Lori Alvord

I’m not saying that our normal doctors never do any good, but it is strange how whenever Western society needs a shot in the arm to the idea that separation is real, we turn perhaps most frequently—at least in some quarters, but generally, very commonly—to the healing arts. “If you’re not normal enough, you could DIE!!! So…. Be afraid!!!” 🙀

—I’m afraid, Mommy. What do I win.
—Nothing, you just…. I mean: that’s your reward. You don’t win Wimbledon because you were afraid and like everyone else. You’re just normal. But at least you’re normal! ….

…. I like books by people from other cultures and genders because I feel that I benefit. I cannot experience success on their behalf, or model what their success looks like. I have my own story and background, which materially differs from theirs. But I believe that it matters how I act, how I treat people, whether I include. It makes a difference for me; when you do great things for others, great things happen for you, and also people can benefit from others’ correct actions. However, I cannot succeed on another’s behalf, or do ‘virtual representation’ for them, as the British called it in the 17….50s? (A small joke.) This is actually why it benefits me to see another’s model of success, in that I cannot produce it myself just as what I do they cannot produce on their own behalf, only their own success. This is certainly not to say that it makes no difference what I do, or that my own actions are forced or invalid because of my background. And in my own experience when I act in an inclusive way others see me as inclusive, (even though some people do throw out labels in the abstract in writing or on the internet or so on: half the time the ‘objective label’ that ‘produces’ the subjective result applies to them), even though people in other circumstances walk down a road where others’ assumptions are not just thrown out there casually but made more persistently and with more bite to them, you know. But when someone walks down the spiritual path or the healing way that is right for them, right progress always comes at the proper time, in the way that’s meant for them.

…. “I still had much to learn, and much to unlearn.”

So do we all, if we but knew.

…. Apparently the Freudians often held that “rational” fear (and misery) is preferable to fear and misery that doesn’t come from the mind, although it’s hard to see how. Still, one think of the classic Enneagram Nine character—all chill, quietly loving—and one forgets that they can take on Six—fear—with or without the classic Six-style intellect. It can be unfortunate.

…. People sometimes get paranoid about the new age or whatever; often it’s a veiled reaction against the red man or whoever—but certainly we train “them” to act more like us far, far more frequently than we ever adopt any of “their” practices, a custom that has a lot more to do with cynical power equations than effectiveness, to say nothing of anything more “gushy” than that, you know.

…. I remember once I was in a social work class, and we were talking about substances, and this one guy said, “I have kinda a weird opinion; [and it was, at least for white people, which he was and most of us were]. I think that psychedelics should be legal, and alcohol should be illegal.”

Edmund Burke: (appalled) But things are the way they are because things ARE the way they ARE—and we know that’s right, because—

“Because that’s the way it is.”

…. The thing that you don’t necessarily get from a Western-trained Navajo doctor trying not to get mentally eviscerated by the system is that if you just look for cancer eight, ten, twelve hours a day, eventually you’ll just feel like you’re living in Cancer World. Even the Native cultures sometimes succumb to fear, but compared to over-educated Americans—we always compare ourselves to Europeans, the only other people, I guess!—the Indigenous people have a better sense that there is more than fear out there, that we can relax and have a little clean fun, basically. I don’t pretend to be Navajo—I’m el gringo del Norte, after all—but I try to carve out time that’s not, narrowly speaking self-improvement, or mental or physical health manipulations, right, like just watching baseball or softball or something—or even doing success affirmations instead of doing a White-Light-Meditation: like I’ve gotta reach the End of Life, you know—even though this is the end, because there is no end, so there’ll be time to figure out how I’ll die after I watch the UCLA girls beat the bitches from Oklahoma, right. (Just kidding, heartlanders: I don’t root.)

…. They say that the white man’s medicine can be your best bet for curing the white man’a diseases…. That goes two ways, obviously, two parts—modern society is arrogant, when we’re not secretly convinced that we’re unworthy, and often we’re unhealthy, even less healthy than those who walk the simple way. But sometimes for us if we look at other people’s simple things (if you will), like say a romantic Navajo myth, and not our own simple things (a contemporary Regency paperback or mass market), then we complicate it in our mind, and the whole central characteristic of the simple way is lost. And we shouldn’t misrepresent ourselves; we’re not Navajo, even if we want to be generous, right. There are important lessons, like that feeling good //is// “medical”, you know, even if all cultures, including Native ones, have fears and flaws as well. And, of course, we do still live in this world we’ve created for ourselves. White man’s sickness, white man’s medicine.

…. I talk about fear and flaws in cultures, inclusive of Native ones, but I guess I should mention that that doesn’t mean that those fears can’t be “real” or given reality, you know. Navajo experience fear characteristically through “superstition”, the way that white people experience fear characteristically through mental activity/spinning our wheels, say through conspiracy theories—but that doesn’t mean that sometimes there aren’t politicians or whoever who take bribes and do rotten things, just that we tend to energize that activity my obsessing over it, in my opinion. At the very least, we make ourselves miserable in exchange for nothing. Likewise, (if you don’t mind me reversing the clauses a little), the Navajo fear of witches and bad magic is basically self-defeating IMO because fear IS the bad magic; however, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t strange things happening to them, as the cliche goes, “that Western medicine can’t explain”, or that you should stigmatize them or tell them to shut up and be normal, etc.

…. Anyway, it’s not a red-on-red (cf blonde-on-blonde) sort of a book, although I guess that’s not strictly speaking necessary 100% of the time, and it must be a little hard to arrange these days sometimes, you know…. But I did take something from the book, you know: happiness is medical; that’s why the Navajo sing healing songs to cure disease, right.

…. And certainly we also seldom let Native people have leadership roles, or even agency, of any kind, in this beautiful world we’ve created together for them, you know—so clearly it’s that story, too.

…. “It is beautiful all around me.”

…. The ducks are also children of the mother.… (más)

This is an autobiographical account of Lori Arviso Alvord's training as a surgeon and her attempts to reconcile her native culture with that of the medical world she chose to work in. She very strongly advocates the idea of holistic medicine, which follows from traditional Navajo medicine, and the way of "walking in beauty" applied to all parts of medical practice, and the book charts the evolution of these ideas, primarily during her time working with her people in Gallup.

I found her story both interesting and moving. It is now more widely accepted that western medicine needs to be more holistic, treating its patients as people and accepting that their frame of mind (and their medical practitioners') affects their healing just as active medical and surgical intervention does. However, western medicine still has a long way to go and this was an excellent reminder of the kind of relationships we should be aiming for with patients. Her struggles to reconcile her career with her belief system provide insight into traditional Navajo beliefs, but are also encouraging to women from all walks of life who are trying to knit their lives together coherently.… (más)