I turned away from this post many times over the past few weeks. Why is it hard to write about the ten-year anniversary of the book about my newborn daughter Mary Rose who died at birth? My son just graduated from eighth grade and middle school, and each of his milestones remind me that Mary Rose is not here on this earth. I am the mother crying at the school concerts and talent shows always holding the space for my baby who lived inside my core and belly and could not live outside my body. The years and decades go by, and we continue to change and grow in love and grief and hope.

Last weekend I walked a labyrinth in a forest of ponderosa pine trees. This sacred circle is one I have walked many times since moving to Colorado almost 10 years ago. In the center I remember my loved ones, living and dead, and speak their names in prayer. The saplings in the center are growing. Woodpeckers carve more holes in the bark of the trees as they ate. A dog barks in the distance.

If my heart is a woven tapestry, or a work of embroidery, many stiches make up the landscape of my life. I think about the people who have come and gone, of the many places where I lived, of milestones and griefs and miracles. As the decades go by, my own view of life expands and widens.

St. Olga of Alaska says, “God can make great beauty of utter desolation.” I lived for months in the dark night of my soul after the news from the doctor at 21 weeks of pregnancy. The fact that some babies with trisomy 18 live and others don’t, made the experience that much more difficult. I had to prepare for different outcomes (from a preemie car seat and pump, to a casket for burial), and my heart was heavy. I was determined to love my unborn baby in life and in death.

As a classical homeopath, when a grieving mother enters my office, we feel each other deeply. Last year before Thanksgiving a new client whose adult daughter died came to my office bereft. I told her to look at me. We made eye contact. “You will survive this,” I said. “If I lived through my daughter’s death, then you will too.” I gave her a homeopathic remedy and love. We soon realized that her daughter Nicole and my daughter Mary Rose have the same birthday.

This summer will be the 12^th anniversary of my daughter’s birth and death. Each year I change as I walk through this world in awe of so much beauty. I am grateful for the experience that I had with Mary Rose which shaped my understanding of life and love. I loved my baby when I knew that she would die, and I love her more now. I feel her close by. I know that we will be together again.

If you want to read more about my pregnancy or grief walk, or you know someone who could use this raw story, the book is available on Amazon. I wrote a how to book about pregnancies with life-limiting outcomes. There is a chapter on how to stop milk that comes in after you bury your newborn baby, and another on whether or not to send out birth announcements when your baby has died. There is poetry in addition to contemplation, and the emails that my mentor Cubby LaHood wrote to encourage me when I was pregnant through the nonprofit Isaiah’s Promise. In the months before Mary Rose was born, Cubby told me to love my baby now, just as she is. And I did.

When I was a child, I attended St. Catherine and St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Schools in Astoria, Queens. We had two classes in the Greek language every day: one in grammar and reading, and the other in Greek history and religion. From kindergarten to eighth grade the lens and identity of being Greek Orthodox was a significant part of my classical education. As I age, I realize the great impact that this education and community has had on my life and experiences.

I did not grow up in the church, but there was religion at school. The children went to confession twice a year to prepare to receive communion during school-wide liturgies. I remember enjoying the service, sitting in a pew, hearing a small bell that meant I had to stand up, then sitting again. The carpet at St. Catherine’s Church was bright red in my memories. I looked forward to the powdery donuts that we were given after liturgy, as we had fasted from breakfast on those days.

In sixth grade Mrs. Efstathiadou became passionate in our Greek class one day. She raised her index finger above her head and admonished us. “Your ancestors died in slavery to preserve the Greek language and religion. You must pass on your culture, language and religion to your children, or your ancestors died in vain.” I absorbed each of her words into the cells of my body. When I became a mother, I decided to raise my son in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

I have friends and family members who eschew religion. Some people have been harmed by their churches and by religious authorities. We live in a secular society, and many are isolated. We are disconnected from each other and prefer to associate with people who believe exactly what we believe politically. Where are the communities and support systems for our children in these times?

I spoke with my friend Daniela about the way that we were raised in immigrant families and communities. She went to Catholic school and attended church with her Italian immigrant family in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Daniela says that church was good for her as a child, though she didn’t realize it at the time. She spent time with family and had a community to support her as she grew up.

I sing in the choir of an Eastern Orthodox Church and drive over a half an hour to get to services and be a part of this community. I bring my teenage child to church. We participate in the sacraments of confession, eucharist and holy unction. Is this something old fashioned and outdated? A way of life for my grandparents’ generation?

In the village of Kalamoti on the island of Chios, one of my paternal great-grandfathers would awaken in the night when someone banged on his door. He kept the keys to the church of Saint Kyriaki which was near his house, and unlocked the temple for travelers, sojourners, and the bereft who wanted to pray and light candles in the dark of the night. His daughter, my grandmother Despina, whom I am named after, was very religious. Dressed in black from head to toe, this woman who was under five feet tall, hunched over from picking mastic for decades, prayed day and night. People went to her for a blessing in a village outside Argos on the mainland where she was displaced, living with her daughter after my grandfather died in the 80s, for decades. She used to say, “I am not for this world.” Δεν είμαι για αυτόν τον κόσμο.

