by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 27, 2014 | Body Image, cancer, Women's health, Writing
This piece was meant for the CCNM Body Monologues during the 2014 Women’s Health Week. It is an important story for me to tell, so I decided to finish the final edits and publish it here.
It was in Kingston, Ontario on the campus of Queen’s University, my alma mater, where I first met my roommate, C. We were both giddy with the nervous anticipation of coming face-to-face with the person we’d sleep beside for the next year. We were like two halves of a mail-order marriage; since divorce wasn’t an option, we were determined to make it work.
The pictures we pasted on the walls of our respective sides of the room highlighted the differences in our personalities and adolescent experiences. On her wall, there were sunny photos of rows of carbon copy, bikini-clad young women, posed in a way as to accentuate their lean abdomens and disguise obtuse hips. Their skin was bronzed from the sun. They could have been models. Why weren’t they models? I’m sure some of them were models. On mine, I plastered photos of my mishmash of weird friends. We wore sideways baseball caps, looked into the camera making cartoonish Zoolander faces or tucked our necks in to parody double-chins. We held up our hands in ironic peace signs. We emphasized our ugliness in order to assure our public that we were not trying to fit in. It was hilarious.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 25, 2014 | Cleaning, Detoxification, Health, Nature, Self-care
Spring is about cleaning. The April rains wash away the dirt and grime from the winter, people emerge in fresh, light clothing, we tackle the stacks of papers on our desks, sweep out dust and clutter, open the windows to allow fresh air to ventilate our lives and donate old, knobbing winter sweaters to charity. Spring is also the season of the Liver and Gallbladder in Chinese Medicine. This means that our body’s ability to clean revs itself up at this time of year as well. Some wonderful plants also push their way through the ground. Pick some from your garden and start throwing them into everything you eat. Spring is in the air!
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 20, 2014 | Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Health, Medicine, Motivation, Naturopathic Principles
I remember sitting in the walk-in clinic. I’d been waiting for over an hour, not to mention the time lost denying my symptoms, waiting until they got bad enough to warrant the visit in the first place. Finally, it was my turn. I walk into the treatment room, where a thin, middle-aged doctor was seated, her hair short and grey, her eyes encased in dark, baggy skin. She didn’t smile. “How can I help you?” She asked, bored already. I began where I thought the story began, at the beginning. I got a few sentences out before she cut me off. I was surprised; couldn’t she see that all this information was relevant? I didn’t just have fatigue, it was a part of me. It was woven into the fabric of my life; it had a back-story. This doctor needed to know when it began, what my life was like at the time, what I’d tried to do to treat it myself, when it felt better, when it felt worse. I didn’t believe she could treat me without that information. Surely it all mattered.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 16, 2014 | Body Image, Book, Women's health
Women’s Health Week and International Women’s Day have both come and gone. At the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Women’s Health Week is usually accented with the popular event, the Body Monologues. Body Monologues, like its vagina-specific counterpart, consists of the telling of narratives on female body image. Every yearly event is filled with challenging, heart-felt, angry and inspiring stories by women as they articulate, through poetry, dance, speech and song, their personal struggles with femininity, sexuality, eating disorders, abuse and fight for body confidence. Sadly, this year, the Body Monologues was cancelled (you can still attend the main event in April 2014, in Toronto – click here for more information). However, even if the Monologue is cancelled, the dialogue must still persist; here are some of my favourite books in the world of female health that challenge the way we view femininity and our relationships with our bodies.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 5, 2014 | Chronic pain, Meditation, Mind Body Medicine, Mindfulness
I can feel the general feeling of malaise and a focal ache in the side of my head. My mind slows and I feel that stupid sense of dullness overcome me. I am engulfed in a wave of sickness and pain; I am getting a migraine.
Many of my patients suffer from chronic pain. Their lives become about experiencing life behind a veil of physical discomfort, which intrudes into everything they do. Pain can be a metaphor offered up by the body for other forms of discomfort that are either too hard to solidify or too easy to ignore. When my little dog vies for my attention he cries. Our bodies do that too. Pain can be sticky, it can be complicated and its cause unclear. It can also destroy life; it becomes an unrelenting presence that threatens to ruin every plan or dream we have for a life of balance and well-being. Pain, and more importantly our reaction to it, can succeed at controlling us. So, how can we take back the control and heal through pain?
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