an injury typically comes Rhus Tox. It’s the stage of pain where the first movement is painful but once you warm up the pain starts to recede.

The pain might start to come back if you overdo it too soon, in which case a dose of Rhus Tox can be helpful.

The key sensation in Rhus Tox is STIFFNESS. Think of it like the Tin Man who hasn’t oiled up his joints in awhile and they are all stiff and creaky. Or a rusty gate that makes an awful sound until you open and close it a few times.

I use this remedy a lot in my practice for people with chronic pain that is from fascial adhesions. The fascia can become dehydrated and can cause the joints to go slightly out of alignment, causing pain.

It’s also a great TMJ remedy - when the jaw loses its range of motion - but overtime with some painful chewing it starts to loosen up again.

Chamomilla

This is well known as a teething remedy but its a remedy I find myself prescribing for adults and kids alike. With Chamomilla, there is an increased sensitivity to the pain. It’s as if your nervous system is over responding to the pain. Nerves need to be calmed and settled.

There is a lot of irritability with Chamomilla. Whining. Crying. Tantrums. Irritation. When someone is in this state it can be a bit hard to be around them. Their irritation and sensitvity turns into your irritation and sensitivity. I remember a mentor telling me once - “the person who needs Chamomilla…you love them but you also kind of want to throw them out the window” haha!

They dont know what they want. They ask for water and then say not THAT kind! Its too hot. Too cold. Nothing is quite right. They want you near. They want you to leave.

Its a great remedy for colicky stomach pains. Soothes the gut and nervous restlessness.

Its good for kids who use pain as a tool for connection (they complain of pain right when they need to go to school or their grandparents house and be without you).

Ignatia

And finally, I wanted to end with a remedy for acute emotional pain that can become physical pain. Tics, twitches, spasms. Contraction of the muscles following grief, a separation, a loss.

Theres an emotional shock that happens and acute symptoms follow. For example, someone has to move away from home or loses somebody close to them and they develop spasmodic pains in the muscles.

I’ve also seen a lot of burning nerve pain with this remedy in my practice. A client will suffer a grief or emotional loss and develop nerve sensitivity and pain. Burning pains that move about.

There can also be a cough that develops - also spasmodic in nature. There is coughing without an acute illness.

Back spasms are big in this remedy - someones back goes out right after an emotional shock, fight, or separation. There can also be an increase in arthritis pains or cramping pains in the muscles.

There is a bit of Chamomilla in this remedy too - not sure what they want - do they want comfort or to be alone? Nothing feels quite right. Hysterical emotions. Ignatia helps to smooth the emotional waters and the pains that heighten alongside.

Have you tried any of these remedies successfully? Will you try them? Which one resonated most? Let me know down below!

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

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Here’s my question: I wanted to ask you about how to discern between fear and intuition - especially when you have health anxiety and are trying to heal! I regularly have fear-based thoughts about my body, my health, and my family’s health. Sometimes I will have a dream that me or my partner get sick and I don’t know if it’s my intuition telling me to be worried or if I’m overthinking it. I feel like I don’t even know what is intuition anymore. For context, I am someone who struggles with health anxiety, chronic illness, and intrusive thoughts. Any help is appreciated.

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This question was on my heart to answer today because I feel like I am uniquely equipped to handle it based on my own personal healing journey, and what I have come to find working with clients as a homeopath. (Thank you for asking it!)

First, I want to say to anyone reading this, no matter how muffled and quiet your intuition has become, it is something that you ALWAYS have access to.

The trick is to know the difference between your inner wise person trying to guide you and what is just plain fear coming from a dysregulated system.

The first step is to know what your habitual thought patterns + the emotions that come with them tend to be in your current state. What’s your current baseline? How much of the day do you spend in a thought space that is unpleasant and fearful? How many of your thoughts go to fear and “what if” places? If you’re finding it to be your dominant experience, that tells us that fear is currently your baseline pattern.

That’s a lot of distortion for your intuition or inner wise person to cut through to reach you. Fear tends to be loud and in your face. It tends to take up as much space as possible in your brain in an attempt to keep you safe (even if you aren’t actually experiencing anything threatening).

Our intuition speaks to us quietly but consistently. It’s an inner knowing that you come back to again and again when there is enough space for it to speak to you. It’s not something you can miss, because it will consistently try to get your attention. But it’s not going to be loud, verbose, and insistent like fear.

Think of fear as the toddler constantly trying to get mom’s attention. Fear will try every tactic in the book to get your attention. It will bargain with you (just google this one symptom and then you’re done for the day…just ask chatgpt what this could be a sign of…if you just do this one thing then you’ll be ok). It will creep up in unexpected places (maybe you aren’t focused on your health today but then it jumps to your loved one…are they ok? are you sure? what if they aren’t?).

It makes a lot of conditions for your okayness (you need to do this health routine, eat these foods, exactly the way this expert said or something bad might happen).

Whereas your intuition is like a calm sleeping cat on your lap. Maybe it will open its eyes for a moment when it hears an unexpected sound, but then it goes right back to sleep. The cat is aware but not vigilant. It checks in to make sure everything is ok and then immediately goes back to feeling safe. It’s in the present moment - not the future or the past.

I’ll give you an example to further illustrate this:

Example scenario: You have a pain sensation in your liver/gallbladder area. You remember that your grandma had her gallbladder out when she was a similar age to you. Because anxiety is your current default setting - you of course go to the worst case scenario.

“OMG….this is DEFINITELY a gallbladder attack. I definitely have gallstones. I’m probably going to have to get emergency surgery. Should I go to the ER? How do I know if I should go to the ER?”

In this scenario your cortisol is through the roof. You’re no longer grounded or able to think rationally. Your fear mode is running the show. Ironically, this can dramatize pain sensations and make them feel worse than they are, contributing to anxiety.

Now how would you go about this if you were able to ground and tap into your intuition?

First, take a deep breath and ground. The key is to center yourself so that you have better access to your intuition. You want to give it a chance to cut through the loud distracting fear.

I do this by taking Rescue Remedy, the Bach Flower Essence. It has essences that ground you in emergency situations and helps move you from panic to regulation. If I’m really spooked I pair it with Aconite, the #1 remedy for panic attacks, shock, and fear in homeopathy. I use whatever potency I have. You can do this up to every 15 mins for a few doses.

Know that if you even have the time and space to do that, it’s probably not a true emergency. I find that when things are truly an emergency you will be uncharacteristically calm and know what to do. I remember when I got a concussion - my body very clearly told me to go to the ER. There was no “what if” about it. Even though I was still a very anxious person at that time and hated hospitals - I just knew to go (although luckily I ended up being fine).

Now, assuming the pain wasn’t an emergency (because trust me - your intuition DOES kick in then - you will just “know”) hopefully the Rescue Remedy has regulated you enough to where you are more neutral about the situation. We always want to make health decisions from a place of neutrality as much as possible. It’s when emotions aren’t over-heightened that our intuition has space to speak.

Then you can simply ask yourself What does my intuition want to tell me about this symptom? Have there been any recent emotional stressors? What does the pain activate in me?

It can be helpful to free write your answers to these questions. You want to write stream of consciousness - and hand written if possible. This helps to bypass fear and your inner critic. Write freely - even if it “doesn’t make sense.” Eventually you will get some insight into your situation. This gives your intuition an outlet in which to speak with you.

Ok interesting - I do tend to feel this rib pain before my cycle. So maybe it’s related to hormones. I think I read somewhere that your liver has to clear out hormones before your cycle…maybe I just need to go back to drinking some milk thistle tea the week leading up. Maybe I will ask my homeopath about gentle support at our next visit. Now that I am feeling into it - the pain is uncomfortable - but not an emergency. I will watch and wait and support myself in small ways until then.

From the example above, I didn’t immediately try to do a 10 step detox protocol to address the pain. As a homeopath, I see time and time again that the best healing results come from the least amount of intervention. We do just enough to get a result as to not overburden the body and cause unnecessary stress.

You see how we went from gallbladder emergency to maybe I need some milk thistle? When we are out of emergency SOS mode by grounding with flower essences that help us get rid of the excess cortisol and fear-based energy, we can see that the problem is 9 times out of 10 a lot less catastrophic than we originally think it is.

Now as someone who had badddd health anxiety I know how NOT easy this is! It’s simple, but not easy. It takes practice, and knowing what tools work best for you to regulate. This is one of the first things I work with clients on. Most of them come from some sort of trauma or anxiety background (chronic illness itself can create a PTSD and distrust with your system).

The reason I love working with clients in this way is because I know how life changing homeopathy has been in creating a different lens through which I see my body and symptoms. They do not feel like the emergency they once did.

The reason for this is that when you support the vital force (your own internal healing mechanism) with remedies - you are also strengthening the flexibility of your nervous system and therefore spending more time in parasympathetic - rest and digest.

Not only that, but because homeopathy and flower essences are energy based medicines, and emotions ARE energy, they help to move that energy out of your system. Said another way, they remove what ISN’T you, revealing the real, BALANCED you underneath.

This is done best when I can match your specific symptom patterns to a remedy that adequately matches that pattern so we can move it in the most quick and efficient way possible. No matter how weird you think your patterns are - I can guarantee there is a remedy that matches that exact experience and can help you move out of it.

Moms have told me this many times - they give their child a remedy and go…THERE they are! They can literally see the unbalanced state clear off of their child and they go back to acting like their true selves again.

Before I healed myself with homeopathy, I lived much of my life in a fear dominant state. Especially when it came to symptoms. Now that I have done the work to heal - I find that fear and intuition can exist side by side - and I can let that be the case without it stopping me from taking action.

Recently I made the decision that I am going to be moving out of Portland by the end of the year. This has been a long time coming, but the “where” never clicked until a couple of months ago. It just wasn’t the right time. But as soon as the “where” revealed itself, things began to move quickly and effortlessly. This is how I knew it was the right decision.

Now, the “where” is a place that is out of my comfort zone - financially, socially…I am a creature of habit and home is very important to me. So this has understandably triggered some old fear based thought patterns.

But here’s the thing…because I know how to balance myself with remedies…I come back to my baseline very easily. Sometimes I feel fear about the move, but there is also a surprising feeling of ease that has come with it. When something is right, we know it, even if fear is mixed in.

I know now that fear is just a loud protector trying to keep me safe. It’s trying to use facts and data to predict a future that is in its essence uncertain. And I also know that if I just see it as that - something trying its best to protect me - I can let it be there without feeding into it. It no longer becomes my dominant experience.

Instead, I tune into the gentle, subtle guidance of my wise self. The voice of my intuition. And know that each right next step reveals itself in just the right time. And if you’re here on this page, learning about homeopathy, you can start to incorporate remedies into your practice that will make hearing your intuition that much easier.

The remedy that matches your current state (mentally, physically, emotionally) is going to clear space and help get your system into better balance so that you can have better access to this inner knowing. This is the power of homeopathy!

Your intuition is always there waiting for you to listen :-) It’s the subtle but persistent voice that’s there underneath the fear that you can learn to befriend over time.

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

(Not medical advice, always consult your doctor and your own intuition).

When this remedy is indicated, the benefits are immediate & quite dramatic. A raging headache goes within minutes. A fever that is so high you’re delirious starts to come down. The ear infection that had you crying out in pain - your ear bright red with inflammation - returns to normal.

