🌼From 20 Year ICU Nurse To Herbal Health Patient Advocate w/ Cherilyn Morgan

Can you imagine working in the ICU for 20 years, and then discovering the world of plant medicine, spending your days digging in the dirt, and connecting with mother nature? That's exactly what happened to Cherylin!

In this episode she shares stories of her journey as a nurse, turned herbal enthusiast, and patient healthcare advocate. We chat about the broken western medical system, and seeing that there's got to be a better way.
 
🌼She talks about dandelion, and how it called to her as a young woman, and so much more! And how she's learned so much on her herbal medicine journey inside of Apothecary Momma.

If you or someone you love could use some support navigating their medical care options, & you'd like to connect with Cherilyn you can find her at graithcare.com & use code cmoragn to get 10% off!

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You'll learn how to grow them, and how you can use them. Time to start diggin' in the dirt momma!

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🍄Medicinal mushrooms have the power to completely transform your health, and our planet. But, quality does matter when you're seeking these fungi as medicine, and unfortunately, much of what's on the market today, isn't such great quality.  But, WholeSun Wellness is the best of the best out there. Try a tin of their Mycolites or any of their other top quality mushroom products here.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the herbalist path, a podcast where you'll discover how to make your own herbal remedies at home so that you can take better care of yourself better care of your family and better care of our planet. I'm Mel, I'm a clinical herbalist environmental educator and mountain living mama with this crazy passion for teaching more mamas and their little loves how to use plants as medicine in a safe, effective and tasty way so that there can be an herbalist in every home. Again, it's an absolute honor to have you on the journey down the herbalist path with me so that together, we can make herbalism hashtag spread like wild flowers. Welcome to a another episode on the herbalist path. I am so excited about the conversation that we're going to have today. I have Sherlyn Morgan with me who was an ICU nurse for 20 years, and now is a patient care advocate through great care. And she's a student of mine. She is very active in learning as much as she can about this herbal medicine world. And coming from an allopathic background. She has a lot of insight and knowledge to share. So I'm beyond thrilled and Sherilyn, thank you so much for being here on the show today.
I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, of course. So one of the things I love to ask people in the beginning of our chats is just to hear a little bit about the beginnings of your plant path and your herbalist path there we say, and how you
got into that worlds.
So thinking about it. In retrospect, my very first conspiracy theory was not JFK, which is what I thought. Now, when I was that five year old kid, and thought dandelions were the most magical plant. Because in its seed form, it looks like mix of the clouds and the moon. And then the flower blooms. And it was just like the sun, God had to have had a special plan for the dandelion. And so I would pick them up, bring them to my mom, and she'd say, these are weeds and throw them away. And I knew I was right. I never gave up belief that there was something special about the dandelion, and then fast forward 45 years
takes a little time just a little time.
And and what what a rabbit hole that has been. I spent 20 years in ICU medicine, I recovered people after open heart surgery, I took care of patients after transplant. You give me an almost dead person, and I bring them back to life again. And I thought that was magical. But there was always a part of me that said we're doing it wrong. And the more years I spent in it, the more I was asking questions like we're throwing all of these antibiotics at them and it's their gut is absolute trash. Can we can we give them some probiotics? And they'd look at me like, I was speaking a foreign language. But that makes sense, right? As as I would encourage the family to gather around and pray and they're like, What are you doing with? This patient is sick and I'm like, Yeah, sick enough. We need to leave room for God. And they look at me like I was from another planet. So when 2020 I found myself suddenly no longer at the bedside I was on tick tock just trying to lick my wounds. And there came your sunshine smile and and you're talking about dandy lion.
Yes, I love when the signs come so perfectly. That's amazing.
I think that like the story of you being five years old, and then recognizing that and maybe you had no idea for the last 45 years that that was what was happening. I think it just goes to say like the value of the intuitive nature of children exactly, are so sharp and so wise and unfortunately in our society, their innate brilliance is suppressed and And, gosh, if we could bring more of that out for children, wouldn't that be beautiful? Right? I will be empower those brilliant beings, you know and believe in them and their conspiracy theories.
Anytime you can ask a kid a question and listen to their answer instead of just force feeding them the information they're going to teach you. And it's a shame when you don't let the kids teach you.
