Our Journey

Imagine you’re a Flat Earther: you have a map of the world as you know it, and it’s served you pretty well. You can navigate your immediate surroundings with ease, but the farther you have to go, the more you realize your Flat Earth Map doesn’t work quite as efficiently. Your map tells you your home in New York is the same distance from Los Angeles as it is from Seattle, but you know from experience that’s not right. It just doesn’t make sense. Is something wrong with the map?

Then you meet a new friend who says, “Humor me. I’ve got this thing called a globe. Here, play around with it, and tell me if it doesn’t better predict what you’ve observed in your travels.” All of a sudden, you see that Los Angeles is indeed farther from New York than Seattle is. If you’re traveling to Tokyo, you don’t have to cross the Atlantic, past Europe, past the mid-east, past all of China, and over the East China Sea to get there. Actually, the fastest way to Tokyo from New York is over Canada, then Alaska, then finally Russia (Russia?!?! How did you even get from Alaska to Russia???), and boom! You’re in Tokyo now.

This wonder and delight and confusion of having a completely new model to navigate the world with is exactly how I felt when I started talking with Erna. I love pop psychology and observing human behavior, but sometimes what I observe in the real world doesn’t quite line up with what the professionals tell me is supposed to happen. Sometimes it works well enough, but when covering a lot of ground, Flat Earth Psychology takes a phenomenally long time — an unnecessarily long time. And when your journey is not one from New York to Tokyo, but from trauma to mental health and well-being, well, you want to get there as fast as you can. You don’t have time for Flat Earth Psychology, you need a globe.

Meeting Erna

I found Erna when I went in search of help for trauma and grief. My ex-husband had recently died by his own hand, and all the emotions that came from that event were soul-crushing; I was barely functional in the aftermath.

In an attempt to “get better,” I went to a Pilates class at a local studio. The instructor, a beautiful South American woman in her late 20s, started her playlist for the session, and as soon as the Latin music began to play, my eyes went blurry and I was in near panic. I thought perhaps this was just a continuation of the grief I’d been going through, but this was emotionally excruciating. When I recounted the story to my brother, I said, “I heard the Latin music and saw this beautiful young woman and it made me want to cry. All of the memories of my ex-husband taking trips to Brazil to party and engage with sex workers and cheat on me came flooding back, and it was awful.”

“Oh. It sounds like you have PTSD,” my brother replied.

What? PTSD? I…

I had no words. I wanted to dismiss it out of hand, especially given my brother’s glib delivery of his assessment (he wasn’t being glib, he’s just very succinct). Of course my ex’s death was traumatic, but PTSD is a totally different thing. Plus, it wasn’t the thought of his death that sent me spiraling, it was the reminder of his unfaithfulness. I chewed on this idea for about three hours before I decided, Yep, brother is right, this is trauma. I immediately started looking for a “trauma and grief therapist” (a completely made-up phrase I’d concocted to describe the sort of professional I thought I needed). I called everyone who might know someone in the profession, but the wait list to see any of them was months long, if not years.

Still, I put my name on every waitlist for every qualified professional in the Bay Area, it seemed. But I’m an impatient person, and the ache in my body and soul demanded I keep looking for a solution. What about acupuncture?? I don’t know where the thought came from — I’m happy to rack it up to divine intervention — but after only two phone calls, I was given Erna’s name and email address.

Erna Wenus. A good, strong German name. Not the name you might immediately associate with acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), but there it was on Google. Erna began her career in Germany as a medical doctor in anaesthesiology. When she came to the US, she was focused on raising her toddler, but “on the side” she attended the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine. There, she was immersed in TCM and ancient eastern philosophies, and when it became clear to Erna that she would be staying in the US, she decided to build an acupuncture practice.

Three decades in (and counting), she continues to delve deeper into the ancient wisdom of TCM, embracing a truly holistic approach to relieving human suffering. She also keeps on top of all the advances in medical science, especially in neurophysiology, which has complemented her understanding of TCM.

Originally, I thought, “A German anaesthesiologist who is also an acupuncturist can probably sort out my qi (pronounced /chee/: a Chinese word that describes someone’s energy or life force) AND tell me if I’m having a medical emergency. I can get on this bandwagon! She knows meridians, she knows the nervous system, she will physically release these horrible aching feelings from my body and then I’ll be better.”

It wasn’t until I met her in person that I realized Erna is more than just a fantastic acupuncturist and caring doctor, she is also the most astute observer of the human condition that I have ever known. Each session began with a conversation, then treatment with needles. I realized when I acted on the advice Erna gave me during our talks, the grief began to dissipate in a way I hadn’t experienced with any other type of treatment modality — not with Flat Earth Psychology, not with antidepressants.

They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and everything Erna had me do was so effective that I started to feel better, and quickly (all things considered). After guiding me through the initial crisis period — a period I thought I might not survive — I started talking to Erna about everything: friendships, relationships, parenting, politics, you name it. Sometimes I’d send her a meme of some pop psychology that appeared in my Instagram. “Oh, this is not right at all!” she would reply.

“Really?” I’d ask. “What’s wrong with it?” It was during her explanations when I realized that while I’ve been working with a map of psychology and human behavior, Erna is holding on to a globe. This blend of ancient eastern philosophy with a western sensibility is the wisdom and insight we want to share through this blog.