The name for this blog came to me as I was soaking in the bathtub.

OFRADIX. I didn’t want to use my more common web aliases, but still felt that it would be nice to have some consistency. So I started again with my initials. They have helped me as markers of identity since high school. Then they helped with my company logo years before the advent of the Internet. I added the -radix to indicate the importance of being radical in my way. I wanted the name to be unique – and a google search confirmed that this word has not been in use as such.

My way through life has frequently been on the radical side. I find radical an interesting word; one that is often misunderstood. For me, the word is not associated with chaos and violence – I take it from its Latin origins: the root.

I was radical when I choose to follow a way of peace in life. There is nothing else that connects us human beings to the divine in the same way than peace.

I was radical when that way led me to become a farmer. I wanted to care for an increasingly battered planet that was raped for its resources. I wanted to care for the planet most directly on a piece of land that would allow me to grow food. Incidentally, root vegetables were the most suitable crop for the land I was stewarding, since the initiatives I was involved in were working on marginal land due to geography, climate, or soil.

I was radical when caring for the land and the environment inspired me to consider caring for people in a professional way. I started to learn that the way of a hermit does not have to be a disconnect from people altogether. I also started to understand that the land and the people are one. Growing healthy food was one way to support health and healing. However, there were many other human needs that also needed to be considered. Becoming a nurse was my way to respond to some of these needs of individuals and in the community.

I was radical when becoming a nurse led me to explore the taken-for-granted attitudes and behaviours within the professional culture and the health care system and consider its linkages to peace. Applying medical cures and healing started to appear as contradictions the more I got involved in professional health care. I rooted myself in focusing my interests on the sociopolitical determinants of health and in exploring the intersection of health and peace.

I am radical because I have roots in the way of peace.

Ofradix – no, it is not the new name of a wonder cure! And there will be no product or service being marketed under this name for as long as I associate with it. I hope it speaks to you, dear reader, as much as it does to me.