And while no one can deny the effectiveness of this remedy, it’s also one that stirs up quite a bit of controversy. Why? Well - because it’s toxic!

Just the other day I posted on notes how effective Belladonna is for infections and a woman innocently replied - “Isn’t it toxic?”

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Well, yes! And that’s the moment where some people will open their minds to the possibility that you can use a substance that is toxic, in the right form, and have it be curative. Or they run for the hills and never consider homeopathy again.

But this is precisely where homeopathy shines. You see, the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, was responding to the brutal medical practices of the 1800’s that were attempting to cure the infectious diseases of the time like Malaria.

Yes, in the 1800’s they were using high doses of toxic substances like mercury, arsenic, and quinine - along with bloodletting and dangerous purgatives - to help the sick (and almost kill them in the process…)

While it was true that substances like quinine were kind of helping patients with malaria, Hahnemann set out to find a way to treat people without causing harm.

He would come to find that there was a process of diluting and succussing (or pounding) a substance to liberate the medicinal properties while eliminating harmful or toxic properties. Thus the first homeopathic remedy was born - China, also known as cinchona bark, contains quinine which was being used ineffectively as a treatment for malaria.

When used as a homeopathic remedy, where any side effects of the substance are null and void and only the curative properties remain, China effectively curbed any symptoms of Malaria. What was toxic in its crude form becomes medicine in its potentized, or homeopathic, form.

So why do we use toxic substances like Belladonna or China in homeopathy? Because toxic substances cause very severe symptoms - high fever, convulsions, vomiting, fear, pain - which is a match to the symptoms we face in acute pain and infections. Again, none of the toxicity of the substance remains - only the curative properties - and boy do we want those when we’re really sick!

This is the foundation of homeopathy - “like cures like” - the types of pathology a substance can produce it can also uproot in a person with similar suffering.

It’s not just Hahnemann that discovered this, Hippocrates said that “a substance causing illness in a healthy person could, in a small dose, cure someone sick with that same illness.” You can find this same principle going all the way back to ancient Ayurvedic texts.

When you find the same concept popping up over and over again, I tend to find that there is some truth to it, and that’s certainly been my experience helping 100’s of clients get well with homeopathy when nothing else worked.

Nature has given us everything that we need to heal from what ails us. When we use homeopathy we are connecting to the divine intelligence of a substance that initiates what is required to help us heal. We are literally surrounded by healing substances on a day-to-day basis. Homeopathy allows us to use the gifts of nature safely and without the side effects of modern day medicines.

I want to leave you with some of my favorite uses for Belladonna - it’s a remedy I advise every client to have on hand. It’s not a matter of it but when you will need this remedy because it has so many helpful uses.

Acute uses:
-Symptoms that come on suddenly and severely
-Fevers (helps the body move through a fever, instead of suppressing it, which is hugely important. Suppressing a fever can lead to chronic problems down the road)
-Person is flushed, hot, delirious with pain
-Throbbing pains, migraines, headaches worse or brought on by sun/heat
-Ear infections - ear is bright red with a throbbing pain
-High blood pressure with pounding headaches
-Tics and twitches that come after illness in PANS/PANDAS kids
-Brain inflammation in autism, PANS/PANDAS (helps stop hitting / self-harm behaviors)
-Tonsilitis
-Right sided ovarian cysts, pains from cysts bursting
-Severe menstrual pain when the symptoms match

None of this is medical advice - consult your doctor and your own intuition before trying

I’d love to know - have you used Belladonna? What did you use it for and what was your experience? Share below!

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

A live webinar in reading, feeling, and shifting your inner climate
Sunday, June 28th, 2026 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time / 1:00 PM Eastern
90 minutes on Zoom · Recording included (but we hope to see you live!)

Some emotions arrive like drizzle you barely notice. Others hit like a storm you didn’t see coming. Join us as we teach you how to navigate emotional weather with ease.

Flower essences have helped hundreds of our clients move through grief, anxiety, overwhelm, and emotional stuckness — sometimes instantaneously.

In this 90-minute webinar, we’ll show you exactly how to work with them for yourself and the people you love.

Meet your guides…

Cailee Anello, CCH, FNTP

Cailee is a homeopath and mental health coach who brings years of clinical experience watching clients shift their emotional landscape with precise, well-chosen remedies. She’ll teach you how to read your body’s signals before the storm hits as well as give you clinical pearls from her years of practice.

Emily Florence, FNTP

Emily is an astrologer and flower essence practitioner. She weaves the wisdom of flower essences with an understanding of cycles, timing, and the soul’s deeper weather patterns — helping you choose essences to sail through any life circumstance with more ease.

This is for you if...

• You feel emotions intensely but aren’t sure what to do with them once they arrive

• You’ve heard of Bach remedies or flower essences and want to actually know how to use them

• You’re a parent, caregiver, or practitioner wanting natural tools for emotional support

• You’re already working with essences but want more confidence in choosing and dosing them

• You believe emotions carry information and want a practice to help you extract wisdom without holding onto them and causing unneccessary suffering

Here’s What We’ll Cover

• How to tune into your emotional barometer (even before the storm hits)

• The gift of emotions: how to stop fighting what you feel and start working with it

• The thought-emotion loop and how to interrupt it with a few drops of the right remedy

• How to navigate even the toughest emotions with flower essences as your guide

• Techniques to choose the essences that will be most helpful for your specific situation

• How to know if an essence is working — and what to do when it’s time to pivot

• Why some essences stir things up before they settle them (and why that’s actually a good sign)

• Real-world case examples from our combined practices so you can apply what you learn

• Dosing guides for adults, children, and animals (they feel the weather too!)

• Live Q&A — bring your burning questions and leave with real answers

You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of how your body holds and moves emotions — and a practical toolkit to shift your state, uplift your loved ones, and meet the emotional weather of your life with more ease and less dread.

You’ll know which essences to reach for and why, how to listen for a response, and when to adjust – all from our embodied & clinical experience.

A recording will be sent to all participants after the call, so if you cannot join live that’s OK! Participation in the live call is encouraged if you are able. We want to see you!

Date: Sunday, June 28th, 10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern Time (will be recorded)

Sign Up Here

Any questions? Just reply to this email or comment down below and I’m happy to answer them! Know a friend who could benefit from this webinar? Feel free to pass it along :-)

It didn’t make sense to me at the time. I’m in a beautiful, peaceful place. I’m watching the ocean waves come in and out. I’m eating a blueberry scone lovingly made by a passionate baker at the coffee shop down the road.

Why am I feeling this way? What’s wrong with me?

I felt this pressure to enjoy the trip while I had the time and space to connect with my partner, Emily, eager to make the most of our time together away from the daily stress of work and to-do lists.

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I felt it in her too. This restlessness and agitation that kept rising the more we tried to be still and “present.”

From this inner tension came thoughts that were equally tense. I found myself ruminating on my life path. Should I take path A or B? Or C? What did I want?

My head was full of "I should” - I should save more. I should move. I should make more friends. I should call my family more. I should be more serious about saving for kids should I want them in the near future.

I felt the clock ticking. It wasn’t a midlife crisis, I was 32 at the time. But this pressure was building inside of me to figure it all out or else.

You see, I spent the entirety of my 20’s chronically ill. My symptoms took up my entire headspace all day everyday. Before that, I lived at home with my parents in a family that was chronically ill, so their problems took up my entire headspace all day everyday - except for when I was at school and worrying about tests and fitting in.

Illness was all I knew. There was no space to think about a 5 year, 10 year, plan.

There was no space to dream about what I might be or if I should take road A or B.

But the funny thing is, I always ended up exactly where I needed to be anyway - despite not really thinking about it. It was if I was always being guided by a higher intelligence just in the nick of time.

Sure, my headspace wasn’t a fun place to be. I had constant thoughts of what practitioner to see, what supplement protocol to try next, what remedy would finally be “the one.”

But despite all of that - I finished college with honors, moved across the country from Chicago to Portland, Oregon at 23 to pursue natural medicine, and found myself in a job that allowed the perfect amount of flexibility for me to shadow patients and study whenever I wanted.

These things happened in spite of me and had nothing to do with me. And they all flowed perfectly at the perfect time. There was no “figuring it out.”

Now, a decade later, I was sitting on a bench in sunny California absolutely miserable with anxiety about my path and how I could contort and control it to make me happy. Because if I didn’t - who would? How would it possibly work out?

I felt this pressure, I realized, to make the most of my life because I was no longer trapped by chronic symptoms. My life no longer revolved around symptom management. I was no longer anxious leaving the house, in fact now I loved to travel - something I never thought I would get to do again.

At 23, I thought my life was over. I thought my symptoms would progressively get worse and worse. But something lead me to a beautiful life in spite of my beliefs. I was too preoccupied to try to control anything outside of my symptoms.

Maybe that was a strange hidden benefit of illness. I let life guide me to the next stepping stone without questioning it because I didn’t have the mental capacity to. And so everything unfolded as it should. Maybe not on the timeline my rational brain wanted, but it did, and in hindsight - everything happened in perfect timing.

There was something wise inside of me that just knew when the time was right. That moved when I should move. That said yes when a yes was important to the unfolding of my path. So why should now be any different?

A few months later, I was reading The Artist’s Way, a book that came back into my awareness right as I grieved the loss of a close friendship that really rocked my sense of belonging and lovability. It felt like things kept dissolving from the life I knew - wanting to lead me to a new life that I didn’t know a single detail of yet.

I was in this strange, uncomfortable in-between. And so I read the book and allowed myself to process what was happening through connecting deeper to my creativity. I started to write more, practice guitar again, journal daily, and connect back to myself.

In that process, I realized a dream of mine had always been to go abroad to study with teachers that inspired me. Emily and I have listened to Ian Watson, a homeopath and 3 Principles practitioner, for years. I got the intuitive hit to check his website and lo and behold he was hosting a 3 Principles retreat in Greece at the end of May.

It was the end of January when I saw this listing, and I knew instantly I had to be there. I reached out to him the next morning, and it turns out someone had just dropped out, so Emily and I were able to grab the last two spots. Divine timing at it again!

Now, writing this newly on the other side of the retreat, I’m marveling at how I somehow knew exactly what would heal my spirit on that night in January. It wasn’t the result of searching frantically for something to fix me. It was the result of allowing enough space to hear what I needed and allowing myself to have enough courage to follow it.

I could do a whole post on all of the wonderful insights I had during the retreat, but what I’m sitting with today is how the thing that breaks you open can put you right back together again. When you walk straight into the fire of what you fear, it has the power to transform you and remind you that you are always okay - no matter what external circumstances you face.

I walked into the retreat slightly guarded, slightly heart-broken, confused, out of sorts. I walked in knowing that I had a story of “not doing well in group settings” because of social anxiety - especially when I already felt tender.

Did I have moments of feeling uncomfortable and out of place? Yes. I had plenty of thoughts of “you’re awkward, fill the space, don’t be too quiet, open up to them.”

But I had many more moments of remembering how good it feels to connect to open-hearted, like-minded people that want to connect to you in a deep way.

And that that connection can happen very quickly when you are with the right people and in the right environment.

