Hilarious Homeopathy.
My Twelth Blog. I Swear A Lot. The Things We Do And the People We Meet Along the Way All Shape Us, And Who Knew A Homeopathy Meeting Would Be Such Fun.
The team and I had been working with a homeopathic company that was based in Ireland for a while, and if you remember the Piggy diet from a previous blog, this is the same company that provided the homeopathic HCG 'piggy piss' drops.
The Invite
Harry, the owner of the company was such a lovely man, he was in his sixties with the most gorgeous Irish accent and the loveliest character. You could imagine him as soon as you spoke to him, having lots of family around him with his grandkids running everywhere having fun.
He called one afternoon with an invitation to Jane and I to attend a one day Homeopathy course in London that he had organised, the hotel was included and all we had to do was jump on the train and meet them there. Of course we would go. Any opportunity to meet him and connect with new people.
The Course Entrance
We arrived in London the night before so we could be on time for the course. Except that didn't exaclty go to plan. We got lost and we were therefore late.
At this point in the MLM journey I was in particular, the opposite of what you would imagine a Homeopath to look like. I was not a hippie that ocean cleansed daily. I wore false nails, false lashes, false tan, layers of makeup, dyed my hair, had fillings in my teeth and had even tried botox on my forehead and fillers in my droopy mouth! I certainly did not look like the typical person to walk into a Homeopath course.
Jane and I finally found the room in a maze of a building and stood at the closed door in front of us with a pinned note on it saying "Course In Progress" We looked at each other and whispered "Shit"
It was like we were back in junior school when we were 6 and nudging each other to go first. However we weren't we were in our 40's and needed to go in and get a grip of our nerves.
So we knocked quickly and opened the door to immediately see a room full of female faces sat at desks just like school, staring at us in a particularly stern manner, not smiling or welcoming in any way whatsoever. Oooohhh this was going to be tough. Harry was there though thank fuck and he smiled at us both and pointed to the back of the room where there were two chairs left. We had no option now but to go and sit down after we apologised to the speaker. Making our way through the gaps between the desks, in our high heels, black leather leggings, ponchos, shiny lipgloss and perfume while crashing our designer handbags into every single desk and knocking over everyones water a little. No wander every single red blotchy face had the look of disdain all over it. We were the opposite of them all. We had fake tans, they were quite pale, we had painted nails, they had stubs, we had white shiny teeth, they had pegs, we had dyed hair, they had grey streaks, we had smooth straightened locks and they had bird nests. I have never felt so overdressed in my life. But they all smelt so lovely, it was like the best scent ever all in one place.
Escape At The back
Finally we were in our seats on the back row and felt safe from the glares as we could see everyone and they couldn't see us. The woman speaker was still talking about the Homeopathy book we had on our desks and how it was going to be completed during the day while we were taught the fundamentals of Homeopathy with the guidance of several guest speakers. She continued to rattle them off, so Willow would be guiding us through the "Like cures Like" section, Aurora would be talking to us about the Law Of Simplex, Indigo would be blah blah blah until finally she said "and Kate will be talking to us about how a homeopathic diet that can reset your metabolism"
WHAT THE FUCK!!! I looked up and saw Harry smiling away at me and I thought OMG I can't do this I am not prepared to speak in front of these angry pale people.
At this point Jane started to giggle with nerves and I joined in. What else was there to do? FFS All these women fucking hated us, we were the complete opposite of what they all preached about from their caravans and summer fairs down in Devon or wherever. It was horrendous already and now it had just gotten a million times worse. They were going to crush me when I stood up to talk.
I swear.
The speaker was called Dahlia,and was still talking and talking however she was now on to her own topic, which was "Nail Varnish And Toxins Within The Body" FFS This day was getting worse, the more she talked the more Jane and I hid behind our hands giggling away. We were meant to be writing notes through Dahlia's talk but all we could do was hide our painted nails under the table, in our mouths and behind our backs so she wouldn't .pick up on us. It went from bad to worse it was as though we were both her living real life version 'actual' topic. We both had dyed hair so as she said "full of toxins that can kill us", we had false eye lashes that meant the glue from putting them on would enter our cells and over time destroy us internally, we whitened our teeth and used toothpaste so again we were eventually going to die a horrible death from the minty chemicals. We had fillings so we should go immediately and have them taken out as the poison is leaking into our bodies and eating us away, we wore makeup so again the toxins within the lipstick would result in a fatal collapse of something or another. It was a right laugh.
I literally couldn't look at Jane for the rest of the morning session as we couldn't stop giggling when we caught each others eye. And thank fuck 'Birds Nest Head Dahlia' was finally finished telling us how we were both going to have a certain death.
Next up was Hazel who was a Homeopath with her own centre in Surrey and she talking about the consulation side of things for patients when they first come to see her. She seemed nice and quite normal with not so mad hair, so we calmed our shit down and listened and took notes.
