get on the bus!

Hey everybody!

we are being showered with the real riches of CA recently!

we’ve been having some great weeks lately–steady at 40 patients per week, but the real bounty is that spring is springing and community is blooming!  I knew this would happen but am still blown away at how community is so hungry to grow and does so once space is created for it.

we ended the last few weeks with a bounty of goodness:

the hand-made wooden pull-toy based on our we the people logo and the CAN logo,

two containers of homemade potato leek soup,

two huge loaves of local bakery bread,

dozens and dozens of organic eggs from one of our patients’ wheat-grass fed chickens (she brings 4-6 doz per week–we’ve taken to giving them to other patients who are now hooked so we have set up a buying exchange between them),

more than 40 plant starts, packets of heirloom seeds, potted plants for the clinic,

two paintings–from a very special series done by one of our earliest patients for the first art show following her beloved husband’s death

two potholders made for us by our 7 yr old patient (remember those great ones made with the little loom and the stretchy loops?),

16 pots of mature purple irises thinned from a patient’s garden–the same patient who kindly asked our loud phone talking, outside pacing neighbor to please quiet down so he could relax during his acupuncture!

a radio interview (still trying to figure out how to post it here…it’s a Realplayer file, also in my itunes, any help appreciated),

two excellent visitors interested in CA–considerate, excited, informed, arrived early, had scheduled treatments, purchased Noodles–just really “got it,”

a payment 5 times the usual fee from a regular patient wanting to share her birthday windfall with us (each time she re-uses her envelope, she adds more hearts…)

and, you know, the usual weeks worth of hugs and laughter.

and, even more, the true riches of patients reconnecting to themselves, getting relief, feeling hopeful about their particular conditions which are shifting quickly with regular treatment. It is an honor to have them sharing their lives with us, building relationships, connecting with each other–we’ve been in the presence of grace this month and we are thankful!

here is a link to a few photos of the clinic gifts:

happy gardening!

melissa

Author: melissa tiernan

Found community acupuncture in my last year of acupuncture school and it was like cool water on the dry desert of aculand. It addressed all those nagging questions of how to make acupuncture accessible and inviting to people like me, in my own communities as well as actually make a living and I knew I would practice this way for the rest of my life. I have learned more (about acupuncture, about people and community, about myself) in the past few years of running a CA clinic and being an acupunk at another BDC clinic than ever before. It's one of my all-time favorite places to be. I am eternally grateful to this community for its welcoming support, its passionate determination and its irreverence for useless sacred cows. I look forward to our continued work in supporting community acupuncture clinics worldwide!