There’s always this story of things heal slowly, you have to work at it, it’s going to take time - but here so much in me healed instantaneously. My heart feeling fuller, my spirit lifted, my hopefulness and trust in my path restored.

And now I have beautiful people I get to connect with all over the world. And it happened right when I needed it.

I don’t have answers yet of where my life is going or what change wants to happen. I don’t know what I will create or what will show up in the empty space of my life. But I’m seeing the space as possibility and opportunity for magic beyond what I can think up with my rational brain. What else would I call checking a website at the exact right moment but magic?

If you’re in a season of in-between discomfort or feeling stuck in frustration and discomfort, my heart is with you. I hope my sharing this will help you feel less alone or provide you with the truth that life is unfolding just as it should. The right things will reach you if you create space for them. That much I know is true.

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

Lena Dunham’s recent interview with the New York Times for her book “Fame Sick” has me thinking about the energetics of trauma and why trauma patterns repeat themselves.

It also has me thinking about how chronic illness is itself a trauma and how it can separate ourselves from our body. We can be hovering outside of ourselves, trying to dissociate from the painful sensations we experience day in and day out, without realizing we are doing it.

I have yet to read Lena’s book, but like many of us I have followed her since Girls aired in 2012. I was immediately captivated by the raw storytelling in the show - the portrayal of unapologetic messiness and a protagonist, Hannah, who bared it all - almost daring you to dislike her.

This is in direct contrast to a lot of television today where characters often feel hollow and one dimensional - afraid to be seen as politically incorrect or controversial in any way.

While Lena Dunham has faced a lot of backlash since Girls for various reasons I have no interest in getting into, I couldn’t help but feel inspired by her articulation of her experience of endometriosis, chronic pain, and trauma in this NYT interview.

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At the 20 minute mark, Lena shares that she was very impacted by the book The Body is a Doorway by Sophie Strand which details her journey with chronic illness. There is a quote from the book that she shares that really struck me because it’s the exact experience I and so many of my clients have had - this feeling of not being fully tethered to the body. Strand writes “I felt like I was a balloon floating above my body.”

When you are in a pattern of pain and physical symptoms that you have to grin and bear day in and day out it can cause a form of dissociation. Ironically, this dissociation only fuels the chronic anxiety that is so often part of chronic illness.

How can you not feel anxious when you are in pain but also feel disembodied?

One of my clients described it as feeling like she was looking through glass. She was here, present, but there was something that was dreamlike and surreal about her experience. This is common of derealization that can accompany dissociative states.

Really, it’s our body’s way of trying to protect us from feelings that feel beyond our current capacity to withstand. When I was in the natural health world I studied Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis which tests for mineral levels. High calcium was associated with what they called a “calcium shell” - or a kind of numbness or shielding off from experience.

I would see a calcium shell develop in clients who have withstood trauma. After awhile, it would become the opposite, where the calcium would come down, shell would break, and they would feel too raw and vulnerable.

This is reminiscent of the homeopathic remedy Calc Carb (calcium carbonate) - made from the oyster sell. Giving this to people who are numb and walled off, or the opposite, too raw and vulnerable, can help bring them into balance when the picture fits.

Later in the interview Lena vulnerably shares her experience with repeat sexual trauma - which I find interesting that she speaks of alongside her experience with endometriosis. In homeopathy there is a lot of overlap in remedies that treat sexual trauma, endometriosis, and other illnesses involving the reproductive organs.

She says - “I kept finding myself in situations where I’m not in control of what’s happening to my body.” She wonders out loud why she kept having the same traumatic experience repeated over and over again.

She goes on to say that she spoke with the infamous Gabor Mate who reflected back to her that “people who want to cross boundaries are able to identify that you don’t know how to deflect that.”

This is in no way saying that anyone ever deserves or attracts trauma, but when a lack of boundaries or ability to recognize what we do and don’t deserve is part of our energetic make-up, the likelihood of experiencing bad things from bad people goes up.

The remedy Staphysagria, for example, is one of our most important sexual trauma remedies. But also one of our most important boundary remedies. I have sat with this remedy many times, and what is striking about when I take it, is that I suddenly can see all of the ways I acquiesce to other people in ways that harm me. I have done a lot of work around this so it’s in smaller ways, but it’s like taking this remedy takes the blindfold off and allows me to set boundaries I didn’t even know needed to be set.

It’s as if taking remedies that have an affinity for trauma in which ones most precious boundaries have been crossed bolsters your energetic field in a way that says “don’t even try me.” People that used to try and walk all over you now start keeping a healthy distance because they can sense you’re no longer available to give an inch when you know they will take a mile.

I knew a women who would break out into a rash every time she got into a conflict with a family member. It was the kind of painful itchy rash that even modern medicine could suppress. It was roaring and angry and expressing the kinds of emotions women in her generation weren’t allowed to feel.

I had her take Staphysagria 30c - just a few doses - and sure enough the rash - and her rumination about the conflict - dissolved. I gave her the suggestion to plant some of the flowers in her garden this summer as a gentle reminder of her right to a bold and powerful “n-o.”

It’s no accident this is an excellent post-surgery remedy as well. I have clients who are about to give birth keep it in their remedy kit to take if there are any rips, tears, or incisions (like in the case of a c-section). This works doubly well for my clients who typically avoid mainstream medicine and may feel like their boundaries are violated because they have to receive an intervention they wouldn’t typically be open to.

I want to end this article by saying that sometimes dissociation is obvious - where you resonate with feeling of not being quite grounded in the body - floating above yourself. But other times it can be incredibly subtle.

There was a time in my healing journey where I truly did feel like I was at a distance from myself because my body was so sensitive to sensory inputs. Whenever I would go somewhere with a lot of people (and all their energy) I would feel slightly outside of myself while also having physiological anxiety responses.

As I healed my nervous system with homeopathy it went to stage two. I no longer felt debilitating anxiety and had quite a high sensory tolerance. I could drink a second coffee without it feeling like I was playing Russian roulette. But then came the painful realization of what spending so much time fixated on health and disconnected from myself had done to my sense of identity.

As in - I really didn’t have one. I looked in the mirror and saw the weight I had gained trying to numb my symptoms with food. I saw my wardrobe and how it mainly existed to hide and cover myself. I saw the lack of color and joy in my home.

Who was I when I wasn’t trying to heal?

This was painful, of course, but there was a huge win hiding inside this realization. If I was noticing these things, it meant my capacity to be in my body had come back online. If I had space in my awareness for the color of my home, my physical appearance, and my wardrobe…that means that space had been created.

And where there is space there is possibility to build a life that wouldn’t have been possible if you hadn’t had to go through the muck and the mire of trauma to create and appreciate it on a deeper level.

That death and rebirth cycle thats wrapped up in the healing journey is something that can feel incredibly lonely - but I promise you from the hundreds of people I see in my practice - there are so many incredible people fighting alongside you to claim a life that feels fully their own.

Thank you to everyone brave enough to go through this beautiful, messy, confusing journey and share it with others.

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

Nicotine is trending in a major way right now. While smoking has been part of popular culture since the first World War and tobacco has been revered as a sacred plant for thousands of years by indigenous cultures, I am seeing a very interesting resurgence in its popularity in both the wellness space and mainstream culture.

Vaping is out and cigarettes are the new analogue option that reminds us of a time before technology was ever present in every aspect of our lives.

People are posting romantic photos of a woman smoking cigarettes at a cafe or longing staring out the window in a 90’s New York City apartment. The aesthetic is deliberate: slower, more embodied, more human.

And then there is the wellness space where nicotine patches are trending as a treatment for long-COVID, fatigue, brain fog, nausea, and other inflammatory conditions.

When a substance shows up so strongly in our consciousness, as a homeopath, I can’t help but pay attention.

Tobacco, and it’s alkaloid nicotine, want our attention. When we are collectively drawn to a substance it’s often because it mirrors a collective energy state that wants to be regulated. And as a homeopath who studies the consciousness of substances, I can tell you that tobacco strongly mirrors our collective state right now.

The Energetic Signature of Nightshade Plants

When I look at the energetics of nightshade plants one thing immediately stands out: there is a very primal fear and reactivity to the world that runs through the remedies.

This primal fear emerges from a felt sense of “it’s me vs. the world.”

There is a feeling in this plant family that the shoe could drop at any moment, because it already has. And that fear is embedded into the nervous system. As a result, the person needing these remedies is in a chronic state of something is about to attack. Vulnerability and a sense of exposure are prominent.

There is often a fear of the dark and a strong desire for light. In children I use remedies from the nightshade family, primarily Stramonium, for night terrors and fear of the dark. This can show up in adults with nightmares, insomnia, and seasonal affective disorder (desire for sunlight).

Fear runs through this remedy family - fear of death, the dark, something unexpected.

There is also a general feeling that something could be lurking - there is an unsettled feeling - it can even show up as a physical sensation of someone standing behind you.

I have seen this show up in clients as a fear of dogs. Dogs become something the subconscious can latch onto to represent a deeper fear of sudden attack. Something is going to get me, I must protect myself and stay vigilant.

As you can imagine, this state exhausts the adrenals and the nervous system. Weakness, depletion, and fatigue show up across all the nightshade remedies.

Sensory sensitivity and light sensitivity follow from the depletion. Think of a concert (flashing lights, darkness, high energy, crowds…) - all things that someone who could benefit from the nightshades becomes sensitive to.

On the other end of the spectrum, some people become overdrawn to exactly this kind of stimulation - concerts, scary movies, intensity - as a way to metabolize and integrate what their nervous system is holding.

Physically, tics are frequently prevalent. These remedies can support people who have conditions like Tourette Syndrome but also people with a history of PANS/PANDAS or neurological conditions that cause tics and jerks.

I’m convinced Billie Eilish was in a “Nightshade” state when she wrote this album - there is a fixation on nightmares, the dark, and death on this album.

Nicotine & Tobacco as Remedy States

When we drill into nicotine and tobacco specifically, we see a very physical anxiety emerging from that primal nightshade fear.

In homeopathy we always use Latin names for substances. The homeopathic preparation of tobacco is called Tabacum, and its isolated alkaloid nicotine is Nicotinum.

Tabacum is most famously used for seasickness. There is an intense nausea from motion than can result in feeling faint, sweaty, pale, and on the verge of collapse. It can come with vertigo and vomiting, better from open air and worse from light and sound.

But Tabacum only works for people who already have a felt sense of the world not being safe. They are sensitive to intensity. When they are at sea, on a rocking boat, not in control, intense symptoms result. They have trouble orienting themselves in time and space when things are rocky and unpredictable.

I recently prescribed this remedy for a client who works as an emergency tech. She was experiencing extreme nausea and cold sweats to the point of nearly fainting while riding in the back of an ambulance. It was threatening her ability to do her job. This is a beautiful mirror of the remedy state: symptoms triggered by intensity, uncontrolled motion, and a system perpetually braced for the unexpected.

Tabacum has a huge affinity for the vagus nerve, which, as many of you know, is at the center of almost every conversation about nervous system regulation right now. It is a remedy for a system so overwhelmed that the parasympathetic nervous system has either gone haywire or collapsed entirely.

Initially the person feels anxious and overwhelmed; eventually the body shuts down and drops into depression and detachment. The system burns hot, then goes cold.