I agree. I agree. I feel like that with the plants. Like there's a saying I want to say that it was Rosemary gladstar Because I've learned it through United plant savers but it's the same for the plants that I think could also go for the children and it's if you listen, they will teach you simple and yet so powerful and so true. So I'm so happy that you have made that connection did you make the connection
from five year old view to 50 year old that you
recently or then you were like, Oh, I
was it was very recent that I was looking back and realizing that something in me always because I always felt safest when I was up in a tree. I would go with an injury and read and you know, grounding and and sunshine. I was a night shift nurse for 25 years i i was deprived of nature and getting my hands in the dirt again is so healing
my bad I can feel the like healing and relief of that right there. My partner works part of the year graveyard. And then the other part he's in the daytime and it's a literal night and day difference in his being, you know, and I'm like, This is not healthy for you, babe. I love you. I know you'd love your really cool job. I got a little bit of a 10
Your skin's like thank you vitamin D that is great.
I'm aging backwards. Yeah. Connecting with the planet. spending time outside. Yeah,
and one thing I've noticed about you and Danny Lyon is that you talk a lot about dandelion when you do show up to the live classes and apothecary mama and and you have so much knowledge and insight with your healthcare background and saving people's lives. Thank you by the way for that incredibly valuable work. Tell me about dandelion what things do you love about it? How are you using it today for your family and for your your patients you're advocating
for dandelion tea is really really easy. And back in the spring I was just throwing it into on top of my salads it's they're so pretty.
They really are they tie in that's medicine for the soul right
there. Like growing them intentionally made me happy. Oh, the roots I got oh my goodness. Wow. I had originally when we first moved in here back in 2016. had gotten some of those. They look like a whiskey barrel. Yeah, so I had gotten those intentionally for for ornamental out front. And yeah, no, I didn't put mums and nose. No, no, no, I was intentionally growing my dandelions to see how how big I could get those roots.
Who I love that were how big did you get on like,
the fattest ones were like this. This fat. So
for those of you that can't see she's like basically taking her normal adult size hands and putting the index finger
Yeah, yeah, that's added in a corner. Yeah, that's for a container. I was impressed.
Yeah, that's fantastic. I love that. I love that. I love the intentional dandelion growing when so many people are spending so much time and money polluting our entire planets and their
bodies medicine. I know buying How can we shot this louder for the people in the back? We are
poison to kill medicine. I'm confused. That is the most upside down backward thinking. Yeah. Amen.
Can we do again? Can we say that one louder for the people in the back like out Do we make everybody understand that there's so much medicine in the majority of your weeds that are just they're going? Hi, I'm here for you. I'm your food. I'm your medicine. How about you use me? You don't have to use all the exotic plants.
Right here. I
mean, there's nothing hardier and,
and that, that, that statement right there, there's
nothing hardier is a great signature to the value and potency of these plants as medicine. Here you are, your neighbors are spraying and poisoning them as much as possible, ripping them out with anger and what have you. And yet they keep coming back. They keep coming back saying, hey, remember me, I'm still here for you. I'm still your food, I'm still your medicine. Like, wow, you know, that doesn't really happen even with a lot of our manmade drugs, right? We make these antibiotics and formulate them in what ways they do. Yet our bacteria that are making people ill and whatnot are so freakin intelligent, that they are able to be like, oh, sorry, I'm resisting your antibiotics. Right? I would have plants that don't do that.
I would have death's door to take an antibiotic again, ever? Because
we know what is there available? Right? Because you do at least you know,
so much. Yeah. So I bet you have about 1,000,000,001 stories of being an ICU nurse and watching how that happened. And and since we're on the topic of antibiotics, and you brought that up when you were talking about saving people's lives, and everybody just getting antibiotics shoved down their throats, when nobody really cared to look at the health of the gut and how that impacts the entire body and inflammation and your brain. I'd love to just hear really anything you want to say about those times or things that you maybe saw that you were like, Hold on this, isn't that okay?
So one of my aha moments was when I realized that the only time that we ordered an ova and parasite testing was when a patient could not get better. And they had been in the ICU with us taking care of them for months, getting worse instead of better after they had thrown all of the things at them. And then they're looking. And sure enough, they needed to cleanse. And as soon as they supported the immune system just a little bit, suddenly, now they're able to get better. And their body begins healing. It's very little what we were actually doing. Sometimes it's just getting out of their way. But I was it didn't make sense to me. Why are we so arrogant in America that we think we're the only country that that doesn't need to do regular parasite cleanses? Maybe it was maybe especially since since the fast food diet is so prevalent? Mmm
hmm. Yeah. Our diet and our health care system are both like here making everybody sick. Right? It's, it's frightening. And it's really challenging because it's those people running those companies that don't care whether we're healthy or not, as a matter of fact, I bet you a large percentage of them, don't eat any of that crap. And actually lead a healthy life, but they're like I'm making tons of money. So who cares about the rest of the people as if it has to be an elitist thing for us to take good care
of a human? Yeah, again, we
have all of this food and medicine at the ready for us. It becomes
rather naive to believe that the government wants us to be healthy and they wouldn't let anything bad. Be available for us. Yeah, I mean, that monster drinks on in every gas station. They don't care about us.
