As
a tribute to my mother who passed away five years ago, I wrote of her vocation
as a traditional healer in the first part of this series. Here, I elaborate on
a particular condition that she was remarkably competent to offer a cure, an
affliction called nerbiyos. It is
commonly experienced by women going through mid-life. How she acquired the
know-how of this health problem and how eventually she became a healer of the nerbiyosas of Virac was a defining
aspect of her entire being, a salient component of her life history that puts
together all the other parts into a meaningful whole.
It
all started in the late fifties when my mother had a particularly difficult
pregnancy of her sixth child. After delivery, she went into extended
post-partum blues that manifested as a physical debilitation like she did not
feel before. Local doctors could not make anything out of it, psychological
they said, so even with our meagre resources, my father decided to bring her to
Manila. In the city, the doctors were as clueless. My parents were about to
travel back when they got information that a healer from Las Pinas might be of
help. So my father went to see the healer, a man, who impressed him by ramming
through the symptoms even if he has not yet described it. So they postponed
their trip back for a last attempt to get a cure. The healer ministered to my
mother. She went home to Virac healed and ready to face again the tedium of
motherhood.
Back
in Virac, the news of the remarkable cure spread fast. It helped that my mother
was in regular contact with an array of womenfolk through her trade as a
beautician and seamstress. In no time at all, our pantaw where my mother serviced her clientele was always groaning
with women seeking not just beauty but healing. It turned out that nerbiyos was a common condition among
women typically of my mother’s age set. Taking after the method of Las Pinas
healer and with her own added touch, my mother obliged to minister these women
as a way to pay back for her healing from nerbiyos
and as an expression of solidarity with her gender-kind, particularly mothers
suffering the same affliction; she only knew too well the ordeal they were
going through.
With
rare exceptions, nerbiyos is a
syndrome that has a strong gender dimension. Afflicting mostly child-bearing
women, it is most likely physiological, perhaps something that involves
hormones, but as it is with most sicknesses, it is also cultural. Health is not
simply a biological phenomenon but a social one. While doing research on medical anthropology
for my Ph.D., it came as a surprise to know that this condition is widely reported
in social science literature. In Latin America, it is known as nervios, the Greeks call it nervas, and it was also widely
experience by English wives of the Victorian era. What is common in all these
societies, including the Philippines, is that they are all operating under a
feudal arrangement where women are relegated to a social position subservient
to men, a patriarchy. In such a social
system women are mostly confined to the home to take charge of reproductive and
domestic function and largely prevented from involving from taking part in the
concerns of the world out there that is considered as men’s territory. One view
that to me is plausible is that the enormous stress and anxiety creative
chores, plus the fact that these women are inhibited from giving vent to
self-expression and career fulfillment, lead to a reaction formation that is
the nerbiyos syndrome.
Usually,
this condition starts through a trigger, such as a specifically traumatic
event. In others, it just creeps in. The onset of an attack is a feeling of
weakness and coldness in the extremities. It might be accompanied by pain in
the chest or gas pain (harabahab ning
tikab), and dizziness. One also experiences shortness of breathing. It goes
worse until the person gets the imminent feeling that he/she can die right then
and there. The big problem is that it attacks any time and without apparent
cause, so one develops fear of being alone or going out. It then affects one’s
efficiency at home or at work. When a doctor is consulted, the sufferer is told
that the problem is “psychological” as indeed the vital signs are usually
normal and laboratory tests do not reveal anything. The patient resents it
especially when advised to see a psychiatrist, “ay bako man akong bua!” It is even worse when told that dai ka man ning helang, as if one is
making it up. For the nerbiyos victim
the condition is real.
While
doctors might give mood altering substances (such as tranquilizers), the cure
that my mother offered consisted of a regimen of herbal applications, principal
of which is a series of steaming with boiled taran-isog leaves and body hilot
with panhangin concoction. The
whole thing is capped with a pamasma, a
delicious broth that is given to drain away, yes, the pasma, which my mother attribute to the usual ripas ning pagkaon by busy mothers, who sometimes because of
poverty had to give up her own meal in favour of the children. It may be also
due to the countless occasions that the mother is exposed to harmful
conditions, such as init asin ripot in
the course of doing chores because she would usually disregard her own
well-being. Sometimes, it might be necessary to compliment the regimen in order
to deal with aggravating conditions such as culebra
and ponsada, in which case she
applied physical therapy procedures such as kayod
and bintusa.