Nicotinum - the pure alkaloid - has all of the above but with a sharper neurological focus. This is a remedy often used for epilepsy, ticks and jerking motions (revved up, dysregulated nervous system), weakness, loss of appetite, and loss of concentration. Where Tabacum is the full-body overwhelm, Nicotinum is the autonomic nervous system that has lost its ability to self-regulate. There is a persistent sensation of emptiness and faintness at the center. Something is absent where aliveness used to be.

In-Between the Old World & the New

Cigarettes became popular during the First and Second World Wars. Tobacco companies sent millions of packs to soldiers on the front lines, and cigarettes were even included in soldiers’ C-rations.

The energetic picture is unmistakable: men under existential threat, dissociated from their bodies, needing something to calm the nervous system - even if just for a moment. Tobacco is a grounding plant in the face of collective overwhelm and powerlessness.

(They also often used Opium, another major shock and trauma remedy…sound familiar with the current opioid crisis?)

In this period of time between WWI and WWII we saw huge shifts in culture and a push to modernize and optimize for convenience and consumption.

Cigarettes became a way to self-soothe, regulate, and also to stimulate the body and mind just enough to push through the overwhelm and uncertainty of daily life. The world as I once knew it is rapidly shifting and changing…but at least I can carve out 5 minutes to myself to regulate by smoking a cigarette.

This is why it’s so fascinating that nicotine patches are being used to treat long-COVID symptoms - COVID was a global event that completely collapsed our old way of doing things.

It was a time marked by intensity, fear, uncertainty that is still ever-present today with looming financial collapse and ongoing war & conflict, and a collective sense that we are living in between worlds.

Jan Scholten’s QJURE captures the inner life of this remedy state in striking language:

“Many anxieties: fear some misfortune would happen (anticipatory), generalized anxiety before changes - like traveling abroad and being alone…” (interesting many people smoke cigarettes when traveling).

“Anxiety attacks manifest as constriction in the chest, palpitations, inability to breathe deeply.”

“Nervous, frightened without cause, sick and timid, childlike, incapacitated for any business. Ordinary noises cause tremulousness and starting. Fear of death. Paranoia. Feeling as if someone were coming to arrest him”

I find this theme can show up in nightmares in clients needing these remedies.

The Tabacum state is someone overwhelmed by the weight of the world. The old world is dissolving but the new one has not yet arrived. The energetic properties of this plant help us find ground in a world that feels scary, ever-changing, and unstable.

While cigarettes can temporarily quiet our sense of existential dread and anxieties about the old world once again giving way to something new - the real medicine is in the homeopathic preparation of the substance. This is something that our vital force can work with to transform dread and anxiety into something more centered.

Instead of pretending that we aren’t all freaking out about the state of things and brushing it under the rug, we can acknowledge it and integrate it with homeopathy.

The nightshade plants in homeopathy remind our systems that we don’t need to dwell or collapse in the world of darkness, fear, paranoia, and uncertainty.

While they are very real energies of our times, there is still safety and regulation that we can teach our systems how to access even in the worst of times. Calling upon these remedies helps us to hold our center, our humanity, and a sense of lightness in the “in-between.”

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

But this is how many of us exist every Spring. We just call it “normal.”

I was standing in a gym class last week when a woman mentioned her scratchy throat. She wasn’t sure - was it allergies, or something coming on? Before she finished the sentence, someone across the room called out: “Just take some Zyrtec!” And we all nodded. Of course. Take the pill, move through it, don’t lose a day.

I understand the impulse. I really do. And I’ll even offer you my own version of that - a homeopathic remedy you can take and carry on with your Spring.

But if you want more than a season of managed symptoms, it’s worth pausing first to consider why your body is responding this way in the first place.

As a homeopath, I know that your symptoms are a true oracle, telling me what might be living beneath the symptoms that needs to be paid attention to.

In the modern world of so much health information coming at us at all times, it feels more important than ever to learn the skill of tuning out the noise and finding what our body is really trying to say.

We are told that listening to our body means tracking metrics and data: tracking macros, monitoring heart rate, optimizing sleep, making sure our labs look the way we want them too... This is all well and good but it can come at a cost. We have outsourced what was once inherent within us - the ability to sit with ourselves and tune into what is really “off” in our life.

We were never taught the power of sitting with a symptom long enough to ask: what are you here for?

Allergies, in particular, have something specific to say. When your immune system responds to a cherry blossom as though it’s a threat, that is not a quirk of biology. It’s a reflection of a nervous system that has learned - for reasons that once made complete sense - that the world outside is not entirely safe. That contact requires defense. That openness carries risk.

The way I like to work with this isn’t to hand someone a diagnosis or tell them what their symptoms mean. I like to work backwards. I find the remedy that matches what you’re experiencing - physically, emotionally, energetically - and then let the remedy’s profile show you something. Does the emotional picture ring true? Do you see yourself in it? What does it stir in you?

Then we look at the practical aspect of the remedy - what organ affinity does it have? Do we need to support the liver? The colon? The gut? The remedy will help to balance out the organs that are under or over functioning.

This is how we stop outsourcing our wellness and start learning the language our bodies have been speaking all along.

Below are the remedies I reach for most often when allergies come through the door. Each one carries its own signature: a particular constellation of physical symptoms, yes, but also an emotional texture, a way of moving through the world that the body has learned to mirror.

You don’t need to match every detail of your symptom picture to come to the right remedy. You’re looking for resonance. The remedy profile where you get that “ohhh, yup, thats me” feeling when you read it.

What every one of these remedies shares, underneath the sneezing and the streaming eyes and the raw throat, is a single theme: sensitivity. A nervous system that has decided the world outside is something to be defended against. The boundary between self and environment has become a battle line.

The world attacks. I need to defend myself.

The remedies below not only address your histamine response, they also address the emotional pattern that caused the response in the first place.

Allium Cepa
irritation from contact

This remedy is for you if your symptom constellation includes:

-watery eyes + burning nasal discharge

-irritability from conflict with others

-feeling easily “provoked” and touchy

-you have a body that responds quickly & reflexively on all levels (to allergens, to people, to sensations, to the immediate environment)

Sabadilla
too open, too suggestible

This remedy is for you if your symptom constellation includes:

-sneezing attacks + itchiness

-strong sensitivity to smells

-preoccupation with health, fears illness

-perfectionistic because of their sensitivity to their environment

-the mind makes the symptoms worse because of constant scanning for “what’s wrong” - and allergies increase as a result

Arsenicum Album
control as a safety mechanism

This remedy is for you if your symptom constellation includes:

-burning nasal discharge, allergies + gut issues (burning pains, poor assimilation)

-mucus membranes raw & inflamed

-can be both restless & exhausted

-anxiety about health, needs reassurance

-order, tidiness, & predictability reduce symptomology

-feels the external world is unsafe

Natrum Muriaticum
building walls as a buffer

This remedy is for you if your symptom constellation includes:

-nose runs like a faucet + clear mucus

-sneezing attacks with sun sensitivity

-chronic allergies & histamine issues

-reserved & self-contained, doesn’t let the world in especially when vulnerable

-doesn’t want to feel emotionally “exposed” - fears rejection

-allergies as a defense against contact

-grief, feeling of being unseen & unheard

Wyethia Helenoides
unresolvable frustration

This remedy is for you if your symptom constellation includes:

-intense itching of the palate and posterior nasal cavity

-persistent throat irritation

-a feeling of “no matter what i do - i can’t quite resolve this - it’s unreachable”

-compulsive attempts to relieve what is irritating - scratching, rubbing, clearing

-life feels irritating and i’m not satisfied

-there is something i want that is just out of reach & i want relief!

Honorable Mention

Sometimes our symptoms aren’t specific enough to confidently match them to a remedy. When this is the case I like to use a catch-all blend that will help buffer the exaggerated immune response.

One of my tried & true blends is Freedom Flower’s Allergy Defense Blend (interesting name, no?).

You’ll notice the essences in this blend are in exact alignment with the mental/emotional issues that I described above (taken from Freedom Flowers):

Black Currant works with fear-based defensive patterns. The background signal that says something is wrong out there, that the environment requires constant vigilance, that safety means staying braced. This doesn’t arrive as a thought. It’s a felt condition, below language. Black Currant is associated with fear patterns carried in the body at this level. It’s the signal your system keeps broadcasting that hasn’t been addressed.

Yellow Monkey Flower addresses the fight-or-flight state itself. Not the triggered response. The ongoing activation. The physiological alarm that keeps the immune system primed and hair-triggered, running as an undercurrent even when nothing is happening. This is the readiness before the exposure, the state the body returns to between events because it stopped knowing how not to.

Oregon Grape works with defensive conditioning. The learned anticipation of environmental hostility. A body that has been defending for long enough begins bracing before anything has happened, because bracing has become the baseline. Oregon Grape is associated with this pattern of pre-emptive defense: the immune system that doesn’t know the situation has changed, that is still watching, still ready, treating the environment as hostile by default because that’s what its experience has taught it to do.

Pink Yarrow addresses immune discernment. Not walls. Not shutdown. Not full reactivity in every direction. The capacity for your system to signal: this is okay to have close. Not everything that enters the body’s environment is a threat requiring a defense. Healthy discernment is not the absence of response. It’s knowing the difference. This is the essence that helps a chronically reactive system stop treating the world as uniformly threatening, signaling to the body that what it encounters can be allowed closer without the automatic call to arms.

Gentle reminder: spring is not the enemy. The blossoms are not trying to take you down. When your body responds to the natural world as though it must be defended against, something deeper is asking to be heard. For most, it’s an old story about safety, contact, and what it costs to stay open.

A well-matched remedy can begin to shift that story. Not by suppressing the response, but by reminding your system, gently, that it is allowed to soften. That it is safe to rejoin the world and be amongst the sweetness of a season changing - the pollen, the wind, the flowers, the sun on your face.

I hope this article helps change your perspective on what Spring can feel like for you.

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

There have been a good amount of stomach bugs, coughs, and colds going around recently. I’m always amazed at how effective a few doses of a well-matched homeopathic remedy are to help us move through these things with more ease. In most cases, we can move through the symptoms quickly and get back to our lives.

Most times.

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And sometimes symptoms still linger longer than we want them to even when you give a well-matched remedy.

Which brings me to the topic of today’s post - the inconvenience of physical symptoms.

When I was on my walk today one thing kept coming up again and again - the inflated response I am noticing that people have to their symptoms.

Often, it is out of proportion to the symptom itself which is what is creating more of the suffering than physical discomfort.

Why do we panic when we get the sniffles? Is our body not allowed to be inconvenient sometimes?

And trust me, I get it. I’m not judging you in any way. Most times when I get a tickle in my throat I’m also automatically going NO WAIT NO STOP. HOW CAN I CONTROL THIS? WHAT’S THE REMEDY? AM I GOING TO HAVE TO RESCHEDULE MY CLIENT DAY?

But then I pause and take a deep breath and go wait…what?

Why am I acting like a cold is an emergency?

Why am I acting like the world will stop spinning if I have to rest for the day?

I was in a homeopathy webinar the other day. The practitioner was based in the UK and she was mentioning how often she has had to prescribe cortisol-regulating remedies to her American clients.

Go, go, go, go at any cost. And if you can’t? You should feel very, very guilty about it.

