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It’s May again, y’allz!

That means it's Mental Health Awareness Month. In my orbit, thats every day, but I’ll take the Month if it means the beacon is shining a ‘lil brighter and the shadow having less space to hide!

This May, I want to shed some more light upon my own mental health journey and return to wholeness.. My reconnection to Soul. 

In many indigenous cultures and Ancient Wisdom ways mental health struggles, addictions and  chronic ailments are looked at from a completely different lens.  Many preliterate cultures looked at these afflictions as a Sousta, or soul-loss that has caused disconnection. When we have become burned out ( physically, mentally,emotionally and/or spiritually), have strayed from our soul's purpose, or have experienced something traumatizing, any of these things can cause a disconnection.

I’ve written entries in the past about my own journey, but there is a piece that I’ve struggled to bring forward into the light, even though it has been a critical part of my story, and a significant pathway to sustainable healing.

So here it is in a nutshell. Those who know, know.. I now feel ready… ( altho admittedly vulnerable) to open up to the world about it, to advocate for it and to work to end the myths and the stigma around it. 

I am one of the MANY people who have turned to Psychedelic Assisted healing modalities. Specifically to me, Psilocybin.

I remember being a patient (yet again) at a local residential Eating Disorder facility , feeling absolutely hopeless. I remember sitting on the floor with one of my closest friends… utterly in pieces ( “face-down in the arena” as Brene Brown would say) Sobbing without tears, barely able to say the words… wailing to my friend, 

“I don't know what to do. I don’t think I physically have another recovery in me, let alone a sustainable one. I am so tired of fighting. I'm so tired of my own self. So very tired. I think I’m done”

I say this here because it speaks to how low I felt and that I was willing to try ANYTHING. I was afraid that there wasn't a future for me if I didn't do something different. And not for lack of really working hard at many different attempts! I should also state here that I did not have the resources to go out of the country to experience a retreat, nor was I able to secure a spot in one of the very few clinical trials that were available at the time. Deciding to, and committing to, “do whatever it takes' ' and committing to THAT concept, is what led to viable transformation, it wasn’t just the “MAGIC” in the mushrooms.

 I’d only be telling part of the story if I left out the details of what the Magic was, enabled by the mushrooms!

I left the facility behind after being given the Death sentence, carrying the NEVER TO RECOVER label  and decided to do a Solstice medicine journey, facilitated by a local Peruvian trained Shaman of some renown. 

My first journey with the sacred medicine  was a BUST….or so I thought.

The container was poorly held, and by all accounts it was an experience that I felt was a waste of my time and money. I was quite angry about the whole experience. Afterwards, I headed to the Mountains for a week of nature connected healing in the Mountains of Colorado with my ever patient Husband. I remember clearly, sitting high in the Rockies at the base of an Alpine Lake and surrendering it all to the mountains, giving it all over to Gaia to hold.

Still more than a little angry about my “NON- psychedelic experience” over the Solstice I returned home from the mountains, completely unaware of the shift that had occured within me

.

And that, dear friends, is the MAGIC.

Often we get the medicine we need with Entheogens (Sacred Plants). Not what we expect, or ask for!  The Mycelium began to weave a web of healing within me.

I remember recounting my “NON-Experience” to that same friend (from the floor) the one who sat with me in all of my darkness ( side note; when you find those rare gems… keep ‘em) she silently raised her eyebrows waited a bit looked right at me .. she has the most twinkly eyes… and she laughed. 

“Ok” she said “ but SOMETHING shifted”.

She was not wrong.

It was being reflected in every aspect of my life.

I became an active agent of change in my own transformative process in a beautiful partnership with the plants and with Spirit.

It was nearly 3 years before I interacted with the spirit of Psilocybin again.

This time, I had someone with whom I had cultivated a trusting relationship, a  brilliant medicine woman , and a coaching colleague to guide me. I began a microdosing practice, in preparation for another journey. The experience was totally different. Profound and so incredibly supportive and healing.

Proper attention to preparation, set and setting and integration made such a difference. I have had the blessing and benefit of being beautifully held in Ceremony.

*it’s super important for me to note here:

Using Psychedelic medicines for healing, is NOT a one size fits all Magic Bullet, nor a one and done cure for what ails you. While it often can be what allows the walls and barriers to come down, allowing us to open the door to shadow, helping to expose and examine the monsters under the bed, reminding us that we are part of a bigger connection a supported and important part of the divine natural order that holds us to and requires us to be in new relational ways in order to live life in LASTING TRANSFORMATION. ( the old ways and old patterns are still there… we  just figure out how to BE better, and that it’s worth the work!!!)

What Psilocybin has enabled in me:

My relationship with the medicine has created space around the unknown, it has allowed me permission to be. Permission to inhabit my body. Permission to not be in control.. It has reconnected me to my very essence.

It has ignited a soul directed passion to be in Service. To Self, to others, to the world.. The earth itself.To be in service to “Common Unity’ and consciousness.

Active Healing. Healing as a verb.

Why come out of the “Psychedelic Closet” now?

I’m choosing to tell this part of the story now because I believe that this Medicine’s time is now. So many of us aren't given the luxury of time. Time is finite. People need access to paths for reconnection. In the purest way this medicine can be monumental in the Healing of Humanity.

We need to share the stories of healing, to shine a light, to BE a beacon of hope in the darkness.

Access to these life saving and Ancient healing medicines have been restricted for far too long.

Silence is Complacency.

In Service and with Great Love~

Suez