I have been in physical pain for much of my adult life. In December of 2007 I fractured my pelvis while snowboarding in the State of Maine in the United States. I was on crutches for several months and it took years for me to gradually regain my strength. I went from being able to walk for only 15 minutes at a time, to gradually hiking for up to eight hours but the pain never went away. I started going to regular yoga classes, and took up cycling as my main aerobic activity because it had a lower impact on my knees. The knee pain persisted though and I also started to develop pain in my right arm and my hands and wrists. At first I switched from a purse to a backpack and tried to type less but eventually the pain was unbearable. I couldn’t stir a pot of soup, let alone lift anything. In 2014 I finally went on a two year medical odyssey to figure out what was wrong. After a battery of blood tests, electricity being pulsed into my arm, and an MRI, I was diagnosed with repetitive stress injuries in my hands, and thoracic outlet syndrome in my right arm. I tried physical therapy but it only helped so much. The only other option western medicine had for me was surgery. 

At the time, Jennileen had just started out her Ayurvedic training and I was a very willing volunteer. Within a few months with some changes in diet and lifestyle I was virtually pain free in my arm for the first time in years. It was the main thing that I had wanted relief from. It is very common for intergenerational trauma to manifest physically in Native/Indigenous people, and she knew right away that this was the case with me, in addition to the diagnoses I had received from western medical professionals. I felt so understood and supported. 

The lifestyle changes that she prescribed were not only about reducing the inflammation in my body, but also about reducing the weight that the ancestral trauma bore down on me. I was to dance, sing, and do other things that I enjoyed, that filled me with life and weren’t about obligation or feeling ‘down’. As in our friendship, Jennileen listened to me and focused on what I told her I needed. Her recommendations were not always easy but very possible for me to follow because they were about building on successes that I had already implemented in my life, and met me where I was. She brought her considerable knowledge of Ayurveda to my body and added the communal wisdom of her people, the Rroma, to it. Now we are circling back to my knee and pelvic pain together to solve that issue. I am already grateful for the progress I see and excited for more.