Ep. 107-The Byte: Dr. Erica Elliott

Dr. Elliott had no idea what life had in store for her when she moved out to teach on a Navajo reservation. From miracle healings to a WEREWOLF!! YES, a werewolf...this episode gets all cryptidy! Full of surprises, this shorter episode is amazing!

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 107 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

I've got some really exciting news this week.

I now have a total of three Patreon subscribers.

I need to thank Helen Noakes,

Amy Svoboda,

And Donetta McGrath for loving the podcast and for feeling so strongly about it that they've chosen to support me through Patreon.

For those of you who are still curious about what that looks like,

I'll provide a link under the episode show notes.

It'll take you right to my Patreon page.

You can see if you want to support me for $3,

$5,

Or $10 a month.

You can check out the goodies I offer at every tier,

But I did want to say thank you so much to these three wonderful human beings for appreciating what I'm putting out into the world.

Now this week my interview was with Dr.

Erica Elliott.

And you know how you go to a bookstore in one place and then you go to another bookstore in another place,

Then you go to a different city and there's a bookstore so you stop in?

Well at all of these bookstores I found the same book,

Erica Elliott's book,

Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert.

I snapped it up at the third bookstore.

I thought there can't be any clearer sign that I'm supposed to read this book and guess what?

The word miracle is in the title so it has to be perfect.

Well I devoured the book.

It's so interesting and so enchanting.

So then I reached out to the author who lives here in Santa Fe and she emailed me back and she said absolutely I will be a guest on your podcast.

She's had quite an interesting life from teaching on a Navajo reservation then leaving for a while going to medical school then she returns and she becomes a doctor for the Navajo people again.

She has a wonderful website musingsmemoirandmedicine.

Com and there's all sorts of goodies on that website.

Blog posts,

Recipes,

All sorts of really cool stuff.

I urge you to check it out and then of course because this person is unstoppable she has a TED Talk.

Yes she has a TED Talk and it is on co-housing community at its best.

There will be a link under the episode show notes to her TED Talk.

I'm super excited about this episode because it engages with something that no other guest has talked about yet and that's something that occurs in the world of cryptids.

I'm not sure if you're all familiar with that but it has to do with werewolves and something that happened to her while she was living on the Navajo reservation the first time.

I think you're all gonna love it.

It's super interesting and so now episode 107 of Bite-sized Blessings.

And they said never go in the canyon at night because that's when the werewolves hang out and they might harm you.

I said to the class do they harm white people?

Biligana is the word.

Do they harm white people?

And he said,

This boy was really wise,

He said maybe not because white people don't believe in that.

I thought that was pretty smart.

Well there's so many of these magical,

Mystical and unexplainable.

A miracle,

My definition of a miracle is something wonderful that happens and you can't explain it with your logical mind or the science you've learned in school.

It just doesn't explain it and so I that was real I struggled to try and explain what I was seeing.

I struggled and struggled and I just couldn't if I was being honest I couldn't explain it and I had to accept it but when I tell other people about it,

You know white people about it,

You could tell they didn't believe me at all so I just stopped talking about it.

You know it took me 50 years to write the book because I went through a stage where it hurt my feelings when people didn't believe me.

I was telling something so important to me and not to be believed it just hurt my feelings terribly and then I reached a point where I didn't care as I matured I tell this I would tell the story and not care if they couldn't handle it but by then I was so deeply into medicine I didn't have time to tell these stories and I how I made time to tell write the book is because during the elections there's so much divisiveness in the country that I I thought my story is a healing story I have got to find a way to write it and it turned out it just flew out of me you know I'd be so tired at the end of the day and then it would just fly out of me and because it was waiting 50 years to tell this story so it's just bursting forth I didn't have to really it's like I was plugged into some other source of energy because usually I'm wiped out I really knock myself out for my patients I'm wiped out but then I'd sit down and boom all this writing so anyway so there's so many miracles and stuff to choose from do you have a favorite one like there's the healing of the tumor there's the suddenly speaking fluent Navajo when I just had been there about a month or so and I mean that is totally I can't possibly explain that I mean I can say what a physicist in the audience one time explained it I can say what he said he wasn't shocked he said that can all be explained in new physics but it's still it still was amazing and so if you have a favorite story I'll tell it gosh you know I I'm willing to hear two stories if you wanted so I would love to hear the story about the tumor and then in the healing you know which I thought was so fascinating and then I don't know I would love I don't know if this was one of the stories that you would like to share if not not a big deal about how you were in that Canyon that night with your friends okay that's a funny story okay so the kids in my class used to kind of try and counsel me not to make mistakes you know like like when I found a skeleton up in the canyon I rock climbed up there and and found the skeleton under a pile of rocks and then it was a woman because she had beautiful turquoise and she she had sandals woven out of yucca fiber that were all rotting and but preserved because it's so dry there and a basket next to her and stuff so I was very respectful I didn't do anything I put put her back and put the rocks exactly where they were I didn't didn't do anything but when I told the students they were terribly upset they they said they all said Cindy Cindy that means ghost sickness you're gonna get ghost sickness and they urged me to get a medicine man to undo the harm I had done to myself and so they were always sort of counseling me so I didn't make mistakes and they said never go in the canyon at night because that's when the werewolves hang out and I and and they might harm you and I said to the class do they harm white people?

