Like many other medicine people, I didn't choose this life, it chose me. It's been my path in many lives, but it took me a while to remember my true self this time around.
As a child I was painfully shy and moved around a lot. I never felt like I fit in. I had 2 children in my early 20s, and thought I needed to be "normal" to raise them. I did some research online about all kinds of "religions", and received my 1st degree Reiki attunement in 2002. One of my sons had special needs, and that kept me very busy. We did the "church thing" and the "boy scout thing" and went camping every month.
In 2015 I was a full time pharmacy technician and working part time in my favorite store - a local crystal shop.
On August 11, 2016, my 17 year old son Chris died suddenly. This isn't the story of how the worst day of my life played out though. That's for another blog, maybe, one day. (but learn the signs of the onset of diabetes, please!)
As you can imagine, this just about destroyed me and my husband Mike. The downward spiral we were on must have been horrifying to watch. For us, nothing mattered anymore. Life came to a complete halt and every single day was a struggle just to find the will to breath. Neither one of us went to work for 3 months.
I've always been one of those "find the good in everything" kind of people. But the time, the best I could think of was that we truly learned who our support network was.
I decided if God existed, he was so disconnected from humanity that he didn't give a crap about his children. I was hurting, and angry, and full of shame. How could I think of myself as a healer but not know how sick my son was? I didn't deserve to live, but my family wouldn't let me die. I stopped eating. I would go to the gym and get my heart rate up as high as Chris' had been. Then torture myself at that rate for as long as I possibly could, just to feel what Chris had been through.
I don't share this to make you cry, I share this so you KNOW me, and you know the pain I've been through. Because it's in our hardest times, that we grow the most.
A month later, I met an Ayahuasca Shaman, Anita Scott. Another month later, I was in Ceremony. The 1st night, my son came to me! Chris was fully healed!! I got to spend time with him, to hug him, and apologize to him for having been ignorant, and just BE with my baby boy. My son taught me that there is no disconnect. He taught me how to communicate with him in another realm, with all of my ancestors.
At this point I hadn't even been sure if life after death was a real thing or not. Chris told me how much he loves me, how I had done everything I could with the knowledge that I had. He told me his "body was shitty and he was glad to be out of it." He also told me he could cuss now. KIDS!
The 2nd night, I became Chris, and lived his horribly painful death over and over and over and over; until I CHOSE to STOP re-living it. Mind you, I had been re-living every moment of his last 12 hours ever since he had left his body. When I finally had enough of this self-torture, I ran out of the healing circle, to the moon, and the tree, screaming ENOUGH. My Shaman, Anita, came to join me, hug me, and teach me some coping techniques.
I went back into Ceremony, and I met God. God as s a woman, as Mother Ayahuasca, as you and me! That weekend, and told her all of the things on my mind. She let me yell and scream and cry. She told me to let her have it all, she's strong and can handle it. Then she told me she does care, and is always there for me, but that I have to experience these things so she can experience them as me. That I am god, having a human experience, that we are ALL God. Not just the unknown all-[powerful god of my moms religion, but GOD. Source, Great Spirit, Infinite Creator, whatever name you want to give this amazing being that gave life to the universe.
WOOOAAAHHHH!!!
Although I will probably always have "grief attacks", the changes this dramatic healing made in me were HUGE!!!! I didn't just come home liking weird music, I came home with a rediscovered love of life. I had experienced UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, I had forgiven myself, Chris, and god, and it changed my life forever.
It took a little convincing, but a month later, Mike and I were both in Ceremony. Mike came out of this a whole new man!!! He woke up. He experienced his past lives, and discovered he is a Medicine Man, has always been one. I'll let him share his full story in another blog.
Since then, we have ate, drank, breathed, and LIVED the medicine life. We KNOW the healing these plants can do, and we want to share that with the world!