Have We Traded Grassroots for Health Freedom Idols?

I’m full up on red pills.

Red pills, like all pills, are not intended to be taken all at once. In fact, believe it’s entirely possible to overdose on them. So watch for side effects, which can include insomnia, agitation, disillusionment, fear, a sense of hopelessness or maybe a tendency to catastrophize.

If you are in the midst of any kind of an awakening and you experience these symptoms, call a friend, take a yoga class, go for a walk, enjoy some time with your family and get plenty of water and sunshine. It can be the difference between spiritual growth and perpetual cynicism.

So, yes, pace yourself. But I think it’s important to be willing to acknowledge uncomfortable truths that are difficult to witness. (Blue pills go down easier, but they take you with them.)

Having said that, I don’t know what all of those truths are. I only know that I’m seeing ugly accusations and some pretty concerning dot-connecting from places I hadn’t anticipated. Outside of my own relationships and experiences, it’s hard to know what’s true - discernment is a cultivated skill that I’m still working at. But as a Chinese medicine practitioner I’m trained to observe patterns and connections between microcosm and macrocosm. And there are some troubling patterns within the Health Freedom movement that mirror both broader human struggles and the corruption and exploitation of other civil rights and “social justice” movements. With so much distrust and instability within the movement, I think it’s important that each of us take a minute to reevaluate and root back into our values and intentions.

We Bring Ourselves With Us

As Barry Brownstein recently reminded me, Wherever You Go, There you Are.

Many of us found a “safe space” within the health freedom community after being catapulted out of our comfort zones and even cancelled, shunned and/or ridiculed by community or family. Initially, a grassroots network of health freedom advocates provided validation and a much-needed reprieve - a beautiful sanctuary space for people who were waking up to BigPharma corruption and government oppression.

But while we all brought our gifts, we also brought our own biases, blind spots and imbalances along for the ride. And any imbalance, if not revisited and addressed, can become pathological. I’ve written about activism and cultural autoimmunity before. You can read about it here.

So here we are.

In a post from January 2023, Tessa Lena encapsulated it perfectly:

What's Happening in the Medical Freedom Movement?

On the one hand, there are millions of brave people all over the world, people like yourself, seeking answers, solving everyday challenges, bonding with like-minded souls, looking for new ways to  feed their families, being heroic, dealing with betrayal by the formerly loved ones,  and just living day to day, with a heartfelt prayer for a better life on their (our) lips. On the other hand, there are human imperfections, power struggles, egos, politics, counterinsurgency, and bad habits galore…

…The way we reacted to COVID abuse over time differed from person to person. Each person brought their energy and their habits to the mix.

• The pure brought the purity

• The fearless brought the courage

• The grifters brought the grift

• The business-oriented brought the market slicing vibe and the confident promotional tone

• The spies brought many sophisticated tricks

• Those used to being in charge and looked up to carried it over to the Medical Freedom Movement, and made it a point to lead the pack

• Those who were already feeling like weirdos and outcasts in the pre-COVID world, carried over the trauma, the skepticism, a bitter feeling, great suspicion for anyone enjoying success, and the “5D chess”

…The general dynamic is ancient. The need for deep soul searching and uttermost spiritual honesty is timeless.

Tessa also offers this important advice:

Please guard your heart and don’t allow it to be broken by any splits, any unbelievable lies, any shocking discoveries, any events that may take the ground from underneath your feet…Don’t let any real or imaginary leader break your heart. You only have one (yours).

Put this in your pocket. I’ve heard a few different iterations of this over the last 5 years and, to the extent I’ve heeded this advice, it has served me well.

While I’m prone to gushing admiration for those who have very publicly made brave choices and great speeches, I’m lucky to work alongside “regular people” who have been quietly extraordinary day-after-day for years. And witnessing the disparity between how these groups are acknowledged and rewarded for their efforts has been revelatory. I’m now witnessing the struggles of friends who have fought tirelessly for years to preserve health freedom while newcomers rise to levels of stardom that simply never existed in this movement before.

Something doesn’t feel right.

We Don’t Need Another Hero

We are not subjects or groupies or a target market.

