In this episode, God leads me to share about my family’s journey into the U.S., my upbringing and how my experiences have molded me into who I am today. I share my desire to learn and grow because of the limitations my parents experienced in their country.
Never make assumptions about others; get to know who they are. Everyone has a story of triumph, no matter how small or great. I talk about being a root type of person and how root people thrive. We can agree to disagree, be respectful and still be united.
While I didn’t grow up religious or was indoctrinated by religion, I have always had a relationship with God. This gives me a fresh perspective on Jesus and His teachings, as I don’t embrace “religion” but rather RELATIONSHIP with God. I learned to pray as a young child out of desperate moments of threats. Got will use you, even if you think you are a “nobody”, and make you into “someone” He can use for his glory. All we need to do is have faith, trust and be obedient to God. So when I share my faith in Jesus Christ, it is not because anyone forced me into a religion as I was growing up, or indoctrinated by anyone or any system. As I share in future episodes on spirit and soul teachings, this will be important for viewers to understand.
We live in a world where the family is shattered. Americans raise their children with soft parenting approaches, leading to lazy and weak (without grit) children and adults who don’t take advantage of the opportunities offered in this wonderful country. We can change if we desire to change. My mission in life is to inspire others and let them know, “They can do it too!” God wants to use you as a vessel to bring glory to His Kingdom here on earth. Enjoy this episode. Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Speak to your doctor for further guidance.
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Podcast 41 Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your well-being, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, nature pathic, doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body, we are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. In today’s episode, I want to start a little bit differently. I typically prepare for these episodes with a topic and some ideas that I want to share, but as I was coming to the studio, God prompted me to change things up a little bit. Now, as most people who organize and plan, when you do something like this, you want to organize and plan what you’re going to talk about. But sometimes God leads you in a different direction, and he really was leading me to trust him and to have faith in what he was putting in my heart to share today.
This episode is going to be the foundation for the next three episodes, but really for future episodes. In this episode, I want to talk about my story and a lot more detail and with more depth. I want to start by just giving God all the glory. And I want you to know that God is a good God and he’s good all the time. God will take people who are nobodies. What I mean by nobodies, I mean nobodies according to society standards, right? He will take a nobody and make them into somebody who believes in him for his glory to help his people. So I pray, I really pray as you’re either watching this or you’re listening in, that it reaches your spirit, the higher part of who you are, that whatever from this story that you’re about to hear today, that it reaches this part of your spirit that really allows you to see how good God is, whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe in Jesus or not, I want you to listen into my story.
I was born and raised here in Phoenix, Arizona. I am a first-generation Mexican American. My parents came from a state called Juan in Mexico, and they came here. My father used to come out here and work with a work permit and would do seasonal work. Now, my mom, one year, as my dad was getting ready to leave, she tells him, you’re not leaving without us. At this time, my mom had seven children and she was pregnant. And my dad was like, you can’t come with us. You guys can’t come. You guys don’t have visas. She’s like, I don’t care. We’re leaving. We’re leaving with you. We’re not staying behind. Now, they lived in a very, very poor town and they had their fields where they grew their crops, but you had to work it. You had to work the fields, even if it was your field, if you wanted to eat.
They lived in a town that had no running water, no electricity. I mean, they really lived country. They milked their cows every morning. They had chickens. They ate and would kill and eat and eggs that the chickens were laid around and they lived a very, very simple and humble life there. But as you can imagine, with such poverty, you sometimes don’t have the resources for certain things or even access to education. There’s not a church in the town. There are a lot of limitations there. For some reason, my mom and her, in her spirit, felt that they all had to leave. So my mom was actually pregnant with me. She was five months pregnant. I remember being about eight years old when my mom was telling me the story. As I was listening to her tell me the story, I felt a complete stillness in the room.
I was just laser-focused on her listening to her tell me the story of how they left Mexico to come here to Arizona. As I listened to her, I couldn’t help but think how courageous my mother was at the time, and still is, how bold she was to take a risk that most women who are pregnant with seven children would not dare to do so. She tells me how they went through the desert illegally. They went through the desert for days and she crossed the Rio Grande and thought she was going to drown. She said there was a point I thought I was going to drown, but she said, I kept hearing a voice tell me to keep moving and don’t turn back and look. That was very metaphorical, too. It was don’t turn back and look.
