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my story
How I began my Shamanic Path
Stories are so important to be shared, to show, to guide us as individuals and as a community. I'm always fascinated in everyone's story. How they arrived to where they are in each given moment. It's the stories that shape us and live in us that guide us into who we are and who we are becoming. Whenever I work with a client we get straight to their story. It's an opportunity for someone to be deeply honest, not just with me, but with themselves. It takes tremendous courage and trust to share from this place of deep honesty and vulnerability. And it feels only fitting for me to share some of my own story with all of you too.
childhood
I grew up in a middle class family of five, in Ohio. I had the privilege to live surrounded by forest, farm fields, and a magical pond. I never felt forced or required to follow any particular faith. My spiritual journey began in the woods of my backyard. My faith took root amongst the trees, moss, and earth. Over time my spiritual journey meandered like a river, experiencing different landscapes of beliefs, practices, and religions.
As I grew into my teenage years I spent less time playing outdoors and began to withdraw into my own inner world. I became interested in the Catholic faith. I never fully understood all of the rules and rituals, but it was the mystical dimension of Catholicism that lured me in.
Alongside my budding spirituality, I was also a very typical teenage girl. I desperately tried to fit in like everyone else, went to all the dances, wore the trendy clothes, and flirted with boys despite my own crippling insecurities. I was sexually assaulted as a minor and internalized the experience with my own shame and blame. With some assistance from my family, loans, and late nights working at a deli, I paid my way through college where I began my theology degree. I had no idea what practical use a theology degree would provide, but my heart yearned to continue to explore my own faith, spirituality, and existential questions rolling in my head.
During these early college years I began a deep and life changing relationship with a boyfriend. He was my first love. We both shared a similar Catholic spirituality and it felt like we were meant to be together forever. I fully immersed myself in this new experience of being in an intimate relationship, of being liked, of being a girlfriend.
crisis point
Just before I reached the age of twenty, I experienced an immensely traumatic and abrupt halt to this first love relationship. What I had interpreted as a spiritual mystical relationship was in fact a very dangerous and mentally unstable situation. In retrospect there were red flags everywhere, but for a young girl naive to the world and wrapped up in idealistic notions of her faith, I had no idea what I was dealing with. In a single night my life nearly ended and my boyfriend ended up in a psychic ward. Not only did my relationship suddenly end, but my entire world of spirituality and faith collapsed.
I hid the experience from many people in my life, even my own parents had no idea of the extent of what happened. I stopped going to church. I felt immensely confused and in shock. I had no idea how to begin processing this trauma. In fact, I was in denial that I had even experienced trauma. I went into a spiral of panic attacks and deep depression. Visits to the ER room, late nights praying in churches, and prescribed mental therapy landed me with a prescription for anti-depressants and a crumbling belief system.
As my world fell apart and I questioned even the mere existence of God, I somehow completed my theology degree. I entered college a devout Catholic and came out a very confused and traumatized agnostic.
For several years after that traumatic event, I had abandoned all sense of my own spirituality. In fact, I was afraid of it. Without realizing, I had abandoned myself. I doubted if anything mattered. I stopped caring. I began to explore more risky and promiscuous behaviors and generally treated my life as a joke. Deep down there was a broken and scared heart that desperately wanted to make meaning of the world, but I was terrified to find it. I trusted only tangible evidence of our reality and shrugged off even the concept of love as a made up notion. I didn't believe love was real and yet I yearned for it desperately.
journey of healing
Over the following twenty years, I began the slow spiraling process of healing. I didn't realize it most of the time, but I began to build up my belief system with each new experience, each new mistake, each new discovery.
I explored many different paths after college. I worked at a non-profit and travelled to Guatemala. I taught and volunteered for several years throughout Asia. I practiced Buddhism and mindfulness in a recreational way for many years.
I worked on an organic farm and thought perhaps feeding healthy food to communities was the path for me. I experimented with wild food foraging and herbal medicines. I endured a debilitating digestive disorder for many years and through a blend of conventional and natural medicine found a way to bring balance to my body.
So many changes and healing were happening in my outer world those first several years after trauma, but my inner work had yet begun. My heart was still left untended to in many ways. It was from this unhealed place, not knowing my own heart, that I stepped into marriage and began to grow my family.
While my marriage was challenged from the beginning, becoming a mother came naturally. Motherhood awoke something in my heart that had not been touched since childhood. I felt love. It was a funny feeling that I was not sure I had permission to feel, but I did it anyway. My love grew and grew so naturally with each new baby. Three in fact!
