Sometimes Nana’s Medicine Is the Only Medicine

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There are spells that smell like roses and affirmation journals that smell like someone trying to sell you sunlight. Then there is Nana’s medicine — the kind that tastes of vinegar, ash, and whatever herb you don’t want in your tea but absolutely need. It’s not pretty, and it sure as hell isn’t polite. It works.

I learned this in the kitchen, leaning on a counter that had seen births, burials, and every family argument in between. Nana kept a drawer full of things that fixed things people wouldn’t name in public: a tin of dried roots, a spool of black thread, some salt in a chipped saucer. And an onion. Always an onion.

An onion is low-key magic. It’s humble and honest. It looks like nothing, but it’s built to let go — layer after layer after layer. When it decays, it does what it does best: it sheds. It doesn’t try to protect the lie. It tells the truth with its rot.

Which is why Nana taught me the trick: carve a name into the onion and set it moving. Let the woods / the elements / the natural business of decay do the rest. As the onion sloughs its layers away, the thing you’ve carved into it goes with it — and whatever clung to that name gets dragged, peeled, and revealed.

It’s simple. It cuts to the root. And for people draped in their own ego like it’s cashmere, that’s where it’ll hurt them the most. Ego is an insurance policy made of brittle paper. When the layers fall away, sometimes the paper just crumples.

The Work: A Ritual for Calling the Layers Off

This is not a glamour ritual. It’s not about punishment for the sake of cruelty. It’s about exposure — letting the natural world and simple intent do the revealing. If you want something pretty, go light a candle and buy a crystal. If you want the truth to come off someone like sweat after labor, do Nana’s medicine.



You’ll need:

  • One good firm onion (not a soft, rotting thing — we want decay on our terms, not by accident).

  • A sharp knife or carving tool.

  • A small scrap of paper and a pen (optional).

  • A place to leave it where it can be undisturbed: deep in the woods, at the edge of a field, beneath a tree that’s seen worse.

  • Your intention. Be crisp. Be direct. No flowery nonsense.

When to do it:
Do it when you can leave it be. Night works. New moon works. Dawn works. The timing matters less than your clarity.

Steps:

  1. Hold the onion. Feel its weight. Call the name — say it aloud or whisper it. If you’re carving someone’s name, carve it into the flesh: first and last, nickname, title — whatever sticks to them. If you’re calling out a pattern, carve a word: LIES, FACADE, EGO. If it’s you you need to strip, carve your own name. Do not overthink it. Act.

  2. If you want, write the same name or word on the scrap of paper and fold it into the onion’s shadow (tuck it under the onion or lay it beside). This is old-school sympathetic trickery — like putting a name on a poppet, but dirt-simple.

  3. Walk to the place you chose. Breathe. Speak the intent: short, plain sentence. Something like, “By skin and rot, I call the layers off.” Or: “Let the truth slip free and lie where it falls.” Say it once, don’t tether it with drama.

  4. Throw the onion into the woods where it can do its job. You don’t need to dig. You don’t need to light anything. You don’t need to wish for anyone’s ruin; wish for truth. Leave. Don’t gloat. Let the earth do the work.

  5. Follow up with your life: keep your eyes open. People who are wearing façades will trip on their own seams; sometimes strangers or mutuals will notice before they do. The onion isn’t an instant reveal button — it’s a slow chemical witness. Be patient enough to see it.

Why This Works (and why you’ll like it)

You may call this superstition. Call it household alchemy. Call it prankish metaphysics. Call it guerrilla truth-telling. Whatever the label, it works on three levels:

  1. Sympathetic action. You make an object imitate the thing you want changed — you urge it to do to the subject what you wish would happen. Carving, naming, releasing: these are old charms dressed in plain clothes.

  2. Psychic pressure. The act of naming and committing to a ritual (even a small one) sharpens your attention. You begin to notice the cracks you might have ignored. You see patterns. People who have been living on performance and spin can’t be perfect forever.

  3. Sociological reality. The onion doesn’t lie. People who wear layers do. When you do the work, you aren’t forcing the truth — you’re creating conditions where truth walks out from behind the curtain because it can’t help itself.

Also? It’s satisfying. There’s an earthy sense of closing a loop when you put that onion down and move on. No posts. No public shaming. No screencaps. Just a small, efficient, elemental act.

Variations (Because Some of You Will Want Options)

  • For the gentle reveal: Carve initials only. Bury the onion shallow and keep a small vigil of awareness. This is for people who want truth without theatrical collapse.

  • For self-clearing: Carve your own name. Use it when you sense you’re lying to yourself or holding a mask that hurts your work. The onion humbles you without moralizing.

  • For lies that are loud: Carve the thing (e.g., “PROMISE,” “FORGIVENESS”) and leave it by a crossing or fork. The image of that word decaying in public has a way of nudging conversations.

  • For those who don’t have woods: Use a potted plant in a courtyard, or a private compost heap. The principle is the same: let organic processes separate the layers.

Notes from Practical Experience

  • Don’t expect dramatic fireworks. Most of the time this is a slow reveal. But slow is real.

  • Don’t use this to escalate conflict you plan to start. If you want to go scorched-earth with a grubby ego, do it on your own timeline. Nana’s medicine is for peeling, not for orchestrating drama. (You didn’t ask for lectures; still — use the thing like someone who knows what malfunctioning machinery can do.)

  • You will feel better. Not because you’ve “won” but because you’ve acted. Action clears the sticky dread of watching and waiting.

Closing — Because We’re Not Doing Soft Edges Here

People love theater masks. They love curated selves, those attractive smoke-and-mirror versions they can show at brunch. But people aren’t masks — they’re root systems, bristling and messy. Some roots need the frost.

Nana’s medicine is not pretty. It’s not necessarily gentle. It’s honest. It takes something common and everyday — an onion, your breath, the dirt — and asks nature to do what nature does best: remove, reduce, reveal.

If you’re tired of being gaslit by someone who smells of cologne and self-importance, sometimes you need to hand the work to the earth and let it do the slow, humiliating job. The onion doesn’t gossip. It only sheds. The truth, pushed into the light by rot and time, has a way of making the ego fold in on itself like cheap paper.

Do it, if you mean it. Plant the onion, say the name, and then live loudly enough that truth has to keep up.

- Sage

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