Biligana is the word.

Do they harm white people?

And he said this boy was really wise he said maybe not because because white people don't believe that.

I thought that was pretty smart and I said you know I I live on the first floor of a government housing apartment which was a dump but I thought it was really nice because it was my first apartment I said I'm on the first floor can can they harm me?

And he said no no they'll leave you alone but you mustn't you mustn't encounter that you mustn't meet them like in the canyon because then they could hurt you and so anyway so there were these Mormon women who were training to be teachers teachers in training and they were doing an apprenticeship on the reservation at my school and so they had said would would you take us into the canyon and and I said yeah I'll be happy to do that sometime and it never happened then at the last minute they said will you take us in the canyon we're leaving tomorrow I said no I can't it's nighttime we're not supposed to go in there at nighttime they said but you said you take us and and we really please do it so I thought okay well I'm white they're gonna leave me alone as long as I don't meet up with them and so I went with them and they were chattering the whole time it's a full moon and it really annoyed me that they were talking so much you know the the canyon is so silent and then all of a sudden I looked across the canyon and I looked up there was a cave way up high and there's no way to really get there there are little Anasazi those are the ancient people little carved out where you can put your toe but it'd be extremely dangerous and and there was a fire there and I said look and and and they said oh yeah it's a fire I said put us up in that cave and the girl said oh there's just somebody camping I said no it's not you're not allowed to camp in here and white people can't go here and and they weren't fazed and they kept I said can you please let's just whisper okay and they they didn't get it they're chattery chattery and then I said look at that and there was a shadow a huge shadow of a man dancing or something moving on the back of the cave wall and they they still weren't faced and then all of a sudden everything went the fire went out everything went silent and it was really creepy and then we kept walking and then oh there's an old woman who lived at the bottom of the trail where we were and she lived in a Hogan very traditional and she had sheep and all of a sudden in her area where she had sheep there was total chaos and and the sheep were going crazy and dogs barking it's just a big chaotic bunch of noise and then all of a sudden it went quiet and then in the moonlight we saw this thing that we didn't know if it was a horse or a man but it looked like it was a man loping along like a like a giant animal and it looked like he just had a skin on his back and now the girls were completely freaked out and they ran as fast as they could up to the top of the canyon to our car they were so frightened and so I drove them back and my adrenaline was so high even though it's late at night I couldn't go to sleep I was so wired up and so I thought I'm gonna go see my friend who's a public school teacher and his light was on in his trailer and so it turned out he was still grading papers so I knock on the door I told him the story and he looked at me so skeptically it hurt my feelings not being believed was worse than scaring the daylights out of me I if I had to pick I'd rather pick being scared to death and so I said well you know you don't believe me but can I show you so so you'll believe me she said sure so he went there and I think he was scared because he didn't talk at all we went down the steep path and wound back and forth back and forth and then we got to the bottom where they're dried corn stalks and that made a lot of noise as we're going through there and then we came to the base of where the cave was I was scared to death the whole time and I could tell he was too but there was a talus slope going halfway up the wall and then these little carved out areas and he started up the talus slope and he heard a noise up there he said what was that that must have been a mountain lion I said there are no mountain lions in Canyon de Chelly he said well it must have been some animal and he started going up again and then this voice boomed out get the fuck out of here white boy and he almost fell over backwards and he we flew out of there and then he never questioned me again about anything I said he was so scared thanks everyone for listening to another episode of bite-sized blessings I need to thank my unstoppable guest dr.

Erica Elliot and I need to thank her for telling all of her miracle stories and the most interesting one about a shapeshifter or werewolf I think I'm never gonna get over it I need to also thank the creators of the music used for this episode Stephen O'Brien,

Frank Schroeder,

Sasha End,

That Sounds,

And Alexander Naccarata for complete attribution please see the bite-sized blessings website at bite-sized blessings dot com on the website you'll find a link to Erica's TED talk under the episode show notes and then on the treasures page I'm gonna have a link to her book the book in which I discovered her so be sure to click on it to check it out thank you for listening and here's my one request be like Erica keep telling your stories yes there may be a lot of naysayers out there there might be a lot of people who say I don't believe you but someday someday you'll be able to tell your story someday you'll be able to tell your story find your audience and you'll be able to spread a little more magic and some more miracles into the world