01:00   Introduction: Practical Homeopathy® Success Stories: From the Family to the Farm

02:57   How do you give homeopathy to cows?

03:33   An interest in natural healing and helping people led to Joette

            Gateway to Practical Homeopathy®: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

            Joette’s Learning Center (Protocol Courses)

            The Academy of Practical Homeopathy®

05:45   Success Story: Correcting anemia homeopathically without an iron supplement

            Gateway to Homeopathy II

06:57   Success Story: Behavioral issues in childhood (temper tantrums)

08:21   Success Story: Chronic conditions (such as this case of eczema) often take longer to resolve

10:23   Success Story: Newborn with blood sugar issues

11:20   Success Stories: Chronic Pain

14:58   Being a Practical Homeopath™ is “the best job ever”

15:53   Success Stories: Animals

18:47   Tick prevention on the dairy farm

20:52   Closing Advice: Stay immersed in peaceful, yet powerful, homeopathy

           FindAPracticalHomeopath.com

Joette Calabrese on YouTube (Monday Night Lives)

PracticalHomeopathy.com

Joette’s Study Group, Find Your New Study Group Friends

Joette’s Mighty Members

Kate:

This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast, episode number 157.

Joette:

Hi, I’m Joette Calabrese, and I welcome you to our health care movement — yours, mine and the countless men and women across the globe who have retaken control of their families’ health with Practical Homeopathy®.

So, for the next few minutes, let’s link our arms as I demystify homeopathy — what was once considered an esoteric paradigm — into an understandable, reproducible, safe and effective health care solution available to all.

This is the medicine you’ve been searching for — my unique brand of homeopathy, PRACTICAL Homeopathy®.

Kate: (01:00)

Welcome to the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast, where we dive into the world of Practical Homeopathy with real stories and how homeopathy has transformed lives.

I’m Kate, and I’m joined today by Melissa. She’s a Practical Homeopath™ who lives on a small farm in Nebraska and is passionate about helping her family, friends, clients, and even her Guernsey cows using homeopathy.

She’s going to share, today, her journey and experiences. Melissa learned the art of homeopathy through Joette’s Academy and Mastery programs. She has some amazing stories to share with us about how this gentle medicine has made a difference in her life and those around her.

So, let’s get started. Welcome, Melissa.

Melissa:

Hi, Kate. I’m so honored and excited to be here. I think I’ve listened to every single previous podcast, and I’ve learned so much from everyone’s stories.

Kate:

Oh, it is great to hear about people’s success stories with homeopathy. I find it so inspiring, and I, too, am honored to be able to talk with people about how they’re using homeopathy.

So, I’m excited about what you’re going to share today, Melissa. You have some pretty amazing things to share with us. So, let’s get started.

Can you tell us about your life on your small farm in Nebraska with your cows? I know they mean the world to you.

Melissa:

Yeah, I love my life on my small farm in Nebraska. It’s so beautiful and peaceful here, and I get to connect with a lot of people. I even end up writing remedy suggestions on paper towels in the milk room. People come in with their ailments, and I’m able to give them some suggestions. So, that’s fun.

And giving the remedies to the cows is a lot of fun … to see them turn around with a homeopathic remedies and just to watch them. They come up, and they want their remedies. They’ve taken them since they were little calves.

Kate: (02:57)

So, do you just put them — the pellets — into their mouths, or how do you do it?

Melissa:

I actually dissolve the remedies in syringes of water and then squirt them in their mouth. It’s hard to keep a big cow’s mouth closed while the pellets dissolve.

Kate:

I know because I’ve done it with horses. And I’ll actually kind of just put my hand gently under their mouth as they’re chewing to keep them from putting their head down and everything just falling out.

Melissa:

Yeah, for sure.

Kate:

Yeah, there’s a lot of ways I think that you can give homeopathy to animals, and so thanks for sharing that.

So, tell me, what sparked your interest in homeopathy?

