"Often the time, energy, financial, spiritual investments of healing will look huge - yet it’s the (often invisible) costs of NOT HEALING that often go much deeper, to the bone."

~ Nicole Barton

I was feeling heartbroken the other day.

It might seem like a small thing, but I had the most beautiful deep earthly-green ancient victorian homeopathic medicine bottle, that I’d bought myself to honour and celebrate my rebirth of Archetypal Apothecary.  It was deeply symbolic and meaningful to me, despite not costing a lot of money. I’d had a Rose in it, the entire journey with Archetypal Rosa recently, which felt symbolic of the Remedies being part of the bottle.

And my baby girl smashed it, whilst playing.  Cue all the emotions around it being broken - anger, grief, applying meaning about what the symbolism was.  I was raging inside, and sobbing, though I gave Lily a cuddle through my tears and told her it was all ok (thank goodness for this healing work).

My inner child instantly wanted to ‘fix’ it, but the right hand corner of it had shattered into tiny shards; it couldn’t be glued.

"There's no greater privilege than to become who you truly are"

~ Carl Jung

One of the ancient healing wisdom bodies of my Archetypal Apothecary healing modality is homeopathy. It's a medical system that I was born to serve in this lifetime, and I've witnessed healing miracle upon healing miracle with its magic - both for myself and other women.

I no longer serve homeopathy traditionally - I serve the remedies as Archetypes - yet it is a deep part of my lineage, providing healing on a deep level and also providing the foundational technology I harness to map out a woman's soul plan. A soul map helping women understand their natural make up, their soul gifts, and the wounds they need to heal in order to fulfil their potential and live their purpose.

And one of homeopathy's most important principles of 'similia similibus' is woven right through my path.

“This is why healing the Feminine is our most important work. As women and as healers. It's both for us - and for the future generations - and for the loss of Ancestral feminine wisdom body that we have created, without meaning to - because we outsourced our power to the medical science that over-rode our deep innate knowledge.”

~ Nicole Barton

I don't often speak to the 'Ancestral Layer' Archetypal Remedies of our path, but they're a big part of our Soul Map - they are one of the 4 layers of Remedies that women need to heal in order to live their soul purpose (especially as healers).

You see, all cultures at a moment in time have their 'wounds' - ancestral wounds ('miasms') that are passed down in our DNA through epigenetics. Medicine women have always talked of 'ancestral healing' yet modern science itself didn't know, until fairly recently, that epigenetics explained this ancestral piece. Science recently discovered that what we do in our lifetime altars our DNA, which explains why what our ancestors lived through shows up in our bodies - even generations down the line.

“We are all walking around with our own unique collection of Archetypal Remedy "wounding states" that want to be worked with for healing. And so the first choice is, as healers, which 'layer' of remedy do we serve? Some will be more 'surface' layer than 'deeper' layers (read my article on Hering's direction of cure) - and these surface layer remedies are usually the ones that need healing first, so we can slowly and gently open at our soul's pace.”

~ Nicole Barton

One of the things I teach healers to do, deeper in the path, is how to read and match people's energetic "potency" when they are serving their unique remedy.

And this is *beyond* important.

Because, though many of the 'quick fix' approaches to healing (innocently) teach 'one size fits all', not everyone's healing is linear and requires the same remedy and potency.

“Because the body is more clever than we know. It will reveal to us where our healing lies. And it will do so at the pace we are ready to journey.”

~ Nicole Barton

Sometimes when I talk to women I can predict - just by knowing their Archetypal Remedy constitution - their natural physical health patterns through life.

"Oh, you experienced a lot of tonsillitis, or chest infections?" I could have told them that, just by knowing that they liked ice cream, feared the dark and had big eyes and deep sensitivity (all elements of Archetypal Phosphorus).

It sounds weird, I know, but each Archetypal Remedy will have its own unique set of physical health patterns (which is something that's unique about the way my modality works, as archetypal psychology alone lacks this physical map).

“I didn't know it then, but this was my body calling me to listen - to hear something important of my soul.”

~ Nicole Barton

I spent a good chunk of my lifetime contorting myself into boxes - trying to fit in and be 'acceptable' to the world, putting on a mask of 'perfection,' and particularly ignoring my sensitive needs in case I was seen as 'too much'. My deepest fear was abandonment, after my dad left, age 4, and I did everything I could to stop that happening again (including denying my healing gifts for a long time after I was called).

And that trying so hard to be 'loved' had me, on several occasions, burn out, into complete exhaustion, with mysterious womb symptoms, tension, and tightness in my body, deep anxiety and overwhelm.

"One of the clearest ‘markers’ of a ‘wounded healer’ is that she’s usually someone who has had an unusually extra-ordinary level of pain and wounding in her lifetime - which is actually a deep sign you are this particular archetype, and are being called to her healing. ”

~ Nicole Barton

I was speaking to a very special soul-sister the other day and we got talking about the Archetype of the ‘wounded healer’ (you know I love archetypal psychology, given it’s 1 of 3 ancient wisdom bodies of our Archetypal Apothecary path).

It got me thinking about how some women who feel a deep call to this path can have a clear knowing they are here to heal others (even though that largely feels terrifying when they first feel the call) - and yet other sensitive souls just know they feel a deep call to heal themselves and discover their purpose.  

It occurred to me (with my soul sisters’ beautiful reflection) that the Archetype of the ‘wounded healer’ explains exactly why that is - because many of us are walking around as unconscious ‘wounded healers’ - including those who aren’t actually “healers” in helping professions.

So, who are the wounded healers?