See, my mother’s idea was that they were going to come and her and my dad and the older siblings would work here for maybe months or a year and they would go back to Mexico, and with the money they would earn here, they would build a better home out there. That was their goal and intention. It was never to stay. But as they stayed here, the neighbors where they lived said, Why don’t you put your kids in school? And she’s like, no, no, we don’t plan to stay here. So she ended up being convinced and sent my siblings to school. Turned out they were very smart. You have poor children who have very limited access to education in their town. Turns out they were very smart and the teachers just loved them. They loved how eager they were to learn and they excelled.
What became one year became a life of staying here. So my parents were able to get legal documentation in the eighties because of what Ronald Reagan did at the time with the Amnesty Program. Now, I’ll tell you, knowing that my parents were here illegally did create a level of stress in my body. I worried I would pray to God that they were always going to show up home, right? You didn’t know. And my brothers were brothers. They would actually play tricks on me. When the police officers would anywhere in the neighborhood would, if we sat any police officer anywhere, they would tell me, I going to hide because you’re not here legally. They’re going to take you. I believed this the whole time until my mom once said, Hey, don’t believe them. You were born here. They’re the ones who weren’t born here.
I was like, oh, okay. But as my mom would share this story numerous times throughout my life, I didn’t understand what would drive her to take a risk. I got to see at some point later on in my life that I was able to go back and visit their hometown. I got to see the conditions in which the people lived there. They looked happy, actually. They were happy, but they were very limited in terms of resources. Now, the community that they lived in was not better than your communities. Most of you listening or watching this, you lived in better communities than I grew up in. I grew up in a community that was gang-infested. There was a gang in every corner. There were drive-by shootings all the time. Some drugs were being sold and pushed off to young kids. I think I was in fourth grade when someone offered me marijuana, and I was like, hell, no.
A lot of that was because of the way my parents raised us. My mom was very disciplinary, and she would tell us, You are my children. You’re my responsibility. This is my house, and I don’t care what anyone else is doing outside of this house. You’re my responsibility, and we’re going to follow these principles. Those principles were based on respecting ourselves and others and having honor for who we are in our name and caring even if we were poor, but carrying out this legacy of honor and respect and so that we were people of integrity, that we were not going to ask anyone or beg for anything. We worked hard. I can say that, and for Mexican culture, that is something that I consistently see is the work ethic. It’s indescribable. They will work. They will commit to what they say they’re going to do.
I grew up in this environment. Nothing was ever perfect. At a very young age, once I entered school, as many people experience dealing with bullies and dealing with people who are just flat out mean, I had a lot of persecution. I always joke around and say that I probably got in more fights than my brothers did not because I was going around starting them out of self-defense. And I was this kid that was very quiet. I wasn’t shy; I was just quiet. I minded my business. I was very studious, straight A’s, and always attended school early. The teachers loved me. You can say I was a teacher’s pet, but I wasn’t seeking attention. I didn’t really care. I just showed up to learn because I understood where my parents came from. I understood the limitations that they had, and I wanted to make sure that I optimized the opportunities that were accessible to me.
But it was at a very young age. I loved books. I have always loved reading. That was my escape. That was the way I traveled to other countries, learned other cultures and religions and politics and psychology and sociology. I would read those kinds of books at the ages of eight, nine, and 10. But when I was about 10 years old, I was in my local community library, which is a really rinky-dink library. I learned that early on because every time I looked at the catalog and it was those long catalogs, if you guys remember- I had to look for the little cards and find the book. I started to notice that all the good books were not in my community library; they were all far away. And it’s no big deal now for people to drive far out to a library. But in those days, it wasn’t customary to think of going somewhere far for a book, especially when you grew up in such low-income communities. Nobody has time for that, right?
I would never ask my parents to drive me out. I really respected that they were busy people and that they worked hard. I never wanted to inconvenience my parents. I was an obedient child. I was helpful in the areas where I could be helpful, and I never wanted to inconvenience them. I was very considerate of their situation. I was very mindful as a young child myself. So I would never ask for things that I knew were expensive because I didn’t eat them and I was okay without them. So books were my thing. I wouldn’t ask my dad, Can I go to…? Can you take me to that library and check out that book? But one day, the librarian got to love librarians. She said if there’s a book that you’re looking for that’s not here, we can ask to bring it to this library, and you can check it out.
Oh, it was on. The limit was 30 books you could check out at a time. I checked 30 books from all these other libraries outside of my community library. I feasted my brain and my eyes on all this knowledge, learning things that I wasn’t learning at school. Of course, when I went to school, I was bored because they didn’t provide us with the knowledge I desired and craved. At those times, sending me to another school outside of my community that just wasn’t heard of, it wasn’t an option for me. So I went to the schools in my area, but I never stopped there. I never stopped seeking knowledge and wisdom and information. I continuously did that over the years of checking books out from other good libraries, books that I was learning.
