Caroline Dupont: my healing story
A few times in your life, I hope, you’ll cross paths with someone who shakes you and your beliefs to your core, in the best possible way. Someone who cracks you open, bypassing your mind, speaking the neglected language that shines light on unknown and forgotten parts of yourself. Late last year, connecting with Caroline Dupont, my perspective on healing, my body, and what it can and can’t do was forever altered. She speaks through experience, her own and others’, about the process of Deep Healing – of life – as a “journey back to the perfection of who and what you’ve always been, so that you can live in peace, truth and beauty.” There is only wholeness, I think Caroline’s saying, regardless of the set of symptoms we may have, and we always have access to it if we’re willing to truly hear and relax into ourselves.
I am truly honored to bring you Caroline’s personal story of healing, which she’s generously allowed me to share. Stories are one of the soul’s languages, I’ve found. Caroline’s is a long, beautiful, insightful read. So grab a mug of fresh mint tea and a few juicy Medjool dates, and get cozy.
Caroline Dupont’s healing story
An awakening: unhealthy patterns + my body’s messages
Although I’ve never developed a serious disease I believe that, had I not begun to incorporate the many principles and practices that eventually came together to create the integrated approach that I call Deep Healing, I would have eventually. This is my story.
My awakening and healing began in earnest in my late twenties, around the time that my children were born. Previously, particularly in my teens and early adulthood I was pretty asleep to my true nature. I was painfully shy, insecure, arrogant, guarded, almost constantly irritated, and often sad and tense. After I had my children, I was exposed to many new things that inspired me: the vegetarian diet, holistic nutrition, intuitive movement, energy work, therapy, yoga, meditation and many things that had not previously been in my life. In a way, I felt like I was waking up and it was very exciting.
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Get lost: 5 ways I find stillness without seated meditation
When you’ve got a hyper analytical and often frustratingly critical pea brain like mine, you actively seek ways to hush it up. The easier the better. [And I say pea brain because that other part of ourselves, the watcher, the inner knowing, intuition, spirit, whatever you’d like to call it, clearly doesn’t play that game.]
I don’t do traditional seated meditation, at least not often, because I’ve found other ways to get quiet that speak louder to me. That work, too. My day and wellness routine include things that naturally incorporate and encourage stillness just by the focus of my attention, and the inherent centering action woven into their fabric.
#1 Walking & nature
Being outside is an easy way for me to come to center and get quiet. [It's so easy, it almost feels like cheating.]
I reconnect with the natural world, which I spend too much time away from during my hours on the computer, and without trying I find myself falling into nature’s primal, slow, quiet rhythm.
It’s easy to be present, to hone in on what’s in front of me on my daily harbor walks with Rupert, craning my head to follow pairs of oyster-grey herons languidly flapping through the sky, mesmerized by the undulating folds of the hills across the water. Feeling into my body, arms gently pendulous, perhaps cold fingers, and, in summer, bare feet kneaded by the knobbly road. A walking meditation.
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[Part 3 of 3] Digestion + our overall health: healing with a cultured veggie cleanse
Today is the final post of a 3-part series on digestion + our overall health.
I’m sharing another layer to my wellness path, to help you see the importance of making sure each individual system in your body is healthy, for healing to happen and for overall wellness. Plus I illuminate a few lesser-talked about ways to support your gut [and overall] health.
PART 1: You found out it was important to heal my gut stat + how I’m doing it. Light bulb: gut health is directly linked to the health of our whole body [1].
PART 2: Naturopath Alisha Lynch told us about the direct connection between our emotions + gut health, and how to release emotional blockages with Australian Bush Flower Essences.
TODAY, PART 3: A gut-healing and -boosting method. It’s called cultured cleansing [aka a cleanse eating only cultured/fermented foods], with special guest Kayleigh Jean of Pickle-Biotic. There are no juice fasts here, though:
This special cleanse relies solely on fermented foods to cleanse your digestive system and give it boost.
Today Kayleigh chats about:
What she eats for breakfast, lunch + dinner on a cultured cleanse
How she honors her body type + a tip if you have a hard time fasting
Why you shouldn’t freak out if symptoms get worse initially
A recipe for her cruciferous ferment
[Part 2 of 3] Digestion + our overall health: the emotional connection with naturopath Alisha Lynch
Today is part 2 of a 3-part series on digestion + our overall health.