We can be grateful for all the voices while acknowledging the value of our own contributions. We can appreciate people who listen and learn, who join the ranks and add their voices to the chorus. We can show support for the doctors who are willing to acknowledge the shortcomings of mainstream medicine, the insiders and whistleblowers who bear witness to the corruption within scientific, journalistic, corporate and government institutions and the celebrities who use their platforms to amplify dissent. But we compromise our progress when we make them our heroes and defer to them as the new experts. (Remember when we decided that elites and centralized power were part of the problem?)

No one person or group deserves all of the praise, credit, power or resources. Nor should any individual or organization shoulder the burden of “saving humanity.”

Furthermore, it feels important to regularly circle back and revisit with gratitude the shoulders we stand on and the ones we have cried on.

The Shoulders We Stand On

It’s hard for me not to notice that many of today’s Health Freedom “celebrities” are relatively new to the movement. Some wonderful doctors and influencers have come on board - and I’m so happy that they have revisited their previous beliefs and are lending their voices to some inconvenient truths - but I believe they owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the people who laid the foundation of this work. We all do.

Over the last 3 years, millions of people have watched interviews with Bret Weinstein, Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, Peter McCullough, James O’Keefe, Robert Malone and a growing list of people who have done an excellent job of bringing important conversations to the forefront. But most of these people only recently entered this conversation and all of them benefited from a grassroots community that provided much of the foundational research and many of the solutions that they now promote.

How many people know about the work of Celia Farber, Andy Wakefield, Vera Sharav, Barbara Loe Fisher, Larry Palevsky, Bob Sears, Sayer Ji, Brandy Vaughn, the “Mercury Moms” (who co-founded Children’s Health Defense) and so many others who called out corruption and held the line before any of us knew there was a line to hold? Without them, it’s unlikely we’d have the insights or the choices we have today.

How many warrior moms and alternative health practitioners were talking about natto (nattokinase), black seed oil, supplements and Chinese herbs long before they were added to widely marketed treatment protocols?

Driving Under the Influence

To be clear, this is an observation, not an accusation. What I’m observing is a story of forgetting our roots and giving our power away. It’s also an admission. I keep catching myself in the act of what sometimes feels like self-sabotage. I suspect some of my actions may have misrepresented my intentions.

For example, I’ve taken selfies with and promoted just about every prominent voice I came across, not because I felt these people were the authorities on truth, but because they were sharing a version of it that might reach other people. My intention was to amplify a broad spectrum of voices that spoke in support of our freedom to choose. I never intended to endorse a new panel of experts. Somewhere along the way, I may have inadvertently elevated some of those voices above others that also deserve to be heard. I’m learning that good intentions go rogue all the time, especially when money, reputation and power are involved.

In our eagerness for validation, I fear we may have handed over the platforms and microphones prematurely. Or unnecessarily. I think that, by and large, it should be parents and victims holding the microphones and doctors and pundits doing the listening. I also think the OG’s who helped us get to this point should be vindicated and honored before we move this conversation forward.

I don’t want our voices to be tucked neatly into a “new and improved” medical establishment operating under the same system of licensure with medically-approved supplements and dietary protocols endorsed by “experts.” I don’t want people who were promoting vaccines 4 years ago to turn around and tell us, “There. We fixed it.” And I don’t necessarily want to pay to hear a newly awakened physician explain to me in scientific terms what I knew long before he or she did.

I don’t mean any of this disrespectfully. I mean it self-respectfully.

For a brief and beautiful moment, we were all peers, united in achieving a common goal. I want that back.

A Better Way Forward?

Perhaps it’s time to revisit our approach to promoting health freedom. The “root out the enemy” campaigns that are flooding our feeds can easily divert our attention and resources and ultimately deplete us. We’ve seen this play out in global politics. We’ve seen the impacts of this in medicine. Fear of pathogens and enemies have made way for hypervigilance, war and overmedication. We’ve seen how the overuse of antibiotics and vaccines have ultimately weakened us. A version of this appears to be infecting the health freedom movement.

Maybe the best way to fend off threats is by continuously rooting into our values, supporting our friends and strengthening our communities.

Easier said than done, but let’s give it a try.