Who The Heck Are We Anyway?

Here's a picture of the family. This is in Hawaii celebrating Norm's 60th birthday! Wow. Time just creeps up on you sometimes. When Norm turned 60 I noticed that he had a hard time dealing with it psychologically. I know that I would! We need to make a "Turning 60 Freak Out" 30c homeopathic! "Turning 40 Freak Out" 30C wouldn't hurt either. I need that one. (30c's nullify the effects of things, namely freaking out!)

Anyway, Norm's quest in life has always included trying to find a way to keep the body youthful, and I think that a part of him thinks "Oh shit, it ain't happening!" What he doesn't see that I can clearly is what he has accomplished. He is such an amazing Doctor, and I am continually dazzled by him. He comes home after work, and will casually mention a case history that is so profound I feel like I have been struck by lightening. Really. In one half hour session at the clinic, he can sum up someone's raison d'etre. He can pull things together through physical symptoms, and psychological expressions and reveal your life purpose and perspective and then explain the valuable learning that comes from it, and how your body mirrored this through it's functions. It's like a mini Ode to Joy that is emotionally and psychologically cathartic and gives the individual back the power of knowing, and then the power to transform oneself to recieve the gifts that come from all of it. This is how I fell in love with him.

My first experience of Norm was reading a report of my evaluation that Dr. Jack Burke gave me in Hawaii. It was from a computer diagnostic program, Medipoint that Norm wrote and Jack used in his practice. I remember very clearly walking back to my car after my appointment reading my report, when zap! the lightening hit me. I stopped in my tracks and said "Holy crap!" Then I said "Who the heck is this guy anyway?" It was the power that I glimpsed. It was the awareness that the things that were happening to my body and my mind were related, and could be transformed NATURALLY by bringing my body back into balance! At the time my health was not good. There were so many subtle things and a few obvious things that plagued me and kept me from living my life fully. I remember just being grateful for the days that my body "worked" for me. I retreated from life knowing that I couldn't step up to the plate consistently. So I never went for anything, I just tried to get through the best that I could. A few months later I became Norm's patient and he peeled away the layers of disorders and gave me back my life. From my experience I realized that health is the foundation to living. The more that I learn through Norm about our bodies and expressions the more that is true for me. Even our experience of faith and love and community are directly related to our balance in health. It's a process too. Our bodies are amazingly and beautifully complex. We are constantly changing and with that, new stuff comes up. We are still human and haven't transformed into the ultimate observer yet, so we still trudge through life. But my experience is that it's like a spiral that continues to go up and around and when we hit similar issues that we have worked on before, if we are still moving forward, it's experience is elevated and then elevated again at the next spiral up. Then again sometimes we're still just crazy humans!

Since getting my health and my life back, we had two amazing children, Rio and Wiatte. They are 7 and 5 now. They are the lights of our lives and they help us to be better people too! They have brought us some great fun and adventure and have mirrored our own weaknesses very plainly. One thing that is a continual learning experience with and through them is the nature of balance in diet. If you have gotten through the healthy diet page you realize it is very hard to follow consistently! When you try to get your 5 and 7 year old to follow it, (especially when you have all of the right enzyme products to help you process the less than stellar stuff) you have to make the term "balance" work! (And you have major problems with the "food police".... AKA Pop.) So Norm is learning tolerance and I am just trying to get some decent food down their gullets! I'm sure it makes good stories for Norm to tell in the clinic!

So here we are now creating this website. The internet is an amazing opportunity for the world to share information and it's time that we do it too. I always have told Norm that if he ever kicked it, I would have to put his brain on ice until the day that we can "download" information from his frozen cells. I'd put him right next to "Abby Normal". He'd be labeled "Mad Scientist". Mad, because he never found the fountain of youth. Well, it looks like I may not have to do that after all. We are finally getting into a groove of writing and rewriting so that his information is internet speed read ready. It took some serious threats and a few count downs from 5 to 1 for Norm to start writing for me. (Hey, it's the only thing in my mother repertoire right now.) But now that the pattern is set we are plugging away. We still have to participate in life and work at the clinic to pay the bills, but I am hoping that by Spring 2009 we will have downloaded about 1/4 of the health information from that amazing noggin.

I hope that with the insights and observations that Norm shares you can experience what I have, and take back your life and be your totally awesome self.

Health, Balance and Life to you,

Michale Daniel Hawkens

October 13th, 2008