Look at what they give to our children in schools for food. Here's your free lunch it'll keep you nice and sick. Oh
the cereal lie scary Lucky Charms. That's not food. It's not food
not in any way shape or form but it's been fortified. Oh plastic
salt hasn't like they took away the salt.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a messed up system. So I also wanted to talk I didn't recognize or realize that you were specifically treating heart patients when you were an ICU nurse. And so I'm really curious now that you've been diving into the world of herbal medicine. What kind of herbs? Are you thinking that you wish you had on hand back in those days?
Oh, my goodness. So a lot of what I do now as an advocate, is I will take each of the prescription drugs that they are taking on a daily basis, and go to the physicians desk reference online, and copy and paste the entire list of known side effects for those drugs, and then highlight all of the symptoms that they are complaining of, and show them that nine times out of 10. Everything that they're experiencing is not actually the disease process, like they thought it's actually they're doing it to themselves with the drugs that they're being given. When I looked up carbidopa levodopa, that we give her Parkinson's. What we were taught in nursing school where the symptoms of Parkinson's are actually the symptoms of the drug that we give to people with Parkinson's.
Wow. That's really fascinating. And I, and you just brought up Parkinson's and two people that are very dear to me in my life have recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's and I haven't worked with many people with Parkinson's. So I'm really curious what you have been doing early to support those people. Are you are you working with Parkinson's patients? Now?
I've got I've got two just last month, I would have to pull up my notes so that I can tell you with confidence what it was that I that I did, but very much the same treatment plan for both, except that, and this is crazy. One of them, he's had it for years, and he's been on many, many drugs. Not only are we working on getting rid of the heavy metals, he tested off the charts for heavy metals. So we're working on that with him. But they were able to find a hyperbaric chamber, used online from a chiropractic office that had upgraded to a newer model, and had it shipped to the house. So they now have their very own hyperbaric chamber, and a new income source as friends and and family. Come rent it from them. And it's their bills. So a lot of out of the box thinking, yeah,
we've got to think out of the box for sure. Because the box is broken. The box is broken, it is time for us to step outside of it for sure. When I was thinking like immediately when I hear heart back to where you were in ICU care, I one of the herbs I turned to most often and have seen wonderful things happen for people recovering from heart surgery and stints and all kinds of things is Hawthorne, the very flower and leaf is really amazing. And it is generally regarded as safe with most heart medications. And it really helps to strengthen and tone the heart and entire cardiovascular system and that it was like when you spoke with that that was instantly what came to my mind and I have a huge love for Hawthorne also spiritually as it opens the heart to giving and receiving of love. And it is a wonderful herb for supporting people during the grieving process, which I think these days a lot of people are grieving and it's just a magnificent
law right now are off the charts. People are feeling disconnected. Just having felt gaslit from different areas like either by family members or by a system or by an employer and the trauma of that. We're seeing a lot of mental health issues and fear. Fear is the enemy. If if anybody here's one thing that I have to say fear is the enemy and you have got to reject it. We have nothing to fear. It's the greatest lie that we swallow Hall without examining it. And we need to remain curious instead. When fear bubbles up, take a pause, take a cleansing breath two or three, and ask yourself, what are you really afraid of? What is the what is the big thing that could happen? And it's usually a lie. And we can reject it, and laugh at ourselves, and move along in the confidence that we woke up today. We're not guaranteed tomorrow, but we woke up today. So the odds are really, really good. We can make it all the way to bedtime. Yeah, so take the next right step. And reach out. someone cares about you. Hmm,
yes. I love this there. Yes, thank you for those words. Fear is challenging for so many people to get through. And you're so spot on with everybody feeling trauma and sadness and depression, and so many mental health issues, especially, I don't know, maybe just because we're in the United States, and we hear everything happening in the United States, but it seems heavily prevalent here. And of course, it's everywhere. We obviously there's a lot of trauma and tragedy happening throughout our entire worlds. And let's just aren't sad. I could be uh, you know, I see a lot of great posts from people that I respect, especially with what's happening in Palestine right now. And
I have a tendency to,
I don't know if it's run away from those feelings, or just
No, I feel it, I feel it for
my friends. I have friends that are feeling it really, really hard right now. And I guess I just don't talk about it openly on any of my platforms, maybe because I'm not an expert in the area, or I don't, I can't comprehend what is going on. And. And then that piece of fear comes up for me that piece of fear of seeing what's going on in this world and thinking of my beautiful 10 year old child. Right? Obviously, I want nothing but the best for her. And I hope that I'm raising her in a way where her kindness and compassion can spread to many others. And she can. She's an innate healer, like she doesn't know it yet. But I see it in her I feel it in her with her loving, caring hands. Hopefully, she is able to grow into that and really make a difference, even if it's on a small scale. In this world, we need this next generation it goes back to like empowering those children and listening to what they have to say and their pure genius and I we need those children to be heard.