Our addiction to work and productivity is making us sick and is causing a ton of unnecessary stress when we get symptoms. And it makes sense. How many of us have had a boss who makes us feel guilty for needing time off? I hear a lot from moms that they get afraid that the school is going to take corrective action if their child misses too much school.

We have come to see our body as something to micromanage. Something to fear. We never learned how to trust our body to move through symptoms at its own pace.

What if we just let ourselves have a cold without trying to fix it?

What if we could allow a child to move through an illness without immediately going into alarm?

What might change if we meet symptoms with a bit more steadiness instead of urgency?

This is the case in chronic symptoms too. My heart breaks when a client makes significant progress on their remedy then hits a stressful period where symptoms partially return and run to get a steroid or a medication.

It’s not that I don’t understand - I do. For a lot of people a return of symptoms can cause a PTSD-like feeling and they want to run to what’s “standard.”

But does their doctor let them know the cost of doing this? No. Because unfortunately, there is a cost. The symptoms get suppressed and move deeper into the body.

This is the same way when we expect ourselves to show up at max capacity when we aren’t feeling well. It creates more wear and tear on a body that just wants a minute to breathe.

So when I give Bryonia for your cough or flu symptoms and you don’t bounce back the next day, can you let it be okay?

When I give you Nux Vomica for a GI bug and your body still feels weak for a few days and your appetite isn’t back to normal, can you let it be okay?

When your skin symptoms return a little bit because it’s allergy season and your immune system is a bit more burdened, can you wait two weeks to let the body correct itself with Nat Mur?

The next time you’re tired instead of grabbing another coffee or dissociating by scrolling (which is actually costing you more energy), can you close your eyes and breathe for those 5 minutes or stare out the window and get curious about what the birds are doing to give your nervous system time without stimulus to regulate?

This doesn’t require perfection, just curiosity. Can you let your body be a little bit inconvenient to you? It’s only ever doing it out of protection. Your body is constantly working in your favor, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Can we slowly increase our tolerance for discomfort and support our body in that healing process?

At the end of the day when our body is expressing symptoms it is already going through a highly intelligent process that will end in healing.

When we pathologize this process as inconvenient or as the body doing “something wrong” we get in the way. We think we are short-cutting the process but ultimately we are delaying our healing.

At some point, we stopped seeing the body as something intelligent and started seeing it as something that needed to behave.

Instead of getting curious about our symptoms we jump to “how can I make this stop?”

The truth is that fever is an intelligent immune response, and constantly shutting it down can interfere with how the body resolves illness.

A skin rash is your body moving waste out to protect deeper systems.

That mucus is moving out pathogens to help you move through the illness faster. Making it stop or dry up too quickly means the debris will sit in your tissues longer.

When we let the body continue the clean up process (with support from a remedy if things get stuck) it will reward us with better health in the long-term.

Next time you feel sick or have a chronic symptom flare I invite you to journal a little bit about what comes up around it. Does your mind create a lot of internal drama? What is the emotion coming up? Fear? What of?

Let this be a mini invitation to explore what your symptoms activate within you. This might be the only remedy you need. The next time your body asks you to slow down, can you let it be a little inconvenient… without turning it into a problem?

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

We all have that thing or that situation that bothers us that we want to try to FIGURE OUT.

We promise ourselves that if we sit here and THINK. IT. THROUGH for long enough we will come up with a solution and then we will finally be free of the pressure the thought loop keeps us trapped in.

But I know that you know that it never works like that.

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There are things in life that “trigger” us. That aren’t in our control. That are not currently solvable.

For one person it’s overthinking that conversation that led to that fight.

Or obsessing about work and money and job stress.

Maybe we feel fear of the future and we think about that at 3AM instead of getting a good night’s sleep.

All of us spend far too much time in our own minds creating an experience that is more stressful than the thing itself.

Lucky for you I have experienced this enough times and with enough clients that I have developed a routine that is so simple yet so effective. Something you can reach for whenever you need it.

My 10-Minute Energy Hygiene Routine to Banish Negative Thoughts

What you’ll need:
-White Chestnut flower essence
-Pen & paper
-Enough desire to change that you will try what I suggest ;-)

Step One:

Take 4 drops of White Chestnut flower essence under the tongue. If you want to get fancy and with it you can brew yourself a nice cup of chamomile tea and add 4 drops to your cup.

Take a deep breath in…and out. Center yourself.

Think of the White Chestnut as an energetic sponge cleansing your mind of all unhelpful thought-loops. It helps you to stop the anxiety driven rumination cycle. Thoughts are energy based so lets change the channel in our minds to something more positive with energy medicine.

If this is something that is an ongoing issue for you consider adding it consistently to your routine.

Find White Chestnut Here.

Step Two:

Now lets let these thoughts GO. The best way to do this is by doing something tactile that funnels the energy out of your head and onto paper. Get your pen and paper and free write for three pages.

It’s best to handwrite because it activates more regions of the brain than typing which better leads to a feeling of “having gotten it all out.”

No holding back. No self-censoring. No worrying about being “too negative.” This is your place to get out all that stuck energy that’s been making you feel anxious.

Short on time? Set a timer for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes - whatever you have. The goal is to write as fast as you can to prevent self-editing.

There is something magical that tends to happen for people around the three page mark. While the first page is usually where all of our surface thoughts go, the deeper insights show up right around page three.

You just might find that by getting your thoughts onto paper you will see the real emotion or pattern that’s behind the thought loop. This is one of the reasons I love pairing this practice with White Chestnut - the energy of this essence helps open up our awareness to deeper insights that can be harder to access if we don’t shift our energy first.

Step Three:

Got all your thoughts onto paper? Good! Now let’s ground back into the body.

Tap the center of your chest near your thymus gland and breathe deeply to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. This signals to your body that it’s safe to be grounded in the present moment - not worried about the past or the future.

You will know that you have shifted into parasympathetic mode when you swallow or yawn.

Now that you’re feeling better - resist the urge to do the things that you know will reactive you

The thing is that these thought loops trigger stress hormones that some of us have become used to feeling. Sometimes the stress strangely becomes our new comfort zone.

Resist the urge to restimulate your mind with scrolling or too much sensory input. It’s best to shift into another activity that uses your hands - cooking, knitting, drawing, cleaning out a drawer. Things that keep you in the present moment where everything is OK.

I hope that you find this routine helpful! Let me know if you try it. It might just feel like magic :-) Rinse & repeat as needed.

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

The next morning on my walk I found myself checking my watch several times thinking “am I going to make it back in time for my client call?” I found myself walking faster and faster - completely negating any positive effects of what is supposed to be a grounding and regulating way to start my day.

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“Is this because of the new remedies I’m taking?” I thought.

Well yes - in a way.

You see people love to jump the gun whenever they are doing something new for their health. You can start to get a lot of “what if” thoughts if you have tried a lot of things to heal. “What if this is making me worse? What if I am doing the wrong thing? Is this that aggravation thing I read about on the internet?”

But what if you think you’re getting “worse” when actually you are just more aware.

What if you have been running around like a maniac for years and now you are finally noticing it and going “huh…why do I do that?”

What if the support you are giving your vital force through homeopathy is helping to turn up the volume on that still small voice that wants to help you heal?

Because guess what happened after I had this awareness of how fast I was moving? I had the opportunity to make a different choice. This morning as I was vacuuming I thought to myself - “wow, it feels nice to slowly maneuver this vacuum around instead of clumsily knocking it into every corner and putting my nervous system into overdrive for literally no reason.”

You see remedies are very grounding. They put you back in your body when so many of us are hovering outside of it without even knowing. When you land back in your body you notice things about yourself and your life that you were blind to.

It’s when we are blind to the things that are chronically imbalance us that we become chronically imbalanced.

This is the reason I have returned to homeopathy again and again - even if I no longer have the level of chronic illness that turned me onto it in the first place. There are so many things today that take us out of ourselves. Busy schedules. Unnatural environments and demands. The chaotic-ness of the world around us.

We all need things that help us tune back in and notice where we have gone off track.

As I stayed with the remedy more and more things began to pop into my awareness. Here was a big one: why do I have this compulsion to commit to things that I don’t really want to do?

Well, simple - because when I committed I didn’t have the level of awareness necessary to tune in and ask myself if I really wanted to do them. And now that I did have the awareness I could start to say “no” and make note of what gives me life and what doesn’t in this season. No guilt. No “but I should.” Just no.

These seem like small things but these small pieces of awareness add up to a body that has more joy, more vitality, more space to heal & repair. This is how you get & stay well.

This is something I’m always tracking in client follow-ups.

Has their awareness about themselves and their life increased? If it has - I know we are on the right track. This is the difference between homeopathy and just eliminating symptoms. What’s the point of getting rid of symptoms if they are going to come back because you don’t know how to keep yourself well?

The body always keeps us honest and will express symptoms if we are going unconscious in our daily life.

A client recently asked me what I thought about her mycotoxin levels. She was coming to me with a lot of health anxiety, which most of my clients have to some degree, and was concerned about the mold in her house. This is a question I get asked at least every other week and it makes sense. You don’t want to try to get better only to have your environment making you sick.

But I posed a different question - have you ever felt safe in your environment? In your body?

The answer was sadly, no.

This is what needs to change. Because the people who come to me with high levels of anxiety do not get better by over-controlling their diets and homes and the people around them. They get better when they are able to change their relationship to safety and control.

And you may be thinking - “why didn’t I think of that?” (sarcasm). I’m sure some of you have had the awareness that you are trying to fix what can’t be fixed with more control. But what I’m trying to say is that this is really what I’m aiming the homeopathic remedy at.

Can we shift your consciousness around this idea of safety & control? Can we match this energy with something in nature that is designed to help us integrate and make peace with a life and body that has felt unsafe?

It sounds far fetched to people unfamiliar with homeopathy and energy healing - but this is really what we are doing with homeopathy and flower essences. We are stimulating healing in the subconscious, in the physical body, and in the mental and emotional realms.

You can see this as you watch your dreams shift alongside the remedy. What has been stuck and heavy and out of our awareness begins to be brought up to awareness to be processed and healed.

You start to have little insights in your daily life - “huh why do I do that? why do I allow that?” Then the questions make way for better choices and higher quality thoughts. Without that insight, how can we change? And without changing, how can we be well in a way that lasts?

One of the ways I make space for my higher self or “the voice that keeps me well” is by journaling each morning. Some of you know I’m currently doing The Artists Way and part of that is committing to 3 pages of journaling first thing.

It’s very hard not to change what needs changing when you’re writing about it every day. You quickly get very sick of yourself! And beyond that, you start to see what things need support. It’s how I have known what remedies I need and what they are doing when I take them.

So even if you’re not ready to try homeopathy - start journaling! It’s cliche for a reason.

Anyway, that’s enough for today. Until next time.

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com (I work virtually!)

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

Our kids are anxious because the modern day school systems bombard them with exams and overstimulate them with information and expectation.

Our boss is anxious about the economy and takes it out on us by raising expectations and therefore raising our anxiety levels.

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Our spouse is anxious because they too are overworked and scrolling and jumping from thing to thing trying to get it all done.

And this is just in our day to day life.

