🌿My Happiness on Steem

This whole Steem Monsters thing has eluded me since I've returned to Steem. I admit to feeling a bit of FOMO about the whole thing, even though I completely missed the whole game-cards thing. Nevertheless, I've decided to enter a contest proposed by @sgt-dan in his recent post, and write a post about a project on Steem that brings me great joy.

"A project on Steem that gives you joy".... that was the brief given. Where the heck do I even start with that?

There are SOOOO many decent projects being run by SOOOO many amazing people on this blockchain. I've been very active on various social media platforms for close to a decade now. I've pulled away from all of them, except Steem.

There really are lots out there. And some exceptional projects that seek to help out as many people as possible, whether that is in curating quality creative content, helping out with votes, shares, and delegations, or using the platform to raise funds for charitable organisations.

My happiness is slowly creeping back,
Now you're at home.
- Powderfinger

But what brings me joy?

The most joy I've had so far on Steem has been my involvement with the Natural Medicine community, and writing posts for their #naturalmedicine tag.

Here's why:

All the communities that I'm involved with are awesome, and I get a great deal from them.

For half of my adult life, I've been involved in the natural health profession, training for 5 years as a Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner, and then being in private practice for 8 years. Even before my stint studying TCM, I spent 2-3 years exploring the world of natural health through dealing with my own health issues (mental, emotional, and physiological), which I've written about in a couple of other posts.

At the end of last year, I closed up my TCM business, stopped seeing clients, stopped running my Qigong classes, and dietary health programs, and ceased running workshops. I completely stepped away from the idea of being involved in natural medicine ever again. For six months I was also completely offline, closing my social media accounts, and hibernating socially also. I was spent, burned-out, and completely over holding space for other people. I was completely jaded with the idea of Complementary and Alternative Medicines, and the entire industry.

Then one day, this person called @riverflows showed up in the Team Australia channel over in MSP-PALnet, letting us know about a new community being set up called 'Natural Medicine'. At first I was cynical and dubious. But something drew me to check it out, which I did.

I was reluctant to share anything at first. I certainly didn't want to let on that I had a background in the field. Then there was a contest to share your experience with natural medicines. I thought, "what the hell!" and wrote a post about my first ever acupuncture session as a patient, which changed my life completely. The response to my post was like nothing I'd ever had before. The comments were encouraging, and people wanted to know more.

I started to hang out more and more in the NM server. Here were people living lives off-grid, growing food and medicines, healers with enthusiasm and passion for their craft, and passion for sharing it. The admin @riverflows kept wanting me to write more and get more involved... it helps when we live close by and share so many tastes, ideas, and life growing up in and around Melbourne (Australia).

I found myself getting more and more involved. But also, I found that the enthusiasm and passion for natural healing I started with almost 20 years ago was returning.

Here on Steem, and with the #naturalmedicine banner, I could write about topics I loved, without needing to 'sell' anything, or prove anything, or convince anything. I could just write about what came from my heart - and was encouraged to do so.

A few weeks ago, I felt for the first time that I could step back into being a practitioner. Last week, I saw my first client in nearly 9 months. And I had a blast!! Whereas beforehand I felt constrained in my profession, unable to express my creativity and my unique perspective on health & healing, I could do it now. Whereas previously I needed to be careful about what I wrote regarding health, who I might offend, or which national professional body might scrutinise my work, now I could write freely, from the heart.

For the first time in a long time, I felt the old fire rekindled.

And I owe it to the beautiful Natural Medicine crew (as well as many others) who inadvertently inspired me and encouraged me back into this world, and who've led me back to the magic of the natural world and its healing capabilities.

This is what makes the social media experiment that is STEEM different to any other. Because we create very real, authentic communities here. Communities are only as good as the people who engage in them.

Steem puts the 'social' back into 'social media'.

So a massive huge big heart-felt grateful hug to the all of the Natural Medicine community, especially the admins and mods who help create what I feel is one of the best communities around.