Travel: My First Psychedelic Training

I started my career as a teacher in Hong Kong. It was the best, farthest ticket I could find to escape Tennessee and a vortex of intergenerational trauma.

I’d traveled to China and Tibet the prior summer as part of a research project with the philosophy department at Belmont University. I fell in love with the culture, the ancientness of the place and the possibility of entirely reinventing myself.

What was intended to be a year turned quickly into five. During the time I was there, I moved from teaching kids into developing programs to inspire creative thinking for students as well as teachers.

It was hard to leave Hong Kong behind, but I had an opportunity to pursue a Masters degree in Creative Writing with an emphasis on feminist and psychoanalytic theory. Not wanting to miss that chance, I returned to Tennessee for the next two years.

Upon returning, I discovered all the trauma I’d left behind was still there. Looking for diversions and accomplishments far more than understanding how much I had to heal, I took a job at an educational consulting company in Portland, Oregon.

Gradually, I grew a private coaching practice supporting clients at various tech start ups and companies in the Pacific Northwest.

The Psychedelic Voyage of Pregnancy and Motherhood

Everything seemed to be going well until a complicated pregnancy changed the trajectory of my life.

I lost more weight than I gained during my first trimester and was diagnosed with hyperemesis. For the first time since adolescence, my life and body felt wildly out of control, and no amount of internal discipline or external action plan seemed to be able to regulate what was happening. 

I began to slip into a familiar but distant emotional state of depression. Over the next several months, nearly every pregnancy-related complication that could happen did happen, including the loss of a Vanishing Twin. I spent six weeks on bed rest in the hospital after two placental abruptions and developing preeclampsia. 

Despite all the complications and arriving two months early, I became a mom to the most perfect, preemie ever. We spent a little less than a month in the NICU before the doctors declared we were out of the danger zone and safe to go home. 

As we left the hospital, I remember a deep knowing that my life would never be the same. That feeling washed over me with deep fear and gratitude.

Facing Intergenerational Trauma & Breaking Cycles

The traumatic nature of my pregnancy, the complexity of caring for a preemie and the introduction of a love I’d never felt before unraveled me. All the emotions and traumas from my past came barreling forward into the present. In a moment when my stability felt most necessary, it had never felt less accessible. 

Up with a newborn in the wee hours of the morning, I scoured the internet for resources and answers. Each search seemed to bring me to the same unexpected place – myriad articles highlighting the success of clinical trials and psychedelics. My rational brain dismissed the possibility, while my intuition responded with a yes. 

The cohesive narrative about my life and sense of self were already deconstructing in the face of motherhood. I needed a radical reset, and within months it was clear this was the path calling to me.

Soul Travel: Understanding Mother as Healer

The path that unfolded after following my intuition’s lead into an underground world of psychedelic therapy, and then to Mexico where my family and I reside today.

Now eight years later, I’ve completed numerous trainings and three mentorships. I’ve been blessed to work alongside gifted practitioners, curanderos and curanderas.

I enjoy living in the birthplace of mushrooms as sacred medicine.

Motherhood was my initiation to healing in this lifetime. Also, it has been a great return to my lineage, to the women healers who worked as midwives, helping women bring spirits to earth. They, too, worked underground and were called witches.

My calling to this work is about rebirth and what it means to reclaims one’s soul from surviving to living.

I recognize the voices of my ancestors now, as they tell me — do not stop.

My children — so many children — need to remember the unconditional love of Mother. I’m honored to hold that space.