If you don't follow Jen Hoskins you need to on tick tock scheisse was more is caught than taught. She's a homeschooling mom. That is absolutely true. Your kids are watching and they are learning from your example, even when you don't realize it. And I found that I got accidentally got so much more right than I could have dreamt with mine. She won't listen to this probably so I can I can talk about her. She's 27 years old. She was just in a car accident. And when she finished telling me the story, I said, I love you, kid and I know you love your vehicle. But I'm really really glad that it was you that was in that car accident today. Because the kid that ran into her was on their way to a psych VA visit. He has just gotten out of the military. And he spent 20 minutes sobbing while she's patting his back and telling him that it's absolutely going to be okay. And she made that awful mess a little bit less awful and calmed him down. So that he walked into his appointment able to listen and get some good out of it. And
what a good kid. Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's, it's horrible, because it's an accident. But you know, to find the light in that incident. And, you know, obviously people have some pretty intense reactions around accidents and such and it sounds like he really needed that. That help and that love and that time of compassion and caring. And if more people in this world could offer compassion and caring and that loving hearts
and an ear and a shoulder instead of just shutting
everything away, like, here we are. We think we're all connected. If you said this earlier, like everybody is feeling disconnected. it, but yet we all have this social media stuff. And we all have this weird online world and it's a totally different world than you and I grew up in. And it's all there to connect people. But it's, we're not it. We're not digging in the dirt. We're not walking in the woods. We're not talking to plants, and we're not doing the things that we were put on this planet to do. It's heavy. It's really, really heavy. But I'm so grateful that you are getting to see sunshine that you are getting to see the moon light as it needs to be because I think back to your magical.
I've shown it to be worried about this shift that I was gonna have because it was a full moon. Oh,
no. No Moon now. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. It's a full moon night. No, yeah, I bet I've heard that from a lot of my nurse friends that are like, I don't like I don't want to work on those nights. No, thank you.
Oh,
I bolland's Those rumors were true. Yeah.
So I want to hear a little bit
more. So
do join me in apothecary mama. Like right at the beginning as I was starting to build it out, which I can't believe I'm like, in about a year of running that program. And I thought I was gonna have everything built out in like two months.
optimistic. Yeah, are Dido,
optimal state crazy, something, I don't know one of those two things. But it's like, I can sit here and babble about herbs all day. And I can think that that's but then, you know, I go to put together lessons and like, I go back and do research again. And I really think out what's going in there and fix a lot of time, a lot more than two to three months. So. But yeah, ever since you've been in that program, it sounds like you had learned a lot. And now you're utilizing what you've learned in there, to continue with your knowledge and expertise as an ICU nurse for 20 years, but also to help people learn how to use plant medicine. And just knowing that brings me an immense amount of joy, because I want to make herbalism spreads like wild flowers. But I also want to hear about it from you like, what are you doing today with all of your knowledge and your wisdom? And how are you using that to help others.
So I need to go back through now that now that it's all built out again, because there's a whole lot more in there than there was when I when I did my initial deep dive,
oh, and it's gonna keep growing, which is fantastic. That's
what initially drew me to nursing was that you can never learn it all. I've got a lifelong learning mindset. If I'm not learning something, I'm not all the way alive, my brain has to be nibbling on something and making connections. It's just the way I'm hardwired. And so I had assumed that it was just going to be my next hyper focus. I had no idea that there was going to be any purpose in it. And then through a wild set of circumstances, I had gotten a phone call back. Oh 2021 from a lawyer who had heard from a friend of a friend, that I could maybe help break his client out of a hospital. I was doing things. Yeah. Don't give me free time. It's it's dangerous to give me free time I when you let me out of a routine, who knows what's going to happen? And so I went and helped break the guy out and made a new friend and I now have a lawyer cowboy, friend, and he was down in Texas, at a fundraising conference fundraiser thing, and I met Priscilla, who owns Grace care, patient advocacy company. And when she explained what that was, he said, Oh, well, that's what Sherry does. You should you should call her, snatched her phone and put my contact information. Is that nice to meet you and left. And I got a phone call from Priscilla saying Nina got a mic and like, yeah, an hour later she was inviting me to the team. Wow. 2020 And she had been working for an insurance company case managing and saw the need for taking out the middleman and giving patients access to the knowledge and resources so that we have, because they were afraid. They had questions and they felt like they had no power. And they were they were just desperate. And so Priscilla's husband said, Well, if it doesn't exist, and it needs to exist, make it exist. You built it. And she said, Well, you name it, and I'll build it. And their kids, their daughters names are grace and faith. So find that made grace. And it became great care.
Nice. And so great care. It's a patient advocacy. How does it How does it work out? And yeah, so
people can just go to the website online, and they can read about the different advocates. They can text or call or email. And the first person they talk to is Jennifer, and she is an amazing human who plays matchmaker. She listens to the client's story, what do they need help with? And then she figures out which advocate would best have the answers that they're looking for matching personalities. She's brilliant at that there have been a couple of times where she would call me and say, I need I need you to take this one. And she told me about it. Like, that doesn't sound like I'm the one they need. And then I would talk to them and go oh, yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, they needed me.
And then it's almost like patient dating.
Like, it feels like she's like playing matchmaker, and she's genius at it. And then we tag team a lot. I'll have a client that I'm helping with A, B, and C. And then they contact me and say, Oh, well, my mom just got this diagnosis. And I'd be like, well, that's not that's not me. But we've got an advocate for that. And so we collaborate with one another a lot. We've got a nutritionist, we've got a naturopath. We've got insurance nerds and Priscilla's background is pediatric ICU. So she loves the little kids. And we're global. I have a client in Greece, a client in Mexico City and a client in Australia.
That's amazing. And so you like your role, you're basically just to clarify for somebody who might not understand what an advocate is doing for people, and I'm going to do my best stab at it and correct me where I'm wrong or share your version of it. But from what I'm hearing is people are ill, they're in the Western medical system. They are not so much agreeing or feeling that it's working for them. And so they reach out for support hearing out in the world, that there's more natural things that they could be doing right. As part
of it, that's a lot overwhelming. That's a large part of it. A lot of people are looking for alternatives. I'm one of the newbies in that realm. I'm still just learning. But because I've got the ice medicine background, if if we've got a case where they're in the hospital, and they have questions, and I just end up kind of meeting them where they're at. Some of them think that the naturopath he is voodoo medicine and they don't want to hear any of that. Some of them absolutely refused to take blood thinner just because Pfizer made it and then there's a mix of somewhere in between. I do a lot of preventing heading to the hospital. One of the one of my specialties is helping protect from the cold and flu season naturally, and I keep it so simple that I don't think I've got a client yet that did not understand how onion honey is the most magical thing ever, ever, ever. Rubber test and who. And it's so simple. Everybody already has honey in an onion on hand and they weren't using it. It's cheap and it works and it doesn't hurt. And all I got to do is get that baby old enough to get them past that year mark so they can have the honey and then we're golden
added some time and added some garlic to and it's even better. Simple kitchen medicine and the accessibility of it. But yeah, there's A lack of knowledge around it or it is that thought of like, Nope, it's just
happy to be fake will will stop. I think it's genius when I look at traditional cuisine, not fancy cooking, but what the Mamas and the grandmas cooked. And and so you look at what are those, those flavors that that each continent even used constantly? And then what does that do? Would I live with all of our Christmas herbs? Are ginger in our cinnamon? And that's medicine, and I'm like, we don't want to be sick for Christmas. It just makes sense.
Yeah, so much medicine in our food. I love that we're about to do a deep dive intensive on that in apothecary mama coming up in November because it's like, it's feasting season, right. And then this by the time this episode comes out our next herb of the month and the kidsave Herb club will be out. And it's time. And time is that's why I had to bring that up. It's like eat, one of the main constituents in time is thymol. And it's an incredible antimicrobial that used in a lot of men, medical disinfectant products. It's used in tons of coughs, cough, syrups, and antiseptic creams and mouth washes and all kinds of things. And it's simple garden time, the same stuff that we are putting in our foods that grows like a weed, like, you know, so it's so powerful. And I love that more and more people are beginning to recognize that and see that and it's it's such a beautiful thing to see happening. It's certainly skyrocketed since the pandemic, like the pandemic, I think opened up a lot of eyes that maybe weren't so willing to look at these kinds of perspectives. But the fact of the matter is that it's their view like this is real, it is not just fake. That is why they extract this particular constituent from this plant to make this thing and then charge you a lot more money for it later down the road. Right.
Green lips see muscles, huh? They, they are native to New Zealand. And that is what the scientists studied because that particular place in New Zealand, nobody had arthritis, and they tried to figure out why it was the green Lipsy muscles that was a major part of the diet. For those people. They never got arthritis, so well they can't make money off of the C muscles. So they made a synthetic version that was still Celebrex and that whole class of drugs that, like, gave Mamaw a new lease on life for a couple of years. She felt fantastic. And then it killed her liver. And then they died an ugly ugly death. And so now we don't prescribe those drugs anymore. It was a fun experiment. It killed a lots of mammals and peppers. Not cool. All right. They eat they have now made actual green Lipsy muscles ground up and in a capsule that works wonderfully for easing arthritis pain.
Fascinating. I wonder what like what are the constituents in there that are so beneficial? Do you happen to know?
I don't remember I looked that up back in 2014. That
was easy to forget those things.
It made sense when I read it.
Yeah. But that's amazing. Yeah. And that's the other thing is like if you really do just pay attention to the medicines that were used by the indigenous people of those lands like the plants grow right
where you need them. Oh, they're their perfect example was the the yellow jackets that were living in the plantain a patch at the base of the steps, and my man gets done. But the medicine to make this thing go away, right there.
Right in front of you. Right?
So was he much of a believer before that moment? Because I think like plantain is like the gateway into herbalism for a lot of people that makes them just be like, No,
it was he was he was trying really hard not to say bad words because he was outside where kids could hear him. Before he realized what had happened I had already grounded up and slapped it on there and he's like, wait it that fast. It doesn't it doesn't work this thing go and I When work
plant medicine for the win. Yeah, right. They're so amazing. It really is. I love I love
wild lettuce a lot, because that grows so easily here. It's just right. Everybody's farm has has it growing. And
they're like, get this weed out of here and you're like, but wait, wait, wait, I'll get it for you. You told me when it's just starting to come up, you know not flowered yet. I'll gladly come take it from you. That would be wonderful. Yeah, it's so it's so amazing how much is really out there. For us. It's incredibly beautiful. What do you say for anybody that is starting down this? There, I say, again, the term herbalist path. I didn't choose that name intentionally. But I had all kinds of other intentions. And now it just works as as we move on throughout running it, but what would you say for people that are just starting to get into this world and discover all of these plants and their healing properties and how amazing they can be?
Is it anytime I learned something, I decide ahead of time, whether I want a really narrow focus and then go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, or do I want a little bit of knowledge about a lot, just enough to be dangerous. And I think knowing that, before you begin is smart. Some people just want to know how to heal themselves. By got diagnosis, this, I'm going to learn everything about this and then they're going to deep dive on it. I wanted just enough knowledge to be dangerous. And a different way of thinking I needed my my my brain to start thinking about the body, not as disease ridden, but as injured. And this is something that I've talked to my clients about a lot. I'm like, don't accept the label of a diagnosis as something that you can live with forever. Why? Why? Just because they told you they can't heal you it's not in their best interest to heal you. If you're well. So why not? Instead think about what disease what body system has an injury and how can we support it so that it can heal. If you woke up today, then there is a possibility that your cells can can can start rewriting in a healthier way instead of a more broken way. Any old time and it's not going to be fast. And it's not going to be easy. There's no magic to it, it's going to take time. And it's going to take an investment. But your mind is so so powerful. And your brain listens to what your mind tells it and then sends those messages to every cell in your body. So how important is it to gatekeeper what messages your mind is telling your brain? Yes, a lot of it, a lot of it is mindset. And just giving them a different way to think about their body because sometimes we can be very hateful to bodies were in pain. We're aging, we're stressed and we're not addressing it or in denial about it. We don't try to prioritize ourselves. And that tells our body that we don't value it, we are only granted one meatsuit and it's pretty important to take care of it and nobody taught us how and that's okay. We can start to learn and the knowledge is out there and it's not that expensive, you do not need a degree. So I mean, I could have paid 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars and gone after a degree but that Mel has this way of making it fun and accessible and exciting and achievable. And it's it's pretty neatly packaged so that I can carry it around in my pocket. And again the connection I love hopping in there and seeing everyone supporting one another fantastic.