When I stand in church in the dark of evening services, I feel my ancestors who sang and chanted these very hymns. Church is a connection through time between the living and the dead, between one woman in 2026 in Colorado and generations of ancestors who were enslaved under the Ottoman Empire for 400 years. My great-grandmothers struggled to feed their children, buried their own mothers and sons, miscarried their babies, prayed, endured the occupation of the Italians, and then the Germans. They survived the Great Hunger. I do not stand alone in this world. I am their daughter, and I remember them.

I choose to give my son the gift of Eastern Orthodoxy as I honor my family, my great-grandfather and grandmother. I sing with tears in my eyes, remembering my loved ones, my history, and saints who prayed and healed the sick. Saint Anthimos Vagianos of Chios, was my other paternal grandfather’s first cousin and a healer. It comforts me to know that he prays for my family. I remember my daughter Mary Rose who lived for one hour, along with my grandmothers and grandfathers and friends who are no longer living.

I give my son a community with the steady guidance of our beloved priest on how to become a man in the anxiety of our world, because he needs more than his two parents and teachers to guide him. My son has been told by his father confessor that being a man means sacrificing yourself for the good of others. This is not a value of our post-modern, post-covid society, yet giving up a little time to help someone else is a good thing. I want my child to be kind and giving.

I often think that if something happens to me, my family will not be alone, but will have the support of a parish. Our priest says that the church is a hospital for the sick. Our hearts have been broken open with wounds and grief throughout the decades of our lives. We gather together and mend ourselves in the Light of Christ and the community of our church.

I offer my son this inheritance. When I die, I will leave him love and mercy.

When I was a little girl, I was afraid. This wasn’t a child’s fear of the dark or spiders. I lived on the third floor in an apartment above my grandparents in a brick house on 29^th Street in Astoria, Queens, outside of New York City. My grandmother would come out before I left for school. Sirens shriek in the background of my childhood memories. Astoria General Hospital was right down the block. I was wearing my uniform and heading to St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox School. My yiayia would tell me to make the sign of the cross before I left for school and to have 100 eyes. The 100 eyes were to look for danger. I was trained to be hypervigilant and look for catastrophe. I was a terrified girl in a big city, and I did not feel safe, as my eyes darted about looking for someone who would hurt me.

We watched the news each night while we ate dinner in the 70s and 80s. I was a sensitive child who had a mother who decided that she would “toughen” me up to prepare me for the world that I would have to survive in. I remember my stomach turning as I watched news stories of a violent city and world. I prayed to God that he would protect my mother and grandmother from rape as a young child.

I never felt safe on this planet until last year when I went through the Avatar® courses. It was after the second course where I become an Avatar® Master that I searched myself for the familiar watchful fear of danger, and it was gone. I discreated life-long terror with a few simple exercises that Harry Palmer, the creator of the Avatar® tools gives us through the courses.

The Avatar® courses give students tools to change beliefs and manage their attention. I had a lot of fixed attention on certain things. What if someone died? What if someone got cancer? Even though I had been on a constitutional homeopathic remedy for over a decade, and was much less anxious, I began to realize that I had beliefs under my beliefs. I had beliefs that were running my life, and I did not know what they were.

After years of therapy, including EMDR, and many other self-help techniques, I did not know how to move my attention away from certain thoughts. I did not know how not to yell at my son when he pushed my buttons for the 20^th time. I certainly didn’t know how to relax into my life situations without resisting them.

I am now a licensed Avatar® Master who brings students through the courses. My life looks different in many ways. I am calmer. I don’t fret as much. My relationship with my son is delightful and light and fun (most of the time). I am more present in my work as a homeopath. I can do an exercise and move beliefs that do not work out of my life. I then create new beliefs that are supportive.

Homeopathy can heal the soul, the very center of our being. And yet a homeopathic remedy cannot show a client their transparent hidden beliefs. We think so much all day, and we have indoctrinated beliefs from childhood. Our teachers put their beliefs into us. Our parents poured their beliefs into our hearts and minds. Along my path, I realized that I had gathered other people’s ideas and made them my own. I decided that I didn’t want to live from other people’s beliefs anymore. I am creating a peaceful life in service to others.

Avatar® is not a philosophy, nor is it an esoteric practice. The course gives us tools to experience in order to change our lives. I can now listen to intensely tragic stories that my clients tell me, and not spin into melancholy for days. I do not have to clear my space, nor do I have to protect myself with imaginary walls and boundaries that people tell us to put up. I no longer need the idea of karma to explain bad things.

After decades of seeking, I am deliberately me. I am Dianna, a homeopath, a writer, a woman of Greek descent who is Orthodox Christian. I am also an Avatar® Master who shares tools with students to help them realize that they are creating their life as they take personal responsibility. We do not need to follow gurus, wellness celebrities or coaches. We can source our own reality right now.