There were also the big events that can rattle our systems and put us in a state of shock (sometimes without even realizing it). There are big shocks and little shocks. Parents fighting and divorcing. Car accidents. Job loss. Diagnoses. Traumatic births.

The overlay of shock can put us in a perpetual state of dysregulation where we over-respond to the already stressful things of daily life (this is why my clients who don’t respond to well chosen anxiety remedies will get remedies that unwind shock - then they respond beautifully again).

So you can see - anxiety is complex and requires attunement to the person’s specific experience of anxiety and what has contributed to it overtime. Only when you understand the persons full experience and what has brought them to this point do you get a meaningful, permanent healing with homeopathy.

It takes one approach to treat acute anxiety and another to treat chronic long-standing anxiety. Some people are experiencing anxiety as a result of a recent shock or because they are experiencing something that is objectively nerve wracking (like an upcoming exam or speaking in public) and another person is what you would call “an anxious person” where anxiety is part of their daily state.

Acute anxiety is very easy to treat with homeopathy. One dose of Argentum Nitricum before a big exam, flight, or performance that you are nervous about and you’re set. Maybe throw in a little Rescue Remedy on top if you’re really feeling nervous.

But if you have been chronically anxious for a long time it’s going to require someone who is well-versed in anxiety and how it is tracked and measured overtime - what potency to give, what remedy to start with, when its time to change the remedy, etc.

Because if there is one thing about an anxious person - they are not going to be objective when it comes to their healing. They are so used to the habit of surveilling every sensation and symptom they won’t see the very meaningful progress they are making that an objective person will easily pick up on.

I’ll give you an example of a very common remedy we use in homeopathy for chronic anxiety - Arsenicum Album.

I’m using this remedy as an example because it’s a remedy state we are all unfortunately very familiar with.

Arsenicum Album is one of our main remedies for treating COVID and all of the psychological symptoms that came with it.

Someone who needs Arsenicum Album becomes extremely anxious and restless when there is something in their life that is beyond their control. They have a deep desire to control things in order to feel safe. When something is outside of their control it comes out in OCD-like symptoms and hypochondria. This is the person who on the conventional medical side was double masking, sanitizing every surface (twice), and was first in line for the vaccine.

If you were more natural minded you would be in a state of constant fear and worry about the government controlling you or making you get the vaccine. Maybe you were stocking up on food and supplies “just in case.” You track the full moon because you’re worried it will aggravate your symptoms and take charcoal when you see chemtrails. That kind of thing.

Something is out of your control and so you over-control what’s within your capacity to control. You over prepare. Overthink. Become Type A. Restless (Arsenicum loves to pace around the house or clean as a way to channel their anxiety).

So when I give a client Arsenicum who is in this state they start to loosen their grip on control bit by bit. They stop tracking every morsel of food they put in their mouth. They stop looking for black mold in the bathroom. They forget to sanitize the airplane tray table. They no longer feel compelled to go down a rabbit hole whenever they feel a symptom (Kali Arsenicum is also a great remedy for this).

This is just one remedy state of many to illustrate what I mean. You are releasing the pressure valve overtime so your body can actually relax and be present again.

And because you’re more grounded, you have more awareness of your daily inputs that are contributing to anxiety. You decide to journal in the morning instead of doomscroll. You take a walk to shake out the restlessness. You realize that the very nature of life is unpredictable and out of our control and that’s okay. You roll with it. This is how life is and always will be.

Homeopathy reminds us of the okayness of what is and that’s what makes it perfect for our current times.

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

I wanted a change of scenery and a new life and I wanted it NOW!

Not because I hate my life but because I felt restless and maybe a little bit bored.

But today I woke up and peacefully journaled and reflected on how cute my little rental home is and that impulse was gone.

I’m still me but with drastically different emotional weather.

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I’ve learned through lots of experience not to over attach to my thoughts and emotions and make them mean more than they do.

I know from working with hundreds of clients over the years what emotional patterning looks like and how 80% of it is just a sign of something shedding from our energy system. It’s like your body is experiencing a system update and at first it can create all sorts of internal wonkiness.

This is especially true when you’re working with energy medicine like homeopathy or flower essences, as I do.

I knew that the impulse for change was coming from a few different things -

1. I was experimenting with a couple new homeopathic remedies and they were in high potencies (= STRONG energetic shifts).

2. I knew it was eclipse season + that a potent conjunction was happening yesterday between Saturn & Neptune that could shake things up

3. I simply journaled it down, not ignoring it, but watching the impulse with curiosity.

I think we can experience a lot of pain from over attaching to our every thought and emotion. Just like your liver is currently humming along performing over 300 functions to keep your body in homeostasis, just like your blood is currently delivering nutrients and oxygen to your tissues, just like your cells are dying and being born, your brain and nervous system is meeting the moment you are in and regulating itself through the joys and stresses of your daily experiences.

A lot of words to say - the thoughts and feelings self-regulate if you just let them be. They are simply data that is passing through. Not to be ignored, of course. But to be witnessed with curiosity and tracked overtime.

If I feel a consistent thought or emotion or motivation to change something, then I act upon it. But I also know that my perception is not always reality. I might be temporarily looking through a distorted lens. This can happen when your vital force, or your internal regulating mechanism, is stuck or moving through something.

In my case, earlier in the week I had been moving through old grief and it was coming out in strange ways. I had taken a high potency of Ignatia - one of our most cherished grief remedies in homeopathy - and suddenly I found myself listening to music from artists who had passed on without even realizing it. I found myself grieving one of my old favorite musicians who died of alcoholism.

Sometimes our emotions attach to strange and random things as an outlet for regulation.

I had taken the remedy because of old family grief - and that also came up - but when grief was on its way out my body it morphed into that desire for escapism - surely I could simply escape my grief by moving to the sunny state of California?!

But just as day becomes night to become day again - and just as the rain ends and the sun peaks behind the clouds - the grief passed too. It’s that old cliche of emotion literally meaning “energy in motion.”

The emotion wants an outlet. Especially if you are a client of mine and we are working through old energy patterns and trauma or are on your own homeopathy journey - an outlet is hugely helpful. For me, it’s been playing guitar and writing. Something hands on and tangible to get you out of your head.

But remember most of all that your body is self-regulating. You’re watching the body process something it’s ready to let go of in real time. Sometimes you’ll get to watch this happen in your dreams.

So many times I will give a client a remedy and they have some sort of healing or resolution about what we talked about in their dream. It’s because the remedy helps you to integrate the energy instead of it remaining stuck and unprocessed.

I’ll often find myself saying “it wasn’t you - it was just your state.” Something passing through.

I know many of us are struggling emotionally these days for so many reasons. It’s tough out there. I hope this article gave you some comfort and hope that you can weather the storm.

And if you need support - homeopathy can help tremendously for stuck emotions. Even blends like Freedom Flower’s Crisis Care can help the body process the intensity of the moment and come back to center more quickly.

Until next time…

Yours in Healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

So many of the questions I get asked on a daily basis require nuance beyond what a textbox on Instagram stories can allow (and honestly beyond what a q&a can allow but I try!) so it was nice to be able to give these questions some more time and thought.

If you want to be part of the next Q&A comment down below with a question or a follow-up question to anything that’s discussed in todays episode and I will do my best to answer it.

Enjoy!

Yours in healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

(Note: not medical advice. Just an example of what I might do if i was in this situation. Always consult your doctor and your own intuition before taking remedies).

In my last post I talked about common mistakes people make when it comes to homeopathy - one of them being thinking they need to know how homeopathy works or even fully “believe in it” to use it effectively.

For me, the proof is in the pudding. And the remedies I am about to teach you today are so valuable and fast-acting that they don’t need to be explained or understood.

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For many people, a good experience with an acute remedy is the entry point into using homeopathy for chronic symptoms. Homeopathy is so safe and effective that you don’t need to fully know what you’re doing for it to work.

My general rule of thumb is to try a remedy for 3-4 doses and if you don’t see movement then re-assess and try the next best match. For acute pain - one dose an hour is generally a good idea - but if it’s super severed you can do a dose every 15-30 mins (like is the case with something like a panic attack).

Speaking of panic attacks - that leads me to my first remedy:

Aconitum Napellus (AKA Aconite)

Aconite is one of those remedies I believe everyone should have in their car or purse (or both!). When someone needs Aconite the body has been thrown off by exposure (severe cold and wind) or anything that is a shock to the system.

Symptoms that Aconite helps with come on suddenly and intensely - as is the case with a panic attack. Giving someone Aconite 200c every 15 minutes for three doses is a great protocol for panic attacks. It will help the nervous system get out of fight or flight mode and feel grounded again. Remember that cortisol takes some time to flush through the system - so it may still take time to fully come back to themselves.

With Aconite the person can go from “OMG I think I’m dying” to “oh…ok…I think I’m going to be okay actually.”

I’ve also used Aconite for panic that comes after surgery - another type of shock.

It can also be used to treat pain that comes on suddenly after exposure to cold wind (Aconite is always worse cold, dry wind). This can be anything from a toothache to a sore throat to croup.

Many people use one pellet of Aconite 200c with one pellet of Bryonia 30c at the first sign of a cold and flu and it with either stop it completely if caught early enough or make the symptoms less intense and shorter lasting.

But let’s say that you don’t do this protocol and symptoms of the flu come on…enter:

Eupatorium Perfoliatum

Eupatorium is one of the best remedies we have for severe influenza. Think of it like DEEP bone pains and aches. Like - can’t get out of bed pain. Again - we’re talking about remedies that take you from the depths of hell to right as rain so this is much more severe than the general flu aches and pains that are covered by the remedy Gelsemium.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a client email me that they tried taking Gelsemium for the flu and literally cannot get out of bed. Of course they usually have something they absolutely have to do the next day and can’t afford to be sick.

I tell them to take a dose of Eupatorium 30c (or 200c if its really severe) - one dose an hour for 4 doses - and it’s a night and day difference. I’ve had a client be able to board and plane and travel abroad the next morning after not being able to leave the bed the night prior.

With someone needing Eupatorium they will feel really restless with the pain and will want to move despite it hurting. They will often have a fever and there can also be nausea and vomiting.

They can crave cold drinks even with the chills.

This remedy can also help someone who has had bone pain that won’t leave long after they have had the flu.

Continuing on with people who can’t leave bed our next remedy is known as “the corpse reviver” for its ability to help people even in a comatose state:

Carbo Vegetablis

Carbo Veg is for complete collapse states. When it’s needed it’s really needed and will work quickly.

If someone around you has fainted or collapsed you can put one pellet in their mouth to help them regain consciousness (obviously do this with discernment since they can’t consent).

The person may look pale, blue, and icy cold.

Think of this remedy when someone is in a collapsed state after losing fluids (post-illness, food poisoning, haemorrhage), after receiving anesthesia, or after shock.

A person needing this remedy is often better from fresh air, being fanned, or having the window open (it’s a remedy that helps to oxygenate the body again - so it makes sense).

On a less serious note - this remedy can also be used for intestinal gas. If someone is super bloated and keeps passing gas - Carbo Veg can help a ton. It’s a remedy made from the energy of vegetable charcoal so it has a big affinity for the GI tract.

Now let’s move to one of my favorite pain and fever remedies - one that’s an absolute must have especially if you have kids:

Belladonna

Like Aconite, Belladonna works for symptoms that come on quickly. One minute the person is fine and the next they are NOT fine at all.