Oh, that's amazing. Thank you. It is the knowledge is out there and and there are many amazing people to learn from that's the beauty I have it especially for me, I'm obviously biased in the plant medicine world. But I also full on agree with you with the mindset thing. And I feel like everything in this world can be shifted if we can just focus on the mindset. But here we are humans, we're using maybe 5% of our mind, our brain every, on a regular basis. 5% of it, that's 95 for a tournament that is not being utilized, you know, so amazing. And we can heal so much with that, especially if we are able to open up our minds, and understand that the body has an innate ability, ability to heal itself. That's, that's its job. Right? That's its entire job.
One of the craziest cases that I got, oh, that's another thing about great care. The, the giving nature of it, there, there are people that are in desperate need. And financially, they haven't got a two pennies to rub together. And so Priscilla spends as much time as she can, fundraising. So the there can be given time for those those crazy scary desperate cases, which is amazing. And I had a lady that desperately needed help. She hadn't been able to work in a year. So she had blown through all of her savings and her retirement and she's like, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna have a place to stay. But I can't go back to the hospital. They told me I wouldn't leave. They're alive. The next time I came in, her liver and kidneys were shutting down. And she was but I have zero money. I have $0. So if there's something you can do to save me equinor What do I what? I went, Okay, okay, don't panic. Well, if we only have what you already have, then I need to take stock of everything that you have. Thank you, Jesus, she had already had so many wonderful things on hand already. She already believed in natural medicine. So she had lots of supplements and, and things that we could put into use for her. already. We looked in her spice cabinet, we looked under her kitchen sink, we looked in her bathroom closet, we like I knew everything in her house. And we came up with a plan. And we were working 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, so I can play a long game with her. And each time I talked to her, she sounded a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger. And then she said, I feel like I've plateaued. I'm not getting worse. But I'm not continuing to get better. Like I thought and I said, well, then there's something we're missing. There's a missing piece. And we went back through the whole the whole plan. And I'm like, we did it. We're doing that we're doing that. What else is free medicine? Frequencies. Like you've got YouTube, let's look up some Healing frequencies. I've never looked into it. I'd never prescribed it. But I was looking for other free medicine. I sent her a couple of graphics. And I told her just type it in YouTube, that specific frequency for healing for sleep. And I said you do all of your healing when you're sleeping anyway, why not boost it up a notch? Fast forward. I didn't hear from her for like a whole month. I called the check in. I didn't recognize her voice. She was that vibrant and alive. And she goes sorry, I didn't answer when you called. I was pressure washing the driveway. Yeah. Already on the schedule to go back to work. I'm no longer afraid. She goes, I'm getting better. You guys, I haven't felt this good in forever.
So good. And I bet it brings like, it brings chills and tingles to my body hearing that you're able to help people do those kinds of things.
I get a front row seat watching God work. It's just in. It's not me. I'm just on the phone with them. Right.
You're the advocate, You are the messenger, you are the helper and the guide. And that is a beautiful
it's and a lot of times I'm just giving them the right questions to ask. Because they don't know what they don't know. Right? So I can arm them with those questions. And I'm able to reassure them about half the time. After I've done a little investigation and talk to the bedside nurse. I can I can tell them. It sounds like they're providing excellent care does that is that what your gut tells you? And they say yes. And then relax. If your spidey senses start tingling, I'm a phone call away. But I think they're getting really good care right now. And they can relax and and be reassured with that
I love that and relaxing is so much a piece of the game, you know, instead of in that chronic state of stress and worry and fear, right? Which is scary when you're told you're not going to come out of the hospital at all, you know, except for
that. And then we've got legal nurse consultants that are doing case reviews, as well. So we've got people covered on that end once. When they're ready to ask questions and answers. It sounds
like such a fantastically helpful organization, how can people find out about great care and find out about potentially working with you if you're their
perfect match. So you can go to Grace care GRAITH ca r e.com. And you can read the stories of the advocates. And we've got a fantastic knowledge base, when you add everyone in together, and the way that we work together is sometimes awe inspiring, and sometimes just downright fun, we support one another. Priscilla has built the platform with an IT guy, like from the ground up. And it's genius. And and it's still continuing to build. So very soon there's going to be an app so that the client can log in, see how many minutes they have, read the notes that the advocates have put in, we're going to be able to chat and do video conference worldwide, through the app. So that so that I can actually get eyeballs in the ICU room and put it at the monitor. So I can tell you it's stepping out of the role that I was most comfortable in for so long is has been tricky. It's something I've had to navigate because because something's going down, and I'm like, I can't get there and go picks it, fixing it. Are they fixing it? I don't know what I'm fixing it. Hmm. So a lot of it is, is take a deep breath and what can I control. A lot of times we get clients that come to us because they want help for their brother or their uncle. And their brother uncle doesn't realize that they need the help. And so are resistant to it. And so then my role becomes in helping them plant the seeds, then remind them that while free will is a very difficult thing to let people have it is the right thing. And we have to be okay with that. And love them where they're at.