Lunch Time
We were starving and needed to pee urgently. So after having a much needed pee, we headed down to the cafeteria space following the other hippies with their waft of gorgeous essential oils, to order a coffee and salmon bagel each. I swear they could all hear our heels coming down the stairway because every ginger and grey frizzy head, stripy sock and Croc wearing hippie not only looked at us but physically turned in our direction, some with their fruit boxes from home and flasks of herbal hormone tea. We were definitely the Nylon Spandex pants outcasts.
We paid for our coffee and bagels and stood together near a window and watched as the people of London walked past with their takeout coffees and wrapped sandwiches while rushing back to their office desks. Honestly it was extremely weird to feel like this. I wanted to run.
These days I would be learning from them all by attempting to have conversations and finding out how much healthier I could make myself without having my fillings taken out, but back then I really felt as though I was so wrong and unhealthy to be even wearing lipstick. I felt inadequate and totally uneducated.
Back Upstairs
I was first up for the afternoon session as a speaker so I was in the room ready and focussed, with a quickly written list as a guide for my talk session. I was fine with the actual talk as I had done it hundreds of times in meetings and zooms before, however the part regarding the HCG piggy piss drops from Harry scared me. Firstly he was there and secondly I wasn't a Homeopath and didn't know the exact minute details of how it worked, I only knew the basics.
I had given myself a chat earlier and I was not going to be beaten by these wide footed fucking hippie bastards with mean faces, I was going to do my best for Jane, Harry and myself.
I started ok a little wobbly as a sea of stern faces looked at me and as I was in the middle section of the talk about the HCG drops my fears for the talk came true. A ginger frizz head far at the back of the room shot her hand up and bellowed out "No one should take HCG as it gives men testicular cancer and also gives women breast cancer" what did I think of that?
WTAF If it wasn't bad enough with me standing there in my fake clothes and Nylon knickers just about to die from false lash glue, I now had this bloody woman telling the whole room I was giving people cancer while promoting the diet.
I stood motionless, speechless and certainly couldn't look at Jane so I did the next best thing and invited Harry to join me. After all he made the bloody drops so he could share his wisdom and years of knowledge with the room.
He did, he was brilliant. I can't remember anything at all he said that day but he was fabulous. So I walked back to my seat banging into every desk as I scuppered off so fast and sat back down to a meagre clap and thanked the universe for getting me through the last 15 minutes.
Giggle Time
It was at this point that we both Jane and I were getting more confident and coming to terms with the facts given to us about our imminent deaths from consuming fake stuff.
It was at about this time that a hippie named Autumn stood up at the front and told us that her talk was about 'bed wetting'.
Well as soon as she said this was going to her topic we started to giggle.
Jane's family, including herself, her brothers and sister were all bed wetters as small children, to the point of no fluids after 6pm in their house. She even peed on me once during a sleepover. Not that I hadn't ever wet the bed of course I had but in their house it was nightly for all of them. It was normal.
As you can imagine we couldn't hold the giggles in any longer and we were literally wiping the tears of laughter from our cheeks as the memories came flooding back.
Autumn caught us and so did a few others as they turned to stare at the naughty nylon girls and gave us a filthy look for the 10th time that day. That just made it worse. No we were rude.
As she carried on her speel about bed wetting and the causes and what parents can do to prevent or cure it we were nearly doubled over. And then Autumn truly tipped us over the edge. She told the room that drinking cows milk was the single root cause of a bed wetter!
Jane looked at me and said between the tears running down her face "Thats rubbish we didn't have milk, we had Marvel"
For those born in the 90's Marvel was a brand of powdered milk and it made 4 times as much as milk when mixed with water. It was usually a back up but in Janes case and her large family it was generally used for breakfast cereals.
As she said this we both dove under the desk and started to shake with laughter as I remember her mum mixing it up before we went to bed and putting it in the fridge.
The Hotel
That evening after we had recovered and ran from the course in embarassment, we met Harry and had dinner with a colleague of his in the hotel and a few drinks later we plonked ourselves on the sofas in the reception lounge area and confessed all. We both retold what had happened while we were sat at the back of the room. Harry to be fair was such a gentleman after he had finshed laughing loudly at Jane's Marvel story he simply smiled and said 'some people convince themselves some things are true'
Years later we still message Harry occasionally and we still thank him for his time in London. His business is still going strong and we often mention 'Marvel' to him and hear him chuckle and smile down the phone.
It is amazing how your own perspective changes as you awaken, even though I still dye my hair, I still straighten it and I still wear makeup. Gone though are the false nails and big lashes, these days I try to have as many non toxic natural things around me as possible. Including people.
People really do come in waves for a reason, a season or a lifetime! If you're a Hippie Chic on a mission or a Nylon Gal it's the same message, just show kindness to everyone. We never know what anyone is going through.
That was the end of that...I still have the certificate to say I showed up that day in a file somewhere, I have been seen in Nylon since, I may have the odd glass of cows milk but I tend to be 'aware' these days.
Disclaimer 1. 'This blog contains discriminatory content which some may find offensive'
Disclaimer 2. “This is a work of creative non-fiction. All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of the author’s memory. Some names and identifying features have been changed to protect the identity of certain parties. The author in no way represents any company, corporation, or brand, mentioned herein. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.”
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