Belladonna is one of our best remedies for high fevers and infections. Someone needing this remedy will have a fever with a flushed face and may be completely delirious.

The pain that Belladonna deals with is a pulsing throbbing pain. Think painful throbbing headaches, toothaches, or ear aches. There will be redness and inflammation.

Belladonna is a remedy that I hear talked about a lot by people as “the remedy” that made them “believe” in homeopathy. As I mentioned in my recent post, it was the remedy my mentor used on his son for bad ear infections that stopped responding to antibiotics. Belladonna was so effective that it healed the ear faster than antibiotics ever did.

I typically recommend having Belladonna in a 30c (standard acute potency) and a 200c (severe pain not responding to a 30c). Typically when Belladonna “doesn’t work” the person isn’t dosing enough or the potency isn’t high enough. If you’re sure of a remedy it’s better to try it in a 200c then second guessing yourself and moving on too quickly.

One of the big signs that the remedy is doing its job is that the person is more comfortable even if they still have symptoms. They may fall asleep or act more like themselves. Remember - a fever is an intelligent response from the body to move through infection - we never want to suppress a fever. We want to help the body move through it effectively.

What a remedy does is its re-educating your body on how to move through illness and come back to balance without having lasting lingering symptoms or symptoms that are too intense to handle.

The last remedy I’ll cover today is another one that is huge for pain relief and is another remedy I prescribe a lot in my practice for kids but can also be used by adults:

Chamomilla

This is our #1 for teething pains but it’s also a great pain remedy in general. The person who needs this remedy is VERY pain sensitive. The pain makes them very irritable, clingy, and worked up. They will want relief and want it NOW.

In children - they will cry the second you try and put them down. They want to be carried but sometimes even that isn’t enough to soothe them. Sometimes I give this remedy to kids that develop pain and irritability after there is a separation from the parent - think newly enrolling into daycare or a parent working later than usual. Sometimes they will exaggerate the pain (or their nervous system will be extra sensitive to it) as a way to get attention and regulate with someone.

This is another great remedy for ear pain - think of this if there is lingering ear pain after Belladonna is given. Sometimes the person will have one cheek red and the other cheek pale with the pain.

For adults - this is an excellent remedy for severe period cramping and labor pains. The pain will feel unbearable and they may say things like “I can’t do this!” or demand immediate help.

There is often anger and irritability in this remedy. If someone you know has pain from an injury or dental work and they become frustrated and irritable with the pain, think of this remedy.

Ok, that’s all I have for you today! Have you seen a remedy work like magic? Comment down below - I’d love to hear your story.

Yours in healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

(Note: not medical advice. Just an example of what I might do if i was in this situation. Always consult your doctor and your own intuition before taking remedies).

But please, don’t be intimidated. There is really very little you need to know to get started using homeopathy because of how safe it is even if you “get it wrong.” Which brings me to the first mistake I see people make -

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They feel like they have to understand homeopathy to use it.

If you stop a homeopath on the street and ask them to describe what homeopathy is and how it works-unless they have an elevator speech committed to memory-they are going to fumble for the right words at first.

This isn’t because they don’t understand homeopathy. It’s because homeopathy exists within a paradigm that is so left field from what modern medicine falls within. It can be hard to translate homeopathy into words a lay person would understand without completely writing it off as “bunk” or “pseudoscience.”

Just because something doesn’t fall within our realm of current understanding doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It means that science hasn’t caught up with it yet. There is a lot of “out there” phenomena we don’t understand that still happens regardless of if we understand it or not.

In simple terms, homeopathy is energy medicine. The physical substance the remedy is made from is so dilute and far removed that it can no longer be registered on the pellet. The physical substance is essential and is what makes the remedy effective, but we are relying on a very different method of preparation versus a typical tincture or supplement.

We are relying on potentization: dilution and succussion of the substance is what extracts the necessary energy signature to illicit a healing response when you take it.

When you take a remedy and it helps you with your symptoms its because the energy signature of that remedy is a close enough match to the energy signature of your symptoms. When it’s a close match it activates your healing mechanism and sends the body a message to correct the imbalance responsible for those symptoms.

(and if you want studies that “prove” homeopath works - here you go).

But again - I digress - because you DON’T need to understand this to use homeopathy.

The simple truth is that when you or your child have a high fever and that high fever comes with a flushed face and is so intense you feel slightly delirious the remedy Belladonna is going to help your body move through that fever much faster.

You don’t need to know anything about homeopathy for Nux Vomica to support your liver in clearing hang over symptoms (or hang over like symptoms regardless of cause). Arsenicum Album will likely work for the stomach flu regardless of if you “believe in” homeopathy. Homeopathy doesn’t require your belief for it to work - because it just…does (if you know how to use it).

I often find that people new to homeopathy should just try the remedy before trying to grapple with if it fits their concept of reality or not. That’s what my mentor did. He was a Yale trained nurse practitioner working in a psychiatric unit. He was as conventional and proud about it as you might come to expect from someone who went to Yale. When his son was no longer responding to antibiotics for his repeat ear infections he tried homeopathy as a last resort.

He quite literally went into the appointment rolling his eyes and thinking to himself “yeah ok…this is gonna be a waste of my time.”

Guess what? Belladonna still worked for his son’s ear infection. In fact - when he checked his ears he saw it worked faster than the antibiotic ever did. The redness and inflammation calmed much quicker. And when he got an ear infection again while traveling - it worked again. And then he became a homeopath.

Which brings me to the next mistake

I remember when I first discovered homeopathy I saw a natural health practitioner “prove” that homeopathy doesn’t work by taking an entire vial of a remedy made to help for sleep.

“I’m going to take the whole thing in one sitting - watch how nothing happens.”

Two things are wrong here. #1 if you don’t actually have the symptom of insomnia it’s not going to make you fall asleep as if you took an Ambien or downed a whole bottle of motherwort tincture. Homeopathy only acts on the body if you have the symptom to begin with. And it has to be a match for that particular remedy. Your insomnia has to look like the Coffea insomnia (excited, restless, like you downed a coffee) or the Nat Mur insomnia (melancholy, ruminating on a conversation that upset you, thoughts of people you’ve lost) for it to work because we are working at the level of frequency.

Also - a dose is a dose in homeopathy. You are stimulating the body to heal or you aren’t. If you take the whole vial in one sitting that counts as one dose. If you take three pellets that counts as one dose. Your body gets the signal no matter the amount of pellets. If you were to take the whole bottle, wait 10 minutes, then take another bottle, that would count as 2 doses. Get what I’m saying? It’s about the frequency at which you take it (once every 30 mins) not about the amount of pellets.

Of course this guy didn’t “overdose” on homeopathy by taking the whole bottle. He took one dose and it didn’t match a symptom. It just doesn’t work like that. Trust me, there have been plenty of moms who have emailed me saying “OMG my child took the whole bottle of pellets what do I do??” as if they are going to need to call poison control. Luckily, it’s child safe :-)

Which brings me to the last mistake for today

People using homeopathy for chronic symptoms the same way they would for acute symptoms and expecting good results.

When you have an acute symptom like a cough, cold, ache, pain, broken bone, bug bite, etc - they are self-limiting. AKA they will go away on their own eventually. That means that symptom is very much on the surface and easy to grab and kick out with a remedy.

A chronic symptom typically does not have an end point. Maybe it waxes and wanes but typically it will show up again. It’s deeper and more rooted in the system - trickier to grab with a remedy.

This is why I always recommend people experiment with treating acute symptoms first. They are much easier to treat if you don’t understand homeopathy. Even homeopaths see homeopaths for chronic issues - it gets COMPLICATED. (And honestly - sometimes I even see a homeopath for acutes if I don’t feel like figuring it out myself).

Let’s take the remedy Arsenicum Album again as an example and apply it to an acute and a chronic situation.

Example A: You get food poisoning - vomiting, diarrhea, sweats, the works. Typically I would tell you to take Arsenicum Album 30c every hour for 4 doses. If you don’t see improvement by the 4th dose move on to the next match - like Nux Vomica for example. This is where having a basic acute remedy guide comes in handy.

Usually - the “top remedy for X” works just fine. You don’t have to match it exactly. You notice improvement and continue taking the remedy 3-4x a day until you’re mostly better and forget to take it.

Example B: You have chronic health anxiety and GI issues that have been with you since childhood and you have taken several medications to try to correct it. Your symptoms match Arsenicum Album.

You wouldn’t take Arsenicum Album every hour for 4 doses for a chronic situation. Chronic symptoms always respond to gentle nudges over time. The reason I went to school for over 4 years to help you with your chronic symptom is because knowing the remedy is just step #1. Knowing how to use it is most of the story.

When I’m taking your case I’m assessing your level of sensitivity, how deeply rooted your symptoms are, how deep the level of suppression is of that symptom (how much you have managed it with suppressive measures like medication and over supplementation). From there - I come up with a plan.

Ok, this person has both physical and emotional symptoms. Typically, these respond well to a 200c potency. I’ll have them take it every other week until we meet and see how they responded.

You see, the dosing frequency is much less. And thats because you will be taking the remedy for a longer period of time than 2-3 days like in an acute. The more deeply rooted the symptom, the more likely it is that we will need to adjust dosing frequency and potency to match your body’s response to the remedy overtime to get a complete healing.

This is where I see people get discouraged and want to quit at times. Maybe they see a testimonial that someone took two doses of Arsenicum Album and their health anxiety went POOF!

This does happen. But it was because the symptom was on the surface. It wasn’t layered and suppressed. It was easy to grab and eradicate.

There are just as many people who will need potency adjustments or small nudges overtime from a series of remedies as their body heals and becomes more resilient (see my post below for more context).

I will leave it here for now! I’m sure I’ll have to make a part 2 in the future. If you have any questions or common misconceptions in homeopathy you want to see address comment below!

Yours in healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

(Note: not medical advice. Just an example of what I might do if i was in this situation. Always consult your doctor and your own intuition before taking remedies).

To be honest I haven’t felt like myself in a long time. After going through a divorce and then caring for two kids who are going through long-term chronic disease I find myself not wanting to get out of bed.

It’s embarrassing to admit but I find myself scrolling or playing games on my phone instead of wanting to hang out with the kids. It feels like I forgot how to be joyful or what even brings me joy anymore.

For so long I have been playing caretaker. The stress shows on my face. My hair is starting to fall out. My joints hurt. People don’t understand what’s going on with my family and I don’t feel like explaining it.

Is there anything that can help me get my spark back?

Signed,
Deeply Depleted

Dear Deeply Depleted,

First of all thank you for writing in. I can feel the pain and grief in your question and I want you to know that I have helped many people in similar situations. The truth is - I’ve never seen more depletion than now in my practice. So many people are coming to me in a completely burned out state.

Some are burnt out from the state of the world. Some are burnt out from years of trying to heal chronic illness. Some are burnt out from grief and loss that has been with them for a long time.

When the body has been asked to push itself beyond it’s limits for an extended period of time it can feel like we are running on fumes no matter how much sleep we get.

And it doesn’t just show up physically, it show’s up mentally.

What’s cool about homeopathy is that when you are learning remedies you learn about yourself and the human experience in the process.