I’m sharing another layer of my wellness path to show the importance of making sure each individual system in your body is healthy, for healing to happen and for overall wellness. Plus I illuminate a few lesser-talked about ways to support your gut [and overall] health.
PART 1: Last week I revealed why I needed to heal my gut ASAP, and how I’m doing it. After a lifetime of digestive issues, it’s rewarding and powerful to see an improvement in my symptoms in six weeks, which I correlate to less gut inflammation and, all around, a boost on my cancer healing path.
TODAY, PART 2: We’re delving into the emotional connection between gut health and overall well being. I surprised myself, since I harp on about how important the emotional connection is on my cancer-healing path, by assuming our guts are isolated from our emotions. They’re not. It may sound kooky, a bit of a tenuous thread to link your gut and your emotions, so I’ve brought in an expert, naturopath and mum Alisha Forbes, to help us understand.
Today Alisha chats about:
How our gut + emotions are eerily, powerfully, intrinsically linked
Helping our brain = helping our gut
Her favorite natural + effective way to keep your connection open for gut healing + overall health
[Part 1 of 3] Digestion + our overall health: how and why I need to heal my gut ASAP
A lifetime of digestive issues, like bloating and tummy discomfort every time I ate or drank, led me to believe that having these symptoms all the time was normal. It isn’t. In fact, if your gut is out of balance too, chances are you may have other health issues that stemmed from it; think candida, allergies, arthritis, headaches, depression, autoimmune diseases and more [1]. I’d even go so far as to say that it contributed to the imbalance in my body that created cancer. The simple truth is that a healthy gut is crucial for immunity, and our overall mental and physical well being.
I’m excited to share with you another layer of my wellness path – it also illuminates the importance of making sure each individual system in your body is healthy, for healing to happen and for overall wellness.
In this 3-part series we’ll talk about the direct connection between our [amazing, intelligent] gut + our health, including:
Why I need to heal my gut ASAP [and why you might, too]
Gut healing foods + recipes + supplements
What I’m noticing after 6 weeks of dietary changes + supplements
Plus special guests!
The emotional link with naturopath Alisa Forbes
Kayleigh Jean from Picklebiotic on how she gives her digestion a break and a boost with a special one-day cleanse. No juice fasts here, though!
A hodge-podge update: castor oil, doing your heart’s work, eBook design + wellness workshops
It’s twenty to ten in the morning on my least favorite day of the week, castor oil day. I take castor oil internally as part of my many-layered natural healing routine, but I so dislike it that I grimace just thinking about chugging it earlier this morning. The upside, apart from helping my body detoxify, is that on castor oil days I allow myself the luxury of a morning in bed, partly because I’m usually nursing a mini hangover-like feeling as the castor oil works its way through my system, also because it’s a brilliant excuse to indulge my love of TV, reading and, especially, musing, in bed.
In between programs, nestled under a blanket, this morning I ponder the work I want to do in this world. With six months left of the Gerson Therapy, there’s been a need and desire to tease out where I’m going to be in the world after [heading back to New York], and how to do work I love: to craft ways that make being happier and healthier easier for you, in a way that fulfils me and explores my innate, unique gifts – just like you have your particular set of talents.
Because it can be new, lonely, confusing, scary to open your life up to change, even if the end result is more fullness.
Guidance, and hand and heart holding, is needed on the healing path.
This, I know.
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The stories we tell about our symptoms [physical, emotional & spiritual]
There’s an element of healing – of life in general, our health and happiness – that isn’t often talked about. An immense obstacle that’s not often recognized, by doctor or patient. It’s where our deepest fears stem from, where our lack of trust nestles comfortably, and why we are disconnected from ourselves – so unknown to ourselves that we don’t see or ignore our symptoms, whether physical, emotional or spiritual [actually, they’re entwined], until they hit us over the head to get our attention.
This healing hinderer is the stories we’re told.
The stories that come from our parents, our friends, our culture, community, media, teachers, leaders. The stories we don’t know aren’t true, so, from a young age, we begin to tell them to ourselves. And we believe the words by living these limiting stories.
A few limiting stories & how they play out in real life:
Don’t be sad, don’t cry, it’s ok, don’t be weak, suck it up….
Emotional expression is scary. Essentially, “I can’t deal with my emotion – or yours, so shut yours down.”
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