This is Deb

Have you ever felt that the universe is pulling you in a new direction? As if it’s trying to tell you something? I’ve been thinking a lot about what the universe has been trying to speak to me lately and I had a little epiphany, a little aha moment, a little ah crap…..what has often felt like the universe is actually my own voice! My gut, my instincts, my heart, my internal voice! But somehow it’s the voice that I want to quiet the most, yeah yeah Samantha what do you know? Today happens to be my Aunt Deb’s birthday and she just happens to be 70 today. Seventy years old… that’s old right? At 70 you’re set in your ways, certainly not trying new things!? Yeahhh nope! She is young, active, and has always followed, what she calls, her spiritual path. I feel like she never tells her internal voice to be quiet but instead says, where to next!

Deb has been a practicing acupuncturist for over thirty years and currently has her practice Skylands Acupuncture in Chester, New Jersey. While she was finishing acupuncture school, Deb lived with us for about a year. A few months ago I sat with with her to talk about her life’s journey after the age of 40 and where it had lead her. Looking back at teenage memory I had always thought that she was much older when she lived with us during acupuncture school…Deb graduated from school when she was 38! Isn’t it amazing how relative age is? Thirty eight is young!
At the time in New Jersey you could not practice without a college degree and Deb was a few credits shy of earning her bachelor’s degree. So back to school to finish her get her degree and graduate! It would be a few more years until she felt ready to open her own practice….I started working for other people because I wasn’t ready to open my own practice. I was still a neophyte with it. I wanted to experience other people’s practices
I asked Deb if she had any “what if” fears of being ready to open her own practice at 44 years old, I was just so sick of working for other people, I’ve always been that way. I don’t like to work for other people and this particular acupuncturist I didn’t feel like I was being treated very well there. It actually was six years, but I still felt like I was new to it because there’s so much to know about it. But I just I was ready. I was ready to go on my own and I just saw other people going out on their own. And I said, I’ve got to do this. I want my own practice. And luckily, he allowed 25 people to come with me to my new practice because I did sign a non compete. He was generous and they were gonna come with me anyway so he allowed it. He had a very big practice and was a really good business person. So it was it was scary. I remember crying a lot as I was painting the wall, I was just like stressed and scared and but I got very successful. You know, it took a few years and eventually I brought on an associate and I went around giving a lot of talks.

At one of her talks at a local high school Deb met her good friend Carol. When Carol asked Deb what she did for fun her thought was, Well, I don’t know. What do I do for fun? Carol had been a New Jersey State bicycling champion and was still an avid cyclist, introduced Deb to biking. They still bike together, the weekend before I sat down with Deb they had biked 38 very hilly miles!

Her summer of 1995 was spent in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for a work study program.

Around 1997, when Deb was 48, her internal voice lead Deb to the spiritual teachings of Malidoma Somé and a workshop he was giving at the time, I went to his five day workshop and it was amazing, I cried for five days.
Towards the end of 2000 is when Deb began her training with Malidoma and in 2006 became an initiated elder. During this time, the group with Malidoma travelled to his village outside of Dano, Burkina Faso. It was amazing to go there. We did a ritual funeral for his father that had passed away the year before at 105 years old. It was an amazing thing, this was a village that worked with shea butter and the women had no way of breaking the Shea nuts except by hand and we developed a machine for them to help them break the shea nuts so that they can produce much more shea butter. We started bringing it over to the United States and selling it for them. And we also had a fundraiser to dig a well for them because they had horrible water. We never drank their water. It’s amazing they were even alive. Because they had an aquifer but it was very shallow. We were able to get deeper to get cleaner water for them.

Throughout her life my Aunt Deb has always had a desire to learn, through studying, vision quests, immersing herself, and listening to her voice. Her voice has lead her to study Japanese Buddhism, Native American art and culture, herbology, I could go on and on. I felt like I was led by that, I’ve always felt like spirit has led me to very different things. I think that’s why I eventually wanted to get into alternative healing because I felt like that was something I should do, I could do. Acupuncture was a method where you weren’t using medicine and you weren’t using surgery, but you were helping people and I was always so fascinated with the energy within our own system, it’s electromagnetic energy. And you can really affect it and help people heal and get better. My aching thing was to know more about my own spirituality, developing and healing myself healing my emotions because I didn’t have a great time with my mother so I always felt like I was working on healing myself. But when you work with others you’re always working on yourself. That’s still part of my life is working on my own healing you know and being a better person.

Happy Birthday Aunt Deb!