For example, a remedy that comes to mind for your situation is Phosphoric Acid.

When I prescribe the remedy Phosphorus - the person in front of me tends to be very expressive, bubbly, social, and eager to connect. They fill their cup by being with other people and can become fearful and anxious when alone.

Phosphoric Acid is like the depleted cousin of Phosphorus. This person has the potential to be that bubbly connected person, but they are so depleted that they have turned inward. A kind of internal collapse.

You may read this and think it’s a bad thing. But I want to remind you that every single think your body does is intelligent.

When your reserves are depleted its intelligent for the body to give you signals to disengage. To create a temporary cocoon in which you can heal and regenerate. When we go through something that exhausts us that’s usually what we do automatically if we are listening. We retract inward until we are ready to face the world again.

But sometimes life doesn’t allow us to do this. There is something that happens that’s shocking, long-lasting, or beyond our capacity that knocks us so off kilter that we have trouble coming back to ourselves even when we get a chance to rest.

What the remedy Phosphoric Acid does is plug back in your internal battery so it actually begins to hold a charge again.

Some of the indications for this remedy include:
-Chronic depletion after illness, shock, or longstanding grief
-Hair loss after illness or grief
-Exercise intolerance
-Weakness and fatigue in muscles and joints
-Apathy and indifference to life and loved ones
-Withdrawing from life
-Mental fatigue, difficult concentration
-Cravings for fresh, juicy things & cold drinks

I want to note here that the cause of this state isn’t always dramatic. I have also given this remedy to kids experiencing growing pains (body is requiring something beyond its current capacity and hasn’t caught up) or students who have burnt themselves out studying and can’t focus on their notes.

This is why I love homeopathy. It meets us where we are at and then nudges us in the right direction. There are chapters in life that are incredibly challenging and that we may not feel we have the capacity to show up for.

A well-matched homeopathic remedy can give us the support we need when we have exhausted our own resources and remind us what it feels like to wake up feeling excited and curious about what the day might bring.

(Note: not medical advice. Just an example of what I might do if i was in this situation. Always consult your doctor and your own intuition before taking remedies).

Yours in healing,

Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

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You know deep down that there is a part of you that knows how it feels to be aligned and fully alive. A body that has the capacity to carry out your hopes and dreams. But getting from point A to point B can feel daunting.

Now more than ever we are flooded with things to do to heal. Take this supplement. Inject this peptide. Do this meditation for 30 days. Do this, do that, do MORE!

The reason I fell in love with homeopathy is because of its simplicity. Its anchored in the truth that your body knows exactly what to do to heal. In fact, it’s healing right in this very moment. Sometimes it just needs a period of gentle nudging to reach the other side.

That’s all that homeopathy does. It activates what’s already within you. It’s in clearing that space that you get more and more access to the parts of you that have been dormant.

Samuel Hahnemann - the founder of homeopathy - says it best:

“In the healthy human state, the spirit-like Vital Force (autocracy) animating the material organism reigns in supreme sovereignty. It maintains the sensations and activities of all parts in a harmony that obliges wonderment. The reasoning spirit who inhabits the organism can thus freely use this healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.”

-Samuel Hahnemann, The Organon of the Natural Art

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So few people know about the power of healing that is possible in homeopathy. I’m often asked if I could share stories of my clients healing journey’s so that they can see what’s possible and share it with their friends and family.

Today I feel tremendously lucky to share a client’s three year journey of our work together. Thank you, Tharini, for your bravery and beautiful words and for letting me be part of your story.

”After a journey of 3 years with constitutional homeopathy, my words will still fall short of any testimonial I try to give. But I’ll attempt it anyway, because everyone in this world needs to know this reverberating truth that has been hidden from us. That Homeopathy is a journey back home to yourself. In the deepest spiritual sense, and in the simplest possible way.

Homeopathy helps you to peel back the layers of conditioning of our families, circumstances, experiences, and helps you see, probably for the very first time, who you truly are, and what drives you in this life. You get to meet yourself in entirety, it’s like being shown what your soul looks like.

Homeopathy with Cailee has been another reverberating journey. I truly believe that every practitioner carries their own energy signature and intuition into the sessions and Cailee’s particular essence of energy and intuitiveness intersects with mine in the most potent way that just becomes a lighthouse of insight pointing to me where the rocks are, and which is the fastest, safest way home.

And what’s more, that the rocks aren’t actually rocks that could shipwreck me, but they’re what I use to chart a better path for myself going forward. And if my ship and ocean analogy is a bit much, let me simplify it. Every homeopathic session right from that original intake to every follow up, has been a revelation. It has been the gentlest possible space to be heard and seen and to heal.

I’ve always been shown a very loving mirror and given a way to zoom out and look at the bigger picture of all my experiences, and always with exquisite compassion, grace, humor, the lightness of being and ultimate faith---that all the symptoms were beautiful signs of a thriving vital force and there was nothing wrong or awry, and I just needed to give myself time to experience the healing as it was unfolding.

Homeopathy blows my mind every time and Cailee has always taken the time to explain things to me even from an academic perspective, to satisfy my curiosity.

Through it I’ve discovered what anxieties I carry over the future and how that manifested as sinus headaches, what rigidities of thoughts I held, that showed up in my body as stiff, aching joints; what my body was prioritizing through the direction of cure, how flower essences can work beautifully and actually be working behind the scenes even when you think you’re regressing in patterns, and how to hold space for it to do its magic, and how the magic is actually you and your body’s vital force that is actually doing it all.

It showed me how my activated vital force could magnetize me for incredible opportunities in life, attracting prosperity and abundance in a whole new way.

This journey has been a marvel and a wonder. It has been a privilege and grace that I had the eyes of wisdom to take to it and embrace it so wholeheartedly. Just as much as the modality is beautiful and the practitioner is intuitive, I too, as the individual, have shown up for this with openness and curiosity and a hunger to learn and understand myself. Together, the combination of the three have been dynamite!

I’m now at a place where I really have connected with my purpose. And one of those is to broadcast loud and wide, that homeopathy is something every one of us can access. 🙏🏻 Wherever possible I will keep talking about it, and sharing my experiences and sowing the seed that there is a whole world of possibilities with it. Without attachment to the outcome, I will keep speaking my truths and delight in the amazing power of homeopathy. This is my calling now. And this testimonial is only a small step towards that.”

-Tharini Devarajan

I’ll leave you all today with another quote from Hahnemann - may this testimonial inspire you to keep going on your healing journey and serve as a reminder for what’s possible.

“After the remedy has acted, the patient becomes more themselves — more natural. Their actions and emotions are more appropriate, their irritability less exaggerated, and they regain the freedom to respond to life’s events with proportion and clarity.

The patient becomes more natural, more himself, more free.”

-Samuel Hahnemann, The Organon of the Natural Art

If you’re navigating a chronic pattern and want to increase your emotional and physical resilience, this is the work I do every day. If you’re ready for individualized homeopathic care, you can book a consult with me here: www.theripenedheart.com IG: @theripenedheart

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

Yours in healing,

Cailee

How unprocessed anger becomes cancer.
How a shocking conflict can trigger autoimmune conditions.
How grief weakens the immune system,
or how not regulating fast enough during an argument can damage your organs.

It was this quote from an online functional doctor that irritated me enough to make this post (I’ll keep them anonymous).

“A heartbreak, financial stress, or constant anxiety can be as harmful to your health as as an unhealthy diet. They cause adrenaline and cortisol to drastically increase, suppressing your immune system and endangering your heart.”

Of course the graphic was red and ominous looking adding bolded words for dramatic (and frankly cortisol inducing) effect and I just had to roll my eyes.

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Don’t get me wrong - our awareness of the mind-body connection is a good thing, the way this conversation is happening online is missing some very necessary nuance.

For many people, instead of helping them feel empowered, it’s creating fear.
Fear of feeling.
Fear of experiencing anything hard.
Fear that your body is a ticking time bomb waiting for the next conflict to explode into illness.

I know that fear because I’ve felt it myself.

When I first got deeper into mind-body healing and learned how trauma gets stored in the body, it fed this underlying panic that I wasn’t going to get well. Not even because of my symptoms, but because I couldn’t magically resolve the trauma from my childhood.

Every time something painful or unexpected happened in my adult life like an interpersonal conflict, a disappointment, an emotional rupture I couldn’t “fix” I worried it would set me back physically. Or even cause something new.

And then enter German New Medicine.

GNM proposes that conflict shocks — unexpected, overwhelming bursts of emotional intensity — trigger adaptive responses in our tissues. It’s meant to be empowering, but for me (and for so many people I’ve worked with), it had the opposite effect.

I found myself scanning every corner of my life for anything that might catch me off guard. Trying to anticipate a shock. Trying to outmaneuver life itself. Which is funny in hindsight - because by definition, a shock is something you cannot control. It comes out of nowhere, knocks you off center, and demands something of you you didn’t expect.

And I see this same fear reflected in clients who are familiar with GNM or other mind-body frameworks. On calls, after sharing something difficult that happened, the very first thing they often ask is:

“Is this going to make me sick?”

This is where I want to gently, but very clearly, offer a different lens.

As a homeopath, I don’t see emotions or conflict as dangerous.
I don’t see grief as pathology.
I don’t see anger, disappointment, or fear as precursors to disease.

What actually matters in long-term wellness isn’t whether you go through hard things — because you will.

What matters is your capacity to feel and hold those experiences without getting stuck in them.

Your emotions are not dangerous.
Going through hard things does not automatically cause chronic illness.
Your body isn’t waiting to punish you because you couldn’t “positive think” your way out of a stressful day.

Your body is always doing its best to adapt to its environment. It’s not tallying how many good or bad thoughts you had and deciding whether or not to express symptoms or not.

When I’m working with someone in chronic illness, I never look for ways to help them avoid stress. I look for the deeper pattern that’s keeping their system from adapting through the stress.

Because here’s what I’ve seen over and over:

People get better not by living life in bubble wrap, but by strengthening the part of them that can metabolize hard experiences - emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

A well-chosen homeopathic remedy doesn’t prevent life from happening.
It increases your capacity to move through life without getting stuck in pain, inflammation, and old patterns.

It makes your system flexible again.
Responsive rather than reactive.
Resilient rather than bracing.

Your symptoms improve because you improve.
Not because the world gets easier.
Not because you avoid conflict.
But because your internal resources expand.

This is why I don’t fear emotions. And why I don’t want you to fear them either.
Feeling deeply doesn’t make you sick - getting stuck without support does.

And that’s where individualized homeopathic care changes everything.

When hard things happen —and they will— you move through them with a body that has the capacity, the clarity, and the resilience to stay on course.

You’re not fragile.
You’re not at the mercy of your past or what’s happening in the outside world.
And you’re not one conflict away from collapse.

You’re built to adapt.
Sometimes you just need the right signal - a remedy matched to you- to help your body remember how.

If you’re navigating a chronic pattern and want to increase your emotional and physical resilience, this is the work I do every day. If you’re ready for individualized homeopathic care, you can book a consult with me here: www.theripenedheart.com IG: @theripenedheart

If you got value from this post please share it with a friend! I want to grow this little community to reach as many people who need homeopathy as possible.

Yours in healing,

Cailee