But chances are you know very little. This is especially true of the parasocial relationships we experience with lots of different people – not just those we’ve never met. You might have been in the same room as them, talked to them, and on more than one occasion. Might have even been taught by them, read their blogs, followed their feed. And because of all those interactions, that for us, have been very impacting, we autofill all the other information about these individuals, using our imagination, lead by our own cognitive biases, to create our own version of ‘them’. Often making them increasingly one-dimensional, ‘They’re Perfect! Lives it – breathes it’, or alternatively, ‘Here’s a naturopath that still knows how to party!” Our assumptions & autofill could be about any aspect of that individual, their privilege, up-bringing, background, previous life & career, pivot points, their diet, their lifestyle, their own health journey.

Kira became profoundly unwell each time she attempted to complete her Masters in Research which, taken together with her Californian upbringing & the legacy of summer camps full of tie-dying anything not tied down, told her to return to her ‘woo woo’.

Phil had an established international career in anti-nuclear activism & is ultimately motivated by the need for improved social equity.

Lesley, the daughter of an energetic healer, studied naturopathy alongside pharmacy but found the emotional load of 1:1 practice the most difficult to navigate so chose a better suited application of everything she knew.

Ses came to Australia at the time of our AIDS crisis in the 80s which motivated her to reach out & build a bridge with ACON prior to her Hep C research & work.

Sue worked in youth justice in her mid 20s, which she was passionate about but burdened with excessive responsibility by, so she fled to London & found herself working in a health food store – because they loved employed articulate ‘girls from the colonies’!

Liza was exposed to a childhood of nothing more than a dehydrated apricot for dessert, once her mother discovered naturopathy as a necessary course-correction for their ‘toxic farming’ lifestyle.

Hearing myself across the weekend’s program referred to as, ‘The Queen of Mentoring’, along with, ‘Needs no introduction’, was the other side of this same phenomenon. It’s a surreal experience. I imagine that if I wasn’t me, I too would think things about ‘me’. Make some assumptions, autofill the rest. I wondered who ‘she’ is – in the minds of all of these people – and what fraction of my whole that represents. I am sure I am both much less and also much more. I’m aware of a particular role I’ve played in parasocial relationships practitioners have formed with me. I intensely compartmentalised my life, segregated & split-off work from anything personal, for the most part of my career. I don’t post pictures of my kids, speak about my family in any firm terms, I’ve probably sounded sketchy on the details about lots of aspects of my life. It was driven by both my desire to present as the professional I am (& back in the day when that was absolutely mutually exclusive from the current ‘authenticity’ piece) and a desire to protect both mine & my little flock’s privacy. But when I hear some versions of ‘Rachel Arthur’ I think it maybe was a little to my detriment. Perhaps it’s fostered an impression of me more robot than real flesh and blood human, who has all the struggles, the uncertainties, the challenges, the love & the load that you would expect of any middle aged, divorced, single mother of two, solo practitioner, who had their first paid work at 12 (oh yes the work ethic was alive and kicking in my neck of the woods) but transitioned to working for myself from the time my twins turned 2!

I still find myself asking, what’s the value in you knowing this & more of the personal stuff about me?

I guess just so that you don’t ‘other’ me. Such that you can see yourself in me, both in my strengths, but equally my follies. But also so I don’t feel so alone. The summit program this weekend was all about our community & how we each individually need our community to be well – ’tis so true – and Kira, in her closing speech, gave us the evocative analogy of the mother tree of a sequoia grove. To have had the honour of influencing how we educate ourselves in this community but to simultaneously have often felt on the ‘outer’ (because I am not part of an institution, I decline to absolutely align with any aspect of industry, I am not even part of a praccie chic-click – more of a chic-flitter between several 😅) has been a confusing combination over my career. The Australian Naturopathic Summit circa 2016 & 2018 (& 2020 which was put to a stop only by a pandemic!), co-created with Nirala Jacobi, Kathryn Simpson and via all the input of our incredible speakers, vollies and attendees was, I guess, an attempt at creating the community that I until then, I hadn’t experienced myself. And I know to this day, it holds that place in many hearts forever for that reason. But in the absence of the ANS, I ‘gotta’ say NHAA, You did a good job – offering us a big warm hug, an opportunity for reconnection & to see all of ourselves as real people with so much more to each of our stories…

I am leaving the blogosphere.

Well not entirely but almost. At the EOFY all my weekly blogs will be accessible only to our Curious Minds Club subscribers.
Every event, practitioners tell me how they love these blogs. I’ve heard ‘learning while laughing (lmao)’ more than once and it never fails to delight! And I love this small kind of community that we’ve created here between you and me. I so appreciate being able to talk to you. To have the ‘other conversations’, the ones others can’t or won’t. The bigger ones, the tougher ones, the more involved, complicated ones, than most mediums and messaging allows. But I also have had a rapidly growing sense that I want to say more and I really want to hear from you.

So we’re switching on comments.

Because I want this to be an actual conversation between us – not me monologing from atop the mountain! too removed from the realities of our very real clinical lives. I want it to be a co-creation. So we get to address the questions that might remain for you about an issue, the weeds we need to walk through together, in order to come out the other side with real clarity. Whether that’s in relation to ethics, practice models, education, prescribing, diagnostics, industry, politics etc

I’m genuinely excited about this next chapter. More depth. More honesty. More conversation.

We’ll be in touch with the details soon.
If you’re on our mailing list you’ll be first to know.

Photo by Gilles Rolland-Monnet on Unsplash