A Tale of Spiritual Remembering: Part One
A creative expression of unique experiences I have had over the last year using unexpected healing approaches.
Today
I am sitting here trying to find the words. All I can think to start with is acknowledging how language limits us humans—though I love words and writing.
I am deeply moved by how my heart’s emotional energy can create art by borrowing terms and creating a sentence I had never even thought about forming before. Magic unfolds from my fingers, typing or writing across a page by simply pouring my truth out onto the canvas.
Yet, sometimes, that truth is still terrifying to share.
There have been times when I have likely overshared parts of my journey. If you’ve been here long enough you have witnessed how long my posts used to be, I had so much inside me bursting to get out. My pen couldn’t keep up with my brain and it didn’t matter if people read what I said or not, I needed to write—for me.
Vulnerability is tricky in that way. It is a powerful healing window when open and it is simultaneously a leap of risk into potential hurt. Honoring boundaries and balance with its light and shadows are a lifelong dance.
The fact of the matter is, I still care what you think of me.
And over the last year, I have had some of the most uniquely profound spiritual experiences of my life thus far. The approaches and modalities in which I had them though may be deemed as controversial, illegitimate and/or too “woo”. Therefore, I have kept them quite close, uncertain of if I would ever write much about them.
The most recent experience however—feels too important. It was a remembering. A soul-finding journey back to Love, to Spirit, to my essence, to what matters. I cannot show up here as my authentic self unless I attempt over the next while to share how I got here.
From breathwork to inner child meditations and regressions, from ancestral messages to intentional daily prayer, from cacao ceremonies to ecstatic dances, from tarot card readings to internal family system therapy, from grief gatherings to a psilocybin journey —the last year has offered abundant gifts of wisdom, connection, healing and Love.
I am learning who I am and where I come from. What I believe we all are and where we all come from. I am learning to trust in the Mystery and to trust my inner Knowing. I am learning to embrace the “woo” and allow anyone else’s discomfort in what I believe— to be theirs to work through.
That can be easier said than done sometimes though and with my most recent journey with psilocybin, I have worry. As a proud sober human, there is of course stigma around any substance we may choose to aid in our recovery. We battle shame for even things like anti-depressants or anxiety medications because the message of emotional sobriety is repeatedly preached within most sobriety resources and communities.
I myself have been battling judgement of healing avenues such as mushrooms due to this and because I did previously use them recreationally. Now, I understand the purpose and benefit of Nature’s medicine when used with intention and in ceremony. I felt called to experience it myself—both to let go of my own judgments and to understand why so many Indigenous cultures have turned to these practices in ritual for generations.
Nevertheless, the fears were still there in regards to sharing about it—will people fear that I am heading back to the world of drugs and alcohol? Will my spiritual experiences be labeled insignificant or unreliable because of how I had them? Will I lose respect from readers, friends, or family due to how I have chosen to tend to my healing, recovery and life? Will others’ classify me as someone who is not living a sober life?
And then yesterday, I woke with the clarity that I had to write about what I trust needs to be shared. For my healing. For my processing and integration. For my art. For my soul. For my ancestors. For the Spirit within me.
And that is enough. I am enough.
So here I am as this silly human, limited with language, attempting to creatively express these life-changing experiences the only way I know how—from my heart.
One Year Ago
When I first moved to Florida, my partner was still living in Gainesville, FL. I liked visiting there, but shortly after surviving a few summer days of pure dripping humidity in the claustrophobic swamp that it is, I realized I couldn’t move there after all.
Thