Laura Perry, M.S. in Natural Health Graduate, Doctor of Naturopathy candidate
Herbalist, minister, mother and inventor Laura Perry learned that every body is different long before first grade. Her youth included so many food, fragrance, and environmental allergies that as a teen she chose medical school. But pre-med research interviews left her depressed, realizing that “bean-counting bureaucracy stifles even the kindest, purest intentions to help people.”
Embracing her next love, graduate school led to ordination in Universal Life Church. On this metaphysical path, she met a most important teacher.
“My first daughter, Anna, was born with severe disabilities. Our life was a bewildering swirl of medical professionals who meant well, but their only approach was clinical. Her most meaningful care came from allied and alternative practitioners: PTs and massage therapists. Her life forced me to see what acute medicine can and can’t do.”
Meanwhile, years of constant worry, stress and inattention to her own health was killing Perry. “Gallbladder attacks led to liver damage. I needed surgery but Anna needed my constant care. I finally went to a naturopath and begged him to just help me stay alive and hang on.
“I quizzed him on how he learned naturopathy and he told me about Clayton College. Mimicking his teas and tinctures, I started devising poultices for Anna’s chronic skin problems.”
Distance learning was the only option for her complicated lifestyle. “With two traditional degrees, I knew how to study and how to compare programs. I often studied at the computer with a sleeping baby in my lap.”
Her toddler daughter now benefits from “Mama Laura’s” fragrance-free salves made with olive oil, beeswax, calendula, comfrey, chickweed, plantain, and Vitamin E. She created a relief oil for her husband’s stiff neck and shoulders, a regenerating damage repair cream for her mom’s thin, dry skin, and a sulphur/colloidal silver anti-microbial cream for fungal infections.
“Making your own remedies means assuming deep personal responsibility for one’s own health. It is psychologically healing to make something for yourself. I want to help educate others, rather than letting them depend on ‘my’ formulas. They’re all simple, mild, natural ingredients.”
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