Volunteering my homeopathic consultation services for the Integrative Healers Action Network (IHAN) has continued to be extremely gratifying and impactful. We have been lucky to have had a reprieve in our region of Northern California, for a few years, in terms of severe wildfires. So we have continued to have regular community care clinics for those impacted in previous years, including regular wellness clinics for first responders at fire houses in Sonoma County.

The wildfires in L.A. in January were a shock.
The leadership team at IHAN in conjunction with the Volunteer Fire Foundation decided to respond.

The scale of the impact on first responders was vastly unprecedented in the western United States. It is being referred to within the firefighting community as their “9/11” due to the toxic exposure as well as the trauma. Thousands of firefighters from all over western North America including Canada and Mexico, as well as the states, deployed to fight the fires.

Many firefighters on the front lines experienced full exposure to extremely toxic fumes. The reasons for this are complex, but include perhaps an unprecedented use case that Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was not designed for.

In addition to the physical symptoms due to exposure and extreme exhaustion, many firefighters experienced PTSD. They were witnessing things they had never seen in their careers, even though they see many traumatic scenarios on a regular basis. Younger firefighters saw their mentors get scared and shocked maybe for the first time. All of them are acutely aware of the health outcomes of the firefighters who responded to the Twin Towers during the 9/11 catastrophe.

IHAN volunteers were able to treat thousands of first responders over almost four months. I was able to serve two different, very full weekend clinics. I also was focused on orienting local homeopath volunteers, and making sure they were prepared for providing trauma-informed homeopathic care.

Many firefighters returned multiple times for treatments, because they noticed they were helping with their chronic coughs and sinus issues, their anxiety and sleep disruption, and their PTSD.

I am deeply privileged to get to have held the stories, the experiences, for these amazing humans, in an effort to help them heal. I told them that. We were in mutual aid mode but as my colleague Jenny Harrow-Keeler put it, we were all in a vortex of gratitude that went in all directions. I’ve never experienced such gratitude for, or from, humans before such as this. We were in tears. They were in tears, they could not fathom that we were there just to help them.

Homeopaths often ask me which homeopathic remedies we were using. Many! Especially in the earlier response, the remedies needed for toxicity including vomiting - homeopathic potencies of  Arsenicum album, Mercurius vivus, Nux vomica, Cadmium sulph, etc. The shock and fear remedies of course - Aconitum napellus, Arnica Montana, Stramonium. Common remedies for chronic cough such as Antimonium tartaricum, Phosphorus, Pulsatilla, Sulphur and many others. Exhaustion remedies including acid remedies, China officinalis, Kali phosphoriucum. And of course, grief and PTSD remedies like Natrum muriaticum, Ignatia amara, Aurum metallicum (and salts), Causticum,

This will forever remain a tender moment in my heart.
But we are on the cusp of a change in culture. Where healing is the norm. Where interdependence is again celebrated. Where human potential is infinite.

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Thanks to Hahnemann Laboratories in San Rafael for donating homeopathic remedies, allowing us to provide a wide range of specific remedies to the first responders. Thanks to Boiron, for donating a large quantity of specific well indicated remedies.