The April student and graduate spotlights demonstrate the power to connect with other like-minded individuals that social networks create. Several years ago, student spotlight Beatriz Sugarman and graduate spotlight Karen White met via the e-mail contact program CCNH has always made available on its Web site. The two women became friends and exchanged a few e-mails, but both of their lives became busy and they fell out of touch. However, when CCNH launched its Ning network, Sugarman and White found each other again! This time the pair decided to meet in person. Sugarman drove down to upstate New York from Canada and the pair spent hours discovering each other’s natural health passion and rekindling the friendship.
Join the CCNH Ning network today to connect and share your passions with others.
Beatriz Sugarman’s love for healing bloomed when she was a youngster trying to figure out ways to make people feel better. “I remember at the age of five, massaging my mother’s hurt back and feeling a great healing energy passing through my hands,” says Sugarman. When one of her friends got hurt, she was the first one to run and help them. Sometimes the kids would allow only Sugarman and not their parents to help with their wounds. “I was only 9 years old!” she exclaims. “I had intuition about what people were going through before they even told me. The healing career was something that was meant to be for me,” explains Sugarman.
Originally from Brazil, Sugarman explains that “natural healers are found everywhere and teas and plants were part of my daily life.” However, her life’s path took a curious maneuver, and she became a lawyer. She has no regrets and does not feel like she wasted any time because she helped many people overcome problems, but Sugarman knew that the law wasn’t her life’s calling.
Moving to Canada was one of the steps toward starting a new life for Sugarman. She decided to chase her childhood dream of healing and started studying Homeopathy in Ottawa, but after six months she realized that healing involved more than knowledge of one modality, so she began looking for a school where she could accommodate her passion for healing without sacrificing time with the family.
Sugarman found Clayton College in September 2003 and enrolled in the Doctor of Natural Health program. “I have to say that not being able to go to a classroom and interact with other colleagues was somewhat disappointing for me. Even though the school has weekly chats, I never can make it to one,” observes Sugarman. However, now that the college has built a couple of strong online networks, Sugarman and other students and graduates are able to connect and share their interests. “I believe the CCNH Ning network has helped create relationships between students and made the lack of physical contact less frustrating,” suggests Sugarman.
She has finished all her courses and is now working on the practicum. “Words cannot describe how much both my life and personal health have changed with all I’ve learned in the past five years,” Sugarman says with enthusiasm. Her family has developed excellent eating habits, and they grow their own food, care for the environment, and produce their own herbal medicines and teach others to do it.
As she progressed through the program, with each new course Sugarman would imagine a new “dream career.” “At this point my thoughts have settled on the idea of starting my own holistic therapy clinic, and currently, I am focusing on one of my immediate goals, which is to design some natural healing workshops,” she explains.
When people come to Sugarman with a health issue, she notes that they are often skeptical about what natural health can do for them. Bearing the mark of a true healer, she takes pleasure in slow and steady progress, “I am pleased that I have been successful in swaying the skeptics one step at a time, and I can see the changes in their lives which is gratifying for me.”
Sugarman’s favorite quote feels like a natural note on which to conclude this spotlight interview: “I don’t trust a garden (or gardener) that hasn’t any weeds. Some wildness and uncertainty is a condition that is an honest representation of life,” from Christopher Hobbs, an American Herbalist.
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