Melissa: (03:33)

I have always had an interest in just more natural healing and just a heart for helping people with that. It’s about 13 or 14 years ago, my mom actually came across Joette’s blog and showed it to me. I just kind of took that and ran with it.

I devoured everything that Joette wrote. I read through all of her blogs. Anything I could find during that time.

One of the first remedies I saw success with was Cantharis. My mom had chronic UTIs. She was on a standing prescription of antibiotics. She tried herbs and diet; nothing was working.

After taking Cantharis, her UTIs were completely gone, and they never came back. So, of course, that got me even more excited to learn this.

I then joined the Gateway classes. I went through those several times. At least one of them was with Kate.

Kate:

Yes! Yes!

Melissa:

Then I took a deep dive into the protocol courses. I went through each of those.

I then patiently — or rather impatiently — waited for Joette to start her Academy. I joined The Academy and spent an amazing year in that first year of The Academy. I graduated in 2022, and then I went on to Mastery and graduated in 2023.

I’ve been in Mastermind for the last two years, and I’ve been seeing clients for the past three years. It’s been such a joy to walk with people through their suffering and give them hope with homeopathy.

Kate:

Yeah, it’s been really fascinating to watch you and your journey and how your life has really changed since you started learning about homeopathy. Right? It’s completely different in the fact that you used to have a lot more cows, and you were doing farming. Full-time, was it?

Melissa:

I mean, it really has shifted. God has just opened doors for me, and I’ve just kept walking through them. And it has turned into this almost full-time business, so that’s very exciting.

Kate:

Yeah, that’s great. Well, speaking of that, I know you have a lot of stories to share with us, so let’s get started because I know the listeners want to hear.

Melissa: (05:45)

Yes. I have so many stories I’m excited to share.

The first one I want to share is about a child who has chronic kidney disease. Because of the chronic kidney disease, she had extremely low iron levels. So, they reached out to me to see what could be done to help.

They were not able to find a supplement — an iron supplement — that she could tolerate. So, it was really an issue.

And so, I taught them how to use the anemia protocol, which we learned in the Gateway courses. [Editor’s note: Gateway to Practical Homeopathy® II]

After just a few weeks on that protocol, she had another blood draw. The test results showed that for the first time, her levels were out of critical. It was so exciting.

And I think this is such a cool story because a lot of people question whether homeopathy can correct nutrient levels without providing a supplement, and this story really just proves that that’s possible.

Kate:

Yeah, I’ve heard that many times about the protocol for anemia … that it works, and usually it works fairly quickly, like you were just sharing.

Melissa:

I have seen that protocol work many times.

Kate: (06:57)

Yeah. I know you have another story about a boy that had a frightening episode and temper tantrums.

Melissa:

Yeah, so this little boy went to a sporting goods store with his family. This store had very real-looking talking statues. He was extremely frightened when he saw this. He was screaming and just very frightened. They calmed him down and left the store.

A few days later, he started to have raging temper tantrums. I knew that this was a perfect picture of Stramonium with the fright and then turning into anger and rage.

I suggested that Stramonium might be a good remedy to try. After just a few doses, he was back to his good-natured, sweet self.

Kate:

Well, Melissa, how did you figure out that the Friday episode was part of this picture? Did you ask some questions, like “When did this start?” or how did that happen?

Melissa:

Yeah. They told me the story about what happened. I think we were talking about the temper tantrums, and then I kind of asked them had anything happened previously, and so that led to the knowledge that he had been very frightened a few days earlier.

Kate:

Good. Alright. Tell us some more.

Melissa: (08:21)

Okay, so this next case is more of a chronic case. It took about two years, which I think is really good to tell these stories, because we often like to tell the quick, fast, amazing stories.

But chronic conditions often take a couple years to unravel. And really in the big scheme of things, if you can take care of something in two years that would’ve lasted a lifetime, that’s still a pretty good turnaround.

Kate:

Right! And they might’ve had this condition for 10, 15, 20 years, even. So, I think you’re right, two years to see a complete resolution isn’t bad.

Melissa:

So, this was a child that had eczema really covering a lot of her body. She was so itchy. She was miserable.

She also had food intolerances and environmental allergies. So, if she got food that she was allergic to or played outside at the park when they had just sprayed chemicals, her skin would flare up terribly.

Her parents didn’t want to go down the steroid route and knew that homeopathy could help correct her body. We used a number of different remedies. We had to pivot a few times. We had to work through flare-ups.

It was kind of like Joette said, “Two steps forward, one step back; three steps forward, two steps back.” It took a lot of patience and diligence. So, a big shout-out to her parents, who are really in the trenches of working through this every day.

And I am happy to report that now she has a healthy, beautiful child with almost completely clear skin. She’s able to eat anything and everything. She can play outside without reacting, and she doesn’t have to deal with the side effects of steroids and the deeper health issues that they may have triggered.

Kate:

Wow. Life-changing for that family and that little girl because that can last a lifetime.

Melissa: (10:23)

For sure.

My next story is about newborns. Actually, newborns often have blood sugar issues when they are born. They do the tests in the hospital to check their blood sugar, and if they don’t pass those tests, they often get sent to the NICU.

So, through my study with Joette, I knew that Chelidonium was a good blood sugar remedy, and it’s also used for newborns a lot if they have jaundice.

So, when I had parents contact me about a remedy to use in this situation, I suggested Chelidonium. It worked beautifully, and I have actually never seen it fail. So, this has been really great to even keep the newborns out of the NICU with this issue.

Kate:

Way to go, Melissa. That’s fantastic. I want to shift now, and let’s talk about some successes you’ve had for pain.

Melissa: (11:20)

Sure, Kate. My first story I want to share is about a client I’ve been working with for the last few months. She was hit by a car about 25 years ago and had severe pain in the lower half of her body ever since.

The doctors didn’t have any answers. The painkillers were not working. She really had nowhere to go with this and was just struggling with this pain every day.

We started with a few different remedies. We worked through a few different remedies that didn’t touch the pain. Finally, we found a remedy that worked. After she took this remedy for about three days, her pain went from a 10 to a 3 to a 4. And then it continued to improve to where now it is not a problem for her at all.

So, it was very exciting to find something to give her relief when she really had no hope.

Kate:

Wow. That’s great. And even sometimes medication doesn’t work for pain, so I bet she’s very thankful that she spoke with you about this, for sure.

Melissa:

She is very grateful.

My next pain story is about my dad’s neck pain. He struggled with severe neck pain for years. He took Tylenol and Advil daily for years. We started using homeopathic remedies to correct the issue in his neck. He took those for quite a long time, and he has not had Tylenol or Advil for years now. So, that is so exciting.

It was … totally corrected it. Yes! He has his go-to remedy that if his neck is bothering him, he will take that, and it takes the pain right away for him.

Kate:

So, I’m just curious, what is the remedy?

Melissa:

Rhus tox.

Kate:

That is a great one for neck pain, especially when you wake up in the morning with a stiff or sore neck. Yeah, wonderful.

Melissa:

Yes. He’s always asking me, where’s my Rhus tox?

Another story about my dad: He has an amputated leg. He was in an accident in his twenties and, sadly, lost his leg. He has struggled with a lot of pain. One type of pain that bothered him was a severe electrical pain.

We tried several different remedies — some of the first remedies you would think of for a pain like this — and it didn’t touch it.

When I was studying in The Academy, Joette was going through the materia medica, and one day we were studying a remedy that was specific for amputation pain. I decided that the next time he had this pain, I was going to try this remedy.

I did. He took it a few different times. Not only did it take his pain away in the moment, but it never came back!

Kate:

Wow! That’s so great.

Melissa:

He was very excited, to say the least.

Kate:

Yeah.

Melissa:

My next pain story is about someone who had severe stomach pain. They were ending up in the ER. They went numerous times. They had several different CAT scans, all kinds of testing done to see what could be wrong, and nothing was found. The pain medication — even in the ER — was not taking care of this.

So, I suggested that they try Chamomilla and Mag phos. After taking this several times a day for a few days, the pain was resolved, and they never had to return to the ER

Kate: (14:58)

Melissa, as I’m listening to your stories, I can’t help but think, I mean, how do you feel being able to help people with things like this … where they don’t have hope, or they’ve suffered for many, many years? I mean, what an incredible thing to be able to do.

Melissa:

It is such a joy. I think I have the best job ever, really: to bring hope to people in these situations where they didn’t have hope, that doctors didn’t have answers, and homeopathy came in and saved the day.

Kate:

Yeah. Now, we don’t want to give the impression that every time it works, and it’s easy to figure out the right remedy every time, and it works so quickly, because sometimes it does take a little while. But this is the power of homeopathy and how it can change lives.

Kate: (15:53)

Let’s move on to animals.

Melissa:

Okay. So, my first animal story is about a cow that came in to be milked. I noticed that she had an abscess on her abdomen. It was about the size of half of a basketball.

Kate:

What?

Melissa:

This looked like, it was going to require antibiotics, but that’s not how I roll.

So, I grabbed my homeopathic remedies and started to give to her. I gave her remedies every few hours for the first days. The next day, the abscess started to drain. It was really nasty. It smelled very bad.

I continued to give her remedies, and the abscess continued to drain. During this time, she continued to eat. Her milk production stayed steady. She was very perky and happy. I never had to give her antibiotics, and it completely cleared up and healed up.

This was huge because on a dairy farm, if you give antibiotics, you have to discard the milk for quite a while, and that’s never good for a dairy farmer to be dumping milk out. Right?

So, to have these medicines that are just gentle and safe, but heal this abscess is so incredible.

Kate:

So, how long did that take?

Melissa:

It took a few days to really get the abscess healing. Then it really took — in the end — a few weeks to get it completely.

Kate:

Still pretty good.

Melissa:

Yes. My next cow story is another abscess story.

So, a cow came in. I noticed she was having some trouble breathing. When she put her head down, she was really struggling to breathe. I knew it was either pneumonia or an abscess in her throat.

So, I went to feel her throat, and sure enough, she had quite a bit of swelling in her throat. I knew that if I didn’t do something quickly, this could close off her airways. It was obstructing her airways when she put her head down.

For those of you who are fans of the TV series, “All Creatures Great and Small,” think Strawberry, when they had to do the risky surgery to take care of the abscess that was blocking her airway. That’s what was going to happen to this cow.

So, I started her on remedies right away. By the next day, her breathing was much better, and within a week, it was completely resolved.

Kate:

Did you use the same remedies as you did for the other cow with the abscess?

Melissa:

I did not. The remedies I used for the cow with the throat abscess were Lycopodium, Hepar sulph and Silicea. They worked amazingly.

Kate:

Yeah. Wow. You saved the cow’s life.

Kate: (18:47)

Melissa, can you share how you use some homeopathic medicines now for tick prevention in your animals? Because I know that’s a big deal, especially in the Midwest. We have a lot of ticks.

Melissa:

Yeah. There are so many ticks. My cows start coming in with ticks every spring. That’s when I know that I need to add these remedies to their water tank.

So, I use Ledum and Mag phos in their water tank every spring for about three weeks, and that prevents the ticks from getting on them. It’s amazing to see the difference from one day to another of when they have their remedies and when they don’t.

An old farmer told me years ago that land that is deficient in magnesium will have lots of ticks. So, I just applied that to cows and thought that they, maybe, needed some Mag phos to help with ticks.

So, the combo of the Ledum and the Mag phos has been really amazing, and it keeps the ticks off of them.

Kate:

So, I can almost hear people asking, “How do you do this?”

How do you give them these remedies in their water? Do you put just a couple pellets in there? How often?

