Why I chose Naturopathy

Everyone has an origin story for their career choice and I love asking people why they chose the career they did, I find it so interesting. I have heard some really cool stories from these conversations so I thought I would get a little personal and share my Naturopathic origin story.

I had a very minimal idea of what I wanted to study post school. I wanted to have something to do with health so I went into nursing.

Going into my first year, I didn’t LOVE it but I tolerated it. I had my first placement at a local nursing home, the nurse there gave me a real hands on experience. I genuinely enjoyed it and it gave me a spark for nursing. I had a good relationship with everyone there, loved immersing myself in the culture and I even managed to befriend the aggressive man who kept trying to run people over with his mobility scooter.

I got a job at another nursing home and thoroughly enjoyed that. I loved the residents there, my job was to get them ready in the morning for the day or get them ready for bed (how cute is that!). It was a good job, but as time went on I started to get really annoyed and something wasn’t seeming right. Rather than a really beautiful moment where I could spend the time in the morning helping them feel beautiful or tucking someone’s grandparents into their bed all cosy, it was just so rushed and the pressure to just get it done was high and it was beginning to feel transactional. It was in this job that I started to question if this was for me.

I started my next placement. This was so long ago so the details are a little hazy but my placement was one month at a cancer ward and she rocked my world. Initially it gave me a flare again for nursing - I am who these people have to see, they don’t want to be here so I am going to be a light for them, and what a privilege it is to be a light, but then it ripped everything out.

I’ll break down a few things I experienced.

I met an older couple from around my home town, who were so, so, so in love and I loved seeing their love. I watched this woman, his wife, grow sicker and sicker and sicker following her treatment until one shift this beautiful woman took her last breath. To witness this man’s heartbreak was hard to say the least.

I met a young couple who were grieving their dreams of ever conceiving naturally.

I met a young girl who had just started to take part in a radical trial. This trial had only just begun and I met her as a bright and bubbly girl, her room was filled with love and light! Pictures of her and her friends everywhere. Her drawings, her creations, she made that room her home. Throughout that month I saw her lose her light, she stopped drawing, stopped making things, stopped doing anything. Granted that could have just been part of the process but I don’t know what happened to her.

Then the one that absolutely rocked my world. A mummy, with 3 young children who was under-going a harsh form of chemotherapy. It was recommended that her children stay a “safe” distance from her throughout her treatment. They opted to not have the kids come at all. Every day we would bring her bed over to the window where she could look down and see her family holding up a banner saying “we love you mummy”. I still cry whenever I think about it, I am crying right now. She started to deteriorate and these window glances got more and more hard to bear. Was she going to be able to hug her children one more time? Would they get to see their mummy face to face again? I still don’t know the answer to that. One day in particular I was hooking up her food – textured vegetable protein, as she wasn’t eating. This part felt like a movie, I hooked up her liquid, manufactured food, I walked past her small window, I walked under the fluorescent lighting, out into the fluorescent hall way that smelt of sanitiser as someone was dropping off a meal to another patient – coke, pumpkin soup white bread and a jelly cup. Just a random note to add, someone there was vegan and their meal was literally lettuce, a few cuts of capsicum and a coke but I digress. This was the moment that I realised that these people were not in an environment that encouraged healing. 

Back at home, I had my first bedtime shift and once I finished, I stayed and chatted to some nurses who were on their break. They asked me how my placement was as they were always so supportive and I told them everything. One of the nurses laughed, took a sip of her energy drink and told me “oh yeah, people don’t go to hospital to get better” and both nurses laughed, little did they know that my nursing career died at that exact comment. And while that comment is not exactly true, the goal of going to hospital would have to be to get better, it was the cherry on top.

I finished that year of nursing barely, then quit. Got a job at my local pub and was just trying to figure something out.

My mum was the next instigator, she was having problems with her feet, could barely walk, had to spend hundreds on one pair of shoes that might allow her to walk without pain, she tried everything, she tried everyone and eventually she got to the local naturopath. My mum came back amazed and after a few treatments she was pain free, this interested me and made me look into Naturopathy. We went to the open day and I was fascinated, I loved the emphasis on nature in regards to the sun, air, water, earth and in regards to our innate healing capacity, I loved the focus on nourishing the body, I loved the use of herbs to encourage weakened systems I loved it all. I enrolled and moved to Adelaide the next year.

While nursing wasn’t for me, I am so grateful for the experience and have a profound respect for the kind, compassionate, caring and resilient nurses.