Love, Loss, Celebration, and Free Will by Karen Patterson

As we begin 2025, the Parkinson’s community has been actively celebrating many achievements and awards. The love so many of us have put into our advocacy has cultivated many fruits for our efforts in 2024. 

Our dear leader, Micheal J. Fox, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His life achievements are celebrated and honored in the highest regard. None of us in the PD community would have anything without his guiding light showing us the path to a new tomorrow. His ongoing Hero’s Journey inspires us to give all to this fight.  

Yes, and while we continue to fight. Many of us have experienced loss this past year. We grieve for our parents and lost loved ones and friends while we worry about our children. We wonder how our conditions will progress while we stand up for the right to fight for our planet. 

Grief comes in many forms, as a woman diagnosed after too many years of confusion. I also grieve for the person I might have been when my kids were young had I been diagnosed sooner. Rebranding of how we view this disease has to start now. 

We continue to watch and wait to see if paraquat will be added to the list of banned toxic chemicals. I wish to share my poem, Free Will. Like many poems I’ve shared, I’ve been waiting for the right time to share them. Neil Peart and my mother have been gone for 5 years. While neither one of their deaths was caused by PD, their passing, along with the tragic loss of Taylor Hawkens, hit my life with emotional blows that affected me deeply, including disrupting my hormonal function and making my symptoms worse. Free Will was born during that traumatic time. 

Future generations deserve to know the truth about what they face. The experts are working on a second book on Ending Parkinson’s Disease. Robert Cochrane’s book Acceptances is another great example of how all our stories matter. We made a big difference and got the ball rolling towards change in 2024. I know we have enough love and determination in this great and growing team to make way for more great things to come. 

Please listen world, for there’s another way 

You don’t have to do what the mass majority says 

For if you listen and do everything they say 

You might not live to see another day. 

Never would I have ever guessed 

That two decades of rhyme and reason would be put to the test 

All the things I thought were harmless and good 

Were the worst things for me, but I never understood. 

Then at last I found the holistic way 

Though long years, I would still dismay 

For way too much damage had been done 

Still, many twists and turns and battles to be won. 

Research was my sword. Yes, I read and looked 

In books, on-line, all experts new and old were checked 

Cross-referenced and tested and noted and booked 

All remedies across the ages for bodies so wrecked 

All of their stories to heart and mind I took. 

And from all this knowledge, all my tea remedies grew 

Into something resembling a thick, sweet, witchy brew 

The smell is strong and somewhat bittersweet 

And what ails the body these brews do treat..  

For too many years, I listened to odd doctors and peers 

Twisted and turned and wound up in tears 

Every pill they tried just made everything worse 

Their cocktails were said to be keeping me alive 

Yet walk away from it all to never again dive 

Into their mess that was pain pill derived 

And back to mother earth who did keep me alive! 

For her, remedies are old, tried, and true 

Long before labs, those elders knew. 

For too long, the masses have turned a deaf ear 

If we listen and learn, it becomes very clear 

For God only helps those who help themselves 

And he made this Earth full of all that is good 

With His gift of ethos, we can determine right and wrong 

With open hearts capable of trust in need of a new song. 

For not all things good have to come in a pill 

Age-old remedies are grown and sold still 

So before you try the latest greatest prescription fill 

Open your mind to the exercise of free will 

While modern medicine does have its place 

TV and social media are not always a safe space 

Pumping images of joy and hope in your face 

The advice is not theirs to give 

Yet like lost sheep we allow such to dictate how we live. 

Does no one remember ‘your brain on the box’? 

Who would have thought decades of hard knocks 

Would turn most of society into exactly what was 

A fictional nightmare and all because 

For too long, we have sat back and been told 

In a pill or other quick fix, the future did hold 

For far too long, these lies have been told 

To all, from the very young to the mighty old 

So it is Mother Nature who must now be bold 

And stand up strong for the world must be told 

That the answer to our future is not yet to be found 

What will heal and fix most all is still grown from the ground. 

Yes, and we have a responsibility to future generations to take better care of the ground we depend on for our very existence. We must exercise our free will. We need to tell our whole stories loud and proud. 

Like Micheal J’s famous character Marty Mcfly states and I quote. “If you put your mind to it. You can accomplish anything.” 

The way I see it. If we all put all our minds to it. We can find a cure for PD. One story at a time.