Yeah, that does get really, really challenging. But that's that's the fact of the matter is if they're not willing, we can't do much other than still love and just say I'm here when you're ready. No, yeah. And maybe build up all the resources and Arsenal you can use to help them maybe maybe shift their minds a bit, but I know a lot of people have you tried to shift the mind if they're just gonna resist even more. And that's unfortunate. It goes back to the like, what do you want? How or like, do you want to feel horrible forever or no? Like? We were talking about that on a call inside of our community this morning. Like the people that are resistant. They're like I'm sick and then somebody in the family I was like, well, here try this and they're like, no.
Are you doing being sick then?
Exactly. I can help you or you can stay miserable your choice.
You can teach a dog an old dog new tricks, though. My dad's got elderberry syrup in is
Yeah, I see that happen often and I love it so much. That's why I like to get those gateway herbs that just blow people's minds where they're just like no way and we were talking today because the herb of the month and the kids save herb club is elderberry or alder. The entire shrubbery has tons of medicine but we were talking specifically on how elderberry can be so approachable because it's delicious. Number one and it is incredibly effective. There is actual science to back the data behind our back the claims behind elderberries, and it's one of those that you can say to somebody here take this Oh, wow. Were you better so much faster? Oh, wow.
Did you avoid getting sick when everybody you knew got sick?
Really interesting. Yeah. So it's so much fun. Well, thank
you. I don't want to take up too much more time of your day.
I am so grateful that you came on to chat with me and to share about what you're doing today and your experience In both the Western medical system and also learning how to transition out of that system as well, which I think so many people are seeking to do today, thank you for being a caretaker, all at all, as a whole, like, we need more of you in the world.
I think everybody has their strengths and taking care of people just comes naturally, all the broken people show up at my door. And I do it again. And is as much as I fuss about the disconnected feeling that social media and our devices give us. We can use any tool and the ability for great care to bring me the people I don't have to wait for them to find me on their own is fantastic. And I can trust the guy to bring me the ones that are for me, and And Jennifer, she, she's, she's, she's so important to it. It's It's neat watching her work. And then we all get to share the stories, HIPAA compliant, of course. But
of course, you have to be to be that that large, I would say and to be able to make that kind of impact. Hopefully, you are at least so that's amazing. I will for sure link to great care in this the show notes of this podcast, so people can possibly find you. And if it's not you or the other right person that can help them navigate whatever it is that they need to navigate. And again, thank you so much for coming on for sharing for always being there to support and learn more and grow more. I am also that learning addict where I'm like, I've gotta keep learning because if I don't, I'm going to be incredibly bored. And when you spoke about of nursing, and like, that's how I feel about herbalism. So
like, all of the books behind you, they're
like, Yeah, I might be a bit of an addict in the herbal medicine and other holistic healing book collection thing. It's, it's a thing that
got me my very first herbalism book for Christmas last year.
Wow. That's amazing. What do you get?
It's the dino Amy Elohim. I don't. She is on to talk. She has a channel and and that was her little passion project. And it is beautifully done. And it's got great, great photography so that you can see the plants, which makes it so much easier for me to be able to identify, because plant identification is one of those things that's important. If I don't grow it myself, I need to be able to recognize it. confidently. Yeah. She's got a bunch of recipes in there that are very, very simple and accessible. Awesome. And swap outs for soaps and household products and all of those things. Fun.
That sounds awesome. Yeah, I obviously have spent large amounts of money on buying lots and lots of our books. I love it. Because every one of them is so valuable in their own right yet none of them have everything that I need. Right.
But I think I should get one for Christmas every year for the rest of my life. My
mom got me to last year for Christmas. And it really meant a lot to me because I'm really the the person in my family that follows this path and my mom tries here and there she kind of tries and sometimes she'll be like, your thing did this for me. I'm
like, I know. I've been doing this for 20 plus years now Mom, I'm here for you. Anytime you're ready,
and she'll you know she'll try but it was it meant a lot to me the books that she got for me it was really really sweet. So I love it. Okay, thank you so much Sherilyn. You have a beautiful day and I'll let you know when this episode comes out.