Melissa:

I make a water bottle. So, I take about a 16-ounce water bottle, and I put about 10 pellets of each in that water bottle. I shake it up hard, and then I pour it into their hundred-gallon water tank.

I refresh that about every other day, and it seems to work. If I go much longer than that, I can start telling that they’re coming in with more ticks.

Kate:

Okay. Wow. Thanks, Melissa, for sharing your tips on using homeopathy with your cows in the spring and fall. I know fall can be a time when there’s a lot of ticks as well.

So, when I had horses, I used to do it in the spring and in the fall, and I too found that it really helped.

So, let’s wrap things up today, Melissa, by asking you to share some observations that you had about homeopathy and why you think it’s so powerful.

Melissa: (20:52)

I have recently been reflecting on just that homeopathy is not traumatizing.

I know so many people, adults and children anymore who have medical trauma from all the invasive tests and procedures. It’s just such a blessing that homeopathy is not traumatizing. It’s so peaceful and yet powerful. Not only is it not traumatizing, but if there has been trauma from medical procedures that needed to be done, homeopathy can address that trauma as well.

Kate:

Yes, good point.

So, I know you also compare homeopathy to learning a second language, and I think that’s such an interesting analogy. Explain that.

Melissa:

I often tell my Gateway students that learning homeopathy is like a second language. Like learning a second language, they need to stay immersed in it.

So, listening to things over and over again to just hear those remedies and all the information. Surround yourself with people who are speaking the same language. It makes such a difference. And I think if we aren’t using it, we lose it. Right? And then, we come across situations that we need to know the information right now. And if we’re keeping ourselves immersed in it, we’re going to know what we need to know in those situations.

Kate:

Yeah, and I know that’s probably, I’m guessing, one of the reasons why you stay connected through your Mastermind group with Joette … is you’re continually immersed and working together with those students who are also learning and seeing clients and continually working to be a better homeopath, whether it’s just to help their family and friends or to see clients.

One of the things that I wanted to mention is that if you loved hearing Melissa’s stories and you’re asking yourself, “Well, I want to find a Practical Homeopath™. How do I do that?”

You can go to FindAPracticalHomeopath.com. That’s FindAPracticalHomeopath.com, and Joette’s students — her graduates who are taking clients — are listed on that site, and you can find someone that you think you would connect with there. So hopefully that’s helpful.

Melissa, just tell us about what homeopathy means to you personally and any other advice that you’d have for people who are just starting out.

Melissa:

I am so grateful to our good God every day for this medicine, Kate. It is such a gift from Him.

And I am so thankful that my life crossed with Joette’s and that she has been my teacher and mentor all these years. I often think about that I’m just here in Nebraska. I never would have known the information of the Banerji doctors if Joette hadn’t gone and sat with them all those years and brought that information back to me. So, I am so grateful to her.

I would say, just like I said before, just stay immersed in it. Listen to these podcasts and just stay diligent and persistent in learning.

Kate:

Melissa, thank you so much for sharing with us. Your journey and stories are inspiring and encouraging and really highlight the power of Practical Homeopathy®.

It’s been a joy having you with us on this podcast. I know that your insights and stories are an inspiration to everyone that this podcast is reaching today. So, thank you for being here.

Melissa:

Thank you, Kate. It’s been a joy to be here with you today.

Joette:

It’s my honor to share many lessons on this simple method of using homeopathy for free —without affiliates or advertising — here in my podcasts, but also my blog posts and Monday Night Lives.

But it’s critical that you learn how to use these medicines properly. These podcasts should serve as only the beginning of your training. Peruse JoettesLearningCenter.com to find fun study group opportunities and in-depth courses developed by subject.

So, with the proper training, you can join the thousands of students before you in developing the confidence and competence to protect the health of your family and loved ones with my brand of homeopathy, Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:

You just listened to a podcast from internationally acclaimed homeopath, public speaker and author, the founder of The Academy of Practical Homeopathy®, Joette Calabrese. Joette’s podcasts are available on all your favorite podcast apps.

To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit for your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.