If you are interested in a free introduction, let me know. You will get a few tools that you can use in your daily life. Give it a try. It changed my world, and I am no longer afraid.

Avatar® is a registered trademark of Star’s Edge, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The viewpoints on this post are my own and do not represent Star Edge Inc.

When I was in my late twenties, I met a homeopath and began to work with her. For ten years she gave me many different remedies, and I felt a response with each one. What was this medicine that gave me insight into my soul? After taking rhododendron, I recognized a rhododendron bush as if she were my mother. After taking very high doses of aurum metallicum, I landed in a state of night terrors and depression that alarmed me. I decided at 28 years old that I would become a homeopath when I turned 50.

One decade later I drove from Rockland County, New York, into New York City with my six-month-old baby to meet a classical homeopath who came highly recommended. I drove over two bridges, and several highways, with my son, the stroller, milk, and toys. I remember parking in a garage and walking into a room in an office building to meet Aniela.

At the time I was pumping day and night believing that I had to feed my son breast milk exclusively. He decided that he did not want to nurse early on. My little boy preferred the bottle. I was exhausted from months of sleepless nights with a colicky baby who cried for hours and operating from my belief about breast milk. When the homeopath gave me my first constitutional remedy, I realized that my son would be fine with some formula. I got healthier and healthier emotionally, as my anxiety decreased. She began to reorganize my entire being.

Aniela Costello, the woman I call the Holy Homeopath, supported me through my second pregnancy where I found out at week 21 that my daughter would likely die of trisomy 18 very early in her life. I wept and wept, not wanting to birth my daughter only to lose her in death. She lived one hour, and I survived with the love around me, my faith in God, and homeopathic remedies.

We landed in the Denver area of Colorado soon after that experience, and in 2020 I was living in the reality of the Covid 19 pandemic. (How I wish that our children could have had a different experience through this crisis.) One night I walked outside under the maple tree. The moon was full. I had the realization that I would not be able to support myself with any book that I published. I didn’t want to teach college composition anymore, as I had before I became a mother. I remembered the promise I made to become a homeopath when I was 50 years old.

I called Aniela who had once told me that I would make a good homeopath. I asked where I should study. She directed me to study with Dr. Paul Herscu and his wife Dr. Amy Rothenberg at New England School of Homeopathy (NESH). I was enrolled in school the following week. It was the first time in the history of the longest, continuously operating homeopathy school in the US that the courses were offered online. Dr. Herscu believed that classes would go back to being in person that year, but it did not happen that way.

I took the full homeopathy course twice. I felt that there were some gaps in that first course as it had pivoted online quickly. The second time I took the course it felt better framed for the scientific study of Dr. Herscu’s method of Cycles and Segments. I have been enrolled in classes at NESH ever since then.

Why homeopathy in a world with many healing modalities? Having homeopathic support in my years as a mother has been invaluable. From teething pain, to growing pains, infections, fevers, trauma, grief, and many other things, homeopathy has reorganized my son’s being. I am strong after my daughter’s death, and two miscarriages, as well as hormonal shifts. Some things have even been easy with homeopathy.

Homeopathy is not the answer to every ailment. My practice is built on working with clients wherever they are: with pharmaceuticals or without. I have sent clients for tests and scans with medical doctors. I would not treat cancer but have supported clients in treatment to overcome side effects. We can decrease symptoms of long covid, chronic fatigue, autoimmune disorders and multiple chronic illnesses including MS, autism, blood clots, depression and mental illness. A constitutional remedy can improve immunity. It can change children’s behaviors. It can make a weeping mother, whose daughter has died, find joy again.

I deliberately created a family practice where homeopathy is an addition to medical treatment for many clients. This safe and gentle modality can be the central key that opens a newfound peace and wellbeing for people who have sought many modalities. Homeopathy does not use supplements, but a medicine called a remedy prepared in a homeopathic pharmacy.

One client said, “My soul is back.” I have the great joy of supporting my clients’ journey to improved immunity, health, and quality of life.

In constitutional homeopathy, we do not give clients many different remedies. Instead we assess which state each client is in at the time of the intake. Has the client been in this state for years? Or is there something new going on? What came before the symptoms that we are addressing? We take a meandering walk through their lives and physical and emotional symptoms as I ask question after question, as I listen to what the client is telling me. There is one remedy that works for each client, and I am tasked with studying and analyzing to find that one remedy. I know now that when my first homeopathy gave me aurum metallicum, I developed the symptoms of the remedy as a response to taking the wrong remedy. There is no healing crisis in my practice. I offer gentle and consistent homeopathic support.

I have so much to say, and so I begin this blog in the hopes that I can answer questions and be a support for people searching for answers on how homeopathy works.

I wish you good health, and great joy.

Dianna is not a medical doctor. She does not diagnose nor treat illness.