As this natural motherly love grew within me, it began to shed light on areas of my life where love was absent - not only from my marriage, but from myself. In my desperate attempts to save my marriage, I unknowingly began a journey of learning to love myself.
learning to love myself
It was from the advice of a marriage counselor that I began to take time for myself. I was a busy mom of little ones with hardly a minute to spare, and yet, I began taking myself out on dates. It started first with giving myself permission to go on a short hike by myself once a week. Then it grew into grabbing a coffee and journaling after that hike. Then I decided to turn my recreational meditation practice into a daily ritual. I started waking up for the sunrise and exploring long lost passions and talents I had forgotten.
The process was messy and by no means perfect. Most mornings I was interrupted by my kiddos needing breakfast or assistance in breaking up a sibling rivalry. Some mornings I was riddled with guilt after yelling mid-meditation for everyone to just be quiet. And then other mornings I learned to weave in beautiful moments for myself amidst the chaos that is modern family life.
I began to regularly join community gatherings with a local meditation studio where I was exposed to a variety of mindful & spiritual practices. Eventually I started volunteering my time there. My world and lens of reality was powerfully opened with Forest Bathing and Guided Shamanic Journey Meditations. I began to remember long lost parts of myself.
My artistic gifts came online as I started to paint beautiful masterpieces of nature seemingly out of nowhere. Unintentionally, I began lucid dreaming and having powerful spiritual experiences while awake and asleep. Nature started to speak to me, or maybe I was finally able to start listening again.
And then I had my first introduction to an energy healer. She was a bit eccentric and odd, but my curiosity far exceeded any preconceived judgements I harbored. I decided to give it a try. You can read more about my first experience here. It was profound and it no doubt accelerated my path as a healer. And yet, I still held immense skepticism and doubt. I wanted to believe in all of it...the spirit world, life after death, meaning to our existence...but I was terrified of the possibility of being duped.
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decision point
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Eventually I reached a decision point. I had read enough books and listened to enough podcasts on the scientific evidence of consciousness, but for some reason I was still doubting the world of energy healing and spirituality. Then one afternoon I suddenly realized that it all boiled down to a single pointed thought.
If I want to believe in all of this, then it becomes real. If I don't want to believe in it, then it is not real. It sounds so simple, perhaps even obvious -- but in that afternoon, I finally realized how I had spent the past twenty years actively resisting this truth. So in that moment, I very consciously decided that I would choose to believe in all of it. If it only boiled down to my fear of being wrong or looking foolish, then why would I sacrifice a whole life of magic and meaning, soul purpose and love? And why was I so terrified of being wrong in the first place? I can save that past-life story for another day...
We are all co-creators in this reality we are living in and we have a choice to actively participate and believe in our relationship with the Earth, with ourselves, and with each other. It is an act of deep remembrance of who we are, where we come from, and why we are here. This single point became so visceral in my awareness that I quite profoundly chose to believe. I chose to say 'Yes' to the longing and knowing of my heart. From that point on, I began to lean into the yearnings of my heart and stopped actively denying, resisting, and fighting in my mind.
The moment I said yes to my heart, everything fell into place (and some things fell out of place, like my marriage). I followed the spiritual breadcrumbs that led me on this shamanic path, introduced me to the shamans of the Andes and the wisdom of the Mayans. I studied and mentored with Psychics, Reiki Energy Healing, and Shamanic Energy Medicine. I took workshops on Forest Therapy and Shamanic Journey Meditations. I grew a profound relationship with the medicine of Cacao and trained with elders in Guatemala. The connection and communication with the natural world continued to expand and grow beyond my wildest imaginings and it continues to do so today.
The most profound discovery was in my own healing abilities. I have always wanted to help heal the world. For most of my life I thought this would be through soup kitchens or working at a charity. Now I know it is through energy healing and shamanic medicine. Almost immediately after saying Yes to this shamanic healer path, my healing abilities were almost instantly activated. Even when I was still in training, I was shocked when I discovered that I had instantly stopped my colleague's urinary tract infection. Or in my first year practicing on my own I would remove energetic blocks from clients and then discover they had almost instantly received new job opportunities, sometimes within minutes. This actually works! And all it took was my belief.
I share my story to shed light on how beautifully human and extraordinary our unique stories are and how they shape us and set us on our soul path. The hardships and challenges open up doors of immense growth and opportunity. The difficult relationships and experiences become our greatest teachers. It benefits us so much to reflect on our stories and notice the patterns, find the 'teachers' amidst the difficulties, journey through healing and forgiveness, discover the gifts hidden in each experience, and remember deeply who we are.