Not long ago, I stood in my driveway watching water bubble up from the ground above me, trickling into a French drain by my garage.
I had seen this countless times before, but that day, the truth hit me with absolute clarity: this water was flowing straight through my uphill neighbor’s septic field and into my backyard. A quiet, steady stream—carrying with it invisible life forms, including Escherichia coli O157, a strain that can be deadly.
By then, I had already endured months of illness. My journey had begun in March with unexplained digestive distress. Two courses of metronidazole in rapid succession left my gut stripped of its natural defenses. The diarrhea never fully stopped.
On June 24, I plunged into the worst flare of my life: severe intestinal hemorrhaging, dehydration, ten pounds lost in a single week, an aversion to food so strong that even the smell made me nauseous. I slept 18 hours a day and could barely walk across the room.
My neighbor urged me to go to the ER, where I was diagnosed with “stress” and sent home after giving me a liter of IV fluid.
What they didn’t know—and what I wouldn’t confirm until weeks later—was that I had been living with a virulent strain of E. coli for months, possibly years, silently undermining my health.
The parasite Giardia had already been found in my dog, proof that our shared environment was contaminated. I had been looking for answers in every specialty: ER doctors, my PCP, an infectious disease specialist, a gastroenterologist. Each focused on their piece of the puzzle, but no one asked how the pieces fit together.
My naturopath, Katie Bennett, kept urging me to take a PCR stool test. I resisted—frustrated by the out-of-pocket cost, the hassle of collecting three samples, the overnight shipping. Only after I had started feeling better from high-dose probiotics and supportive care did I finally send it in.
The ten-page report that came back in August laid out the whole truth: E. coli O157:H7 confirmed, severe yeast overgrowth from Saccharomyces boulardii supplementation, immune markers elevated in constant high alert. My body had been fighting for its life, system by system.
The Lesson in Systems Thinking
I am reminded of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the Austrian biologist who developed General Systems Theory. He proposed that disease and cures often arise where systems intersect, collide, or diverge—and that if we only examine one symptom or one part at a time, we may miss the healing power of the whole.
Our bodies are “systems of systems”: digestive, immune, circulatory, neurological, all interacting constantly. And we are nested in larger systems—our communities, our environment, our planet, even our solar system and beyond.
My illness wasn’t just a gastrointestinal problem. It was the result of a disrupted ecological system—the intersection of my neighbor’s property mismanagement, local water flow, my own immune resilience, and how the medical system approaches (or fails to approach) complex illness.
The Ancient Blueprint for Healing
Years ago, while traveling in Greece with my daughter Phoebe—her name derived from the Greek for the goddess Artemis—I discovered the remains of a healing center established by Asklepios, a Greek healer who lived centuries before Hippocrates. Her name felt like a blessing on that journey, as if some part of this wisdom was already written in her story.
Asklepios’s mountain retreat was not a hospital as we know it—it was a sanctuary for the whole human being.
Patients could walk shaded pine trails, play sports in open-air arenas, watch plays in the theater, listen to musicians while eating wholesome food, and take herbal remedies made from the surrounding hills. It was a place to restore harmony to body, mind, spirit, and community.
We have always known that reconnecting ourselves to our system of systems is healing. But modern life fragments us. Perhaps that ER doctor was right to say I had “stress”—but the deeper truth was that I was suffering the stress of forgetting who I am, what I know, and that I have the ability to heal by vibrating in harmony with all that is.
The Biosphere Connection
I live on the edge of the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO-protected haven of salmon, eagles, elk, evergreens, rivers, ocean—and people. The mission of the biosphere is to teach us to live in balance within this intricate system of systems.
My health crisis was a vivid reminder of what happens when we fall out of balance with Mother Nature. Contamination upstream becomes illness downstream. Disruption in one part of the system reverberates through the whole.
Balance, whether in nature or in the human body, is not static. It’s a dynamic process—requiring daily awareness and care for the ways our systems interact.
The Spiritual Truth
My healing began when I slowed down enough to notice those interactions—not just the contaminated water, but how my gut, my immune system, my mind, and my spirit were all communicating.
I realized that no single doctor, test, or pill would restore me. Healing would come from realigning my systems with each other and with the greater systems of life around me.
We are all connected. We are all here to help each other remember the way back to balance. God is – I am – We are One.
Takeaway: Whether you are facing illness, grief, or challenge, look beyond the isolated symptom. Ask how your systems—and the systems around you—are interacting. Sometimes the key to healing isn’t in fixing a single broken part, but in listening for the harmony of the whole.