But
more than going through the motions, an important component of the cure is the
social/relational one. My mother’s approach to healing had always been
holistic, meaning that she considered the various interconnected facets of
sickness. In the case of nerbiyos,
the start of the healing process is that the condition is recognized and labeled,
and not denied as “imaginary” (as in the way medical doctors dismiss it as
merely “of the mind”). It helped a lot
that my mother knew of the condition as a sufferer herself and was able to
describe clearly the symptoms. One gets the assurance that she is not alone in
the predicament; others have experienced it.
The second point of the healing is to know that others have overcome it,
as indeed my mother was an illustrative example of successful cure.
If
it is granted that the feudal, patriarchal structure of society has bearing on nerbiyos, it would follow that unless
this disappears, women will be prone to the affliction. In the case of my
mother, nerbiyos attacks did not
cease altogether and so it was with her clientele. So therefore, there was
formed a group of women nerbiyos sufferers
who regularly congregated in our pantaw. My
mother was at the center of this group that had become a support enclave that
talked about not only of their nerbiyos illness
but of the various issues that motherhood brought forth. As I saw it, it was a
space that these women created for themselves where they can ventilate their
concerns. I suppose this mechanism was part of the package of cure for nerbiyos given that this infirmity is
something that is connected with the difficult circumstances of the vocation of
motherhood.
So
it happened then that the pantaw of
my childhood bliss had become the space of my mother’s circle of sisters in
vocation-and-affliction where they tried not only to draw healing from the
wear-and-tear of motherhood but to generate energy to sustain the motherly
mandate. It usually took place in the afternoon when the tasks at home had
thinned out. But such sessions usually get into early evening and so the
husbands, just home from work, would miss their wives at the time they were
supposed to have the kitchen smoking for supper. So these men would appear at
our place to claim back their women. Sometimes they lingered as the wives were
in the mood to extend their empowering space-time. There would be some harmless
bantering then, the husband chiding the wives about their nerbiyos as just their way of papansin.
The wives, basking in women-power, would protest noisily and dare them to
exchange places with them. Oh, it would be some kind of the battle of the sexes
being staged in our pantaw!
By the eighties my mother became quite
sick with diabetes and so she had to frequently travel to Manila for medical
attention. She had slowly retired from active healership but obliged on rare
occasions to heed a request. Mostly, all she could give were advices and
instructions, and even on her sick bed she would dictate a formula for a
particular case brought to her attention. My own sisters came to know my
mother’s formularies and applied it on their children. Particularly, my sister
Genevieve (a dentist-nurse) had become the repository of my mother’s theory and
practice of healing; she acquired not all the specifics of how-to but also the
aptitude and the “spirit” as indeed there was something about my mother’s hands
exuding “energy.” It was indeed a gift.
But
my mother did not really stop her healing vocation. She was able to live up to
the ripe age of 81 because she was a fighter, still trying to cure not only
other people by also herself. But I guess she knew when it was time to go.
Within a few hours before she gave up the spirit, she instructed my sister
Genevieve to prepare a combination of herbs that she wanted to be applied on
her as a sponge bath. My sister obliged of course, but she was wondering if my
mother was inventing a new formula: she knew of my mother’s entire repertoire
of cures but had not heard of this particular application before. After the
bath, my mother asked for a change of clothes, her favourite duster. Then she
said “dai pa daw ako nag kaon” so
they gave her rice broth, of which she was able to finish two spoonfuls, her
first real solid intake in weeks. Then she slept and went peacefully. Later during
the wake, we came to know from old folks that the strange herbal bath was
really the traditional ritual of cleansing for the dying. My mother, knowing
that she would be taking her final journey to her Lord, very calmly dictated
her final healing formula, that which she needed at that singular moment of her
life and something she had to pass on to those of us left behind: the cure of
all cures, one that does not ward off death but embraces it.
Email
your comments and suggestions to monxar@yahoo.com