Hello, my friend!
I spent this week thinking about where healing actually comes from. It isn’t always a needle or an herb. Sometimes it’s a place, so we packed a bag.
↓ In today’s email:
- This week’s inspiration: Healing can be a place
- Latest blog post: Your Body Is Screaming — Can You Hear It?
- What I’m eating: Douro, Portland’s new Portuguese stunner
This Week’s Inspiration: Healing Can Be a Place
Oftentimes, we think healing comes from a substance, a pharmaceutical, herbs, or even a treatment from someone like me. But healing can be a place. It can be time, freedom, or even a person.
When I think about healing as a place, I close my eyes and think of an island called Salina, off the northeast coast of Sicily. A summery retreat for the sophisticated (but not showy) residents of Milan, known for its cultivation of capers, which is actually the bud of the caper flower, and truly beautiful. But let’s be honest: it’s hard to get there. It’s a five-hour hydrofoil ride from either Palermo or Naples, so certainly impossible for a weekend escape from Rhode Island. Unless it’s a daydream.
Setting imagination aside, to physically go somewhere, even if it’s only a couple hundred miles away or a lot closer, can give just the inspiration and change of perspective that’s so needed. It’s like medicine itself.
So we packed up for a last-minute 36-hour trip to Portland, Maine. The briny air, the emerald islands of Casco Bay, and a city with food that punches way above its weight is a wonderful change of scenery. I’ve been here many, many times over the last 25 years, but this weekend feels special, basically like a long date with my husband, topped off with dinner with one of my older sons and his girlfriend. What could be better?
Wondering how you’re getting away, even if it’s for an hour or two, to change your perspective, to think about things differently, and maybe nourish your soul in a way you hadn’t quite known you needed. Report back.
Latest Blog Post
Your Body Is Screaming — Can You Hear It?
This one started with a butt-dial. At 6 a.m., fresh off dropping my son at a basketball tournament bus, I accidentally called my college roommate Liz — and she picked up. Two former athletes, comparing the pains that are new to us (shoulder for me, sciatica for her) while we pour outrageous time, energy, and money into our sons' athletic dreams. Then Liz said the thing neither of us wanted to say: it’s time we take care of our own bodies. The post is about the cost of giving too much, why the body’s whispers become screams when we ignore them, and the science of actually listening.
What I Ate This Week
Douro, Portland, Maine
It’s rare you go to a restaurant where every single dish that comes out is impeccable, including dessert. Usually there’s one dish that doesn’t quite make the mark. But the new restaurant Douro in Portland was truly spectacular. It’s Portuguese-inspired, but forget the caldo verde and chorizo. This was very much Portugal by way of Taormina: fresh, simple, beautiful food, served by a waitstaff that was cute, extremely knowledgeable, tattooed and a lot of fun. I can’t recommend it enough.
Let me know where you decide to go.
Sending warmth,
Dr. Catherine