I upset a reader last Sunday with my post that said that while I favor natural medicines to conventional ones, I am trying not to judge those who go the conventional route because I’ve come to see that mood-altering medicines for depression and sleeplessness “may have” a role. I wish now I’d said, “have a role,” because of course they do. But this isn’t the first time I’ve angered someone over these types of questions. Once, after writing that putting children on Ritalin before all food dyes and additives have been removed from their diet was a “national tragedy” (I do get passionate about these things), a close friend wrote me a long, rather furious letter about why Ritalin was the right choice for her nine-year-old and that she didn’t need me to lay a stigma on him.

I sent the most recent CM exchange to Frances Stahnke, director of a yoga studio in Northern Virginia, and a friend who has taught me (over a period of about twenty years) much of what I know about Chinese herbs, bodywork, and homeopathy. In my note to Fran, I even confessed to more than I’d posted here: that I have an aversion to doctors who won’t consider complementary approaches. And in Frances’s wisdom, she wrote this:

“When we have an aversion, even an opinion that we firmly believe in, it separates us from other fellow human beings. It puts up an ‘ego’ wall. This sends the message ‘No compassion here, due to my opinion.’ And the ego stops the flow of the heart, which is the ego’s goal. My students often ask, ‘How will I know if it is my ego influencing a situation?’ I answer, ‘The ego is that which does not smile,’ which is something I learned from one of my teachers. Watch for it. I see all things as gifts of the divine and there have been times that I have used Motrin or antibiotics and been so thankful for their creation.”

Thank you, Frances. And thanks to Daria who affirms what I’d said in my initial blog post: “There’s a big difference between a temporary disequilibrium like a cold, an ache, or a sad spell, and a deep-rooted illness, like depression or cancer. For these, a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach is often used, and medication satisfies a legitimate need.”