The reason I share all of this is that sometimes people make assumptions about people. We never take time to listen to their story, get to know them, and learn how their experiences have formed and shaped their character to be who they are. A lot of who I am is rooted in my family from generation to generation. I come from people who are very humble, very quiet. I’m a root person because I come from families that are root people. And what I mean by that is that the roots of a tree are never seen, are rarely seen. You see the trunk, you see the branches, you see the leaves. But root people are not seen as people who are roots. They are supportive people. They bring nourishment to the rest of the tree. I find that a lot of that of my upbringing and my family through generations and my faith in God have developed this character in me to be the doctor that I am today to be a root by.
No, there’s no accident why I named my clinic Raices Naturopathic Medical Center, which by the way, I had a lot of people discouraging me from naming it Raices and saying, you name it roots in English because people are going to have a hard time naming it. I said, No, it’s going to be Raices because it’s who I am. It’s a blend of two cultures in two countries, and raices means roots. It’s because I feel I’m rooted in God’s word. I am rooted in my local community. I am rooted in my culture, having been raised in Mexico for generations and generations. I use roots, plants, and plant medicine to help bring healing to people. I encourage eating foods that have roots. There’s a lot in the root that the tree gets life from those roots. And so there’s some of you watching or listening to this that you might resonate with this.
You feel like you’re not seen, you’re not heard, you’re not important. You’re not valued, but you are. God has a special place for you in this world. Maybe that role is to be a roots person. You’re meant to bring nourishment to others, to bring structure and life and support, and have deep and meaningful relationships with people. You’re not superficial. You don’t care to be in front of a camera. I struggled with this podcast because I didn’t care to be in front of a camera. I didn’t care to be seen and heard. But God will take someone like me who was a nobody who came from a family of nobodies according to the world and say, I’m going to use you because you’re faithful. After all, you’re obedient. I’m going to use you in a different way to bring healing and restoration to my people as a tool, not because I’m doing the healing.
I am just a tool that directs that healing in his name, which is rooted in his word. We are living in a time right now that, regardless of whatever political side you’re on, I want you to start to remove the blinders and just look at our world. It’s always very cyclical in terms of the issues, the hot issues that come up and the controversies and how our governments and our world use these topics to create division between people. I am torn apart even if the laws don’t, certain laws don’t affect me, say in regards to immigration, it doesn’t affect me. I’m a US citizen. I have my business, my clinic, my family’s fine. I don’t have anything to worry about, but I always feel torn between two groups of people. This conversation can really get into the well, this, and they shouldn’t do that and all of those things.
But what we need to stop and do is listen to each other to come to a better solution to our problems in the world. Because in God’s kingdom, there is no legal or illegal. There are no borders. You’re either in his kingdom, or you’re not. It breaks my heart to see good Christians say such things that are not rooted in God’s word. It’s just not. Think about this. Jesus traveled from one place to another, and he was welcomed and he was not welcome in many towns, but he continued to visit and go through these towns to share his word. We need to be mindful of the things because it’s going to happen every year. It’s always going to happen where it’s racial division, it’s immigration division, there’s war there, there’s this. We need not to attack each other. We need to listen to each other.
We need to come together as communities, be the roots, and stay united. Because if we stay united, then we can come up with solutions and we tell our government what we want to be seen, not the other way around. I hate to see the hate and how people are so divided through different political points of view. We can agree to disagree. You don’t have to stop being friends or not talk to that family member because you don’t agree on certain views. That actually shows a lack of maturity. It shows a lack of emotional and spiritual maturity, and you cannot enter into a conversation with someone with whom you don’t agree. I know that God has had his hand over my life from the beginning to now to use me as his vessel, as his tool to help people heal. The other part of my story is that it’s going to build on the other topics, other episodes that are coming in the next weeks that I don’t have the strong religious background.
My parents were not big on the Catholic church. They saw a lot of things from where they were from that they thought was wrong. They have faith in God, they pray to God, and they worship God. But I was never indoctrinated into a religion. I had a relationship with God. I learned how to pray when I would hear a drive-by shooting in my neighborhood, and I would worry about whether a bullet would enter my house and hit my mom’s head or my dad or my brother or me. That’s what I would worry as a little four and five-year-old kid. I would drop to my knees by my bed and I would pray to God that he protect our home from any danger. My mom and my dad raised nine children in this country in a ghetto neighborhood. Okay? I told you, gangs, drugs, I mean, I had a higher chance of the statistics at the time, said that I had a higher chance of me dropping out of school, being a teenage mother, being on drugs or being in a gang because girls were in gangs too.
That’s what they were projecting for me for my future. But that was not what God had in line for me, right? I’ll tell you, and I say it with a lot of pride and respect and honor for my family, that none of my siblings, none of the nine of us, were ever on drugs. We were not under the influence of each other’s drinking. We were not running around with gangs. As a matter of fact, my brothers got a lot of trouble from the gang in the neighborhood we were in because they were like, who are they with? Who are they with? They’re not with us. Who are they kicking it with? Would oftentimes go to our yard and try to start a fight with them. But my father and my mom, the way they raised us, my brothers would not engage in that kind of interaction. I know that now I can look back and see the many times that God was protecting our family, even in this neighborhood, which was not ideal.
I was walking right behind their steps because I saw my older siblings and the example they were setting for me. They were like a shield for me. It doesn’t matter what environment you grow up in, it doesn’t matter what family situation you grow up in. I really want young people to know that God will use you to do great things. You just have to have faith in him. You have to trust God and be obedient. That’s the one thing I see missing in our culture here in America. We’re not obedient. Kids are not obedient to their parents. They’re very disrespectful. The family is shattered. How is it possible that I have parents who were uneducated by an institution? I saw that they were educated in an informal way. They have values. Where did they get these values that were passed on from generation to generation?
They knew how to read; they knew the math. They knew stuff, but they didn’t have access to education the way we do in this country. There’s a lot of Americans that are born here from generation to generation, and they’re lazy. They don’t want to work, and they don’t want to pursue an education. Young people who just want to stay home, playing video games, watching TV, being on their phone, you’re squandering opportunities. It’s parents that are raising their children to be this way. They’re soft-parenting their children. And you, as a parent, are the root of your family. You need to bring nourishment to your family, support, stability, and guidance. Because if you don’t, as my father always used to say as he was planting his trees in his yard, he would tell me, you see that tree?
It’s growing crooked, but it’s a small tree. We can straighten it out by putting some stakes here and aligning it well, and it’ll grow to be a straight tree. But if you let that tree grow crooked when it’s bigger, you cannot straighten it out. Now, thank God that we’re not completely like trees, right? Humans can’t change at any point in their lives. I don’t care if you’re 15 years old, 50 years old, or 80 years old. The beautiful thing about how God created us to be is that we can change if you wish and you desire to. So there’s a lot of values in our culture that have been squandered, and this podcast is designed to talk about the spirit, the soul, and the body. And we’ve been talking a lot about the physical body. In the next episode, I’m going to start transitioning to talking about the spirit and the soul.
Not because I’m an expert at it. The reality is no one really fully understands, but we’re going to use the teachings of the Bible and the word to dissect a little bit and understand what these components are that make us. I truly believe that if you have a strong spirit in you, not the soul, but a strong spirit, that the spirit of God that’s in you will carry you through the adversity, the challenges you have in life, he will carry you and he will provide for you in supernatural ways. Sometimes, it’s really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re going through struggles and challenges. It’s not very joyous sometimes at that. But you have to find joyful moments of that. I can tell you that regardless of my upbringing, I thank God for those experiences, upbringing, the obstacles, the challenges, because it taught me so much.
It brought out a good character in me to see who I am. How can I use this to inspire other people who might see themselves in my story and say, Hey, I’m also a nobody, and I come from a family who are nobodies, and God can use you to do something great. When I was in kindergarten, I remember looking out of our classroom window, and I didn’t know to call it God’s voice then, but I know now it was God’s voice that was speaking right to me through my own voice, as in my head, I thought to myself, when I grow up, I’m going to do something great. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know when I didn’t know the details. But that message has carried with me for all of my life. Now, where I stand here today, I smile because I see what the big thing is, and I’m just getting started.
I’m doing it to give God all the glory, all the credit, because he took someone from a family who had no education. I am the first person in my family, not just as a woman, but the first person in my family to obtain a doctorate level education, start her own business, have her podcast, and more importantly, help people in their transformation. Who cares if I get the education? If you make money through a business, what are you doing to give back to people and give back to your community? So that’s where I smile at God and say thank you. Thank you for showing us who you are in my life and the lives of other people. There are many stories in the Bible that reference that same type of story where he takes nobodies and makes them into somebody for his glory.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Stay tuned for the next one because, like I said, this one is really laying the foundation for the next episodes and is really going to get in there and talk about healing and the soul and the spirit. Thank you for listening and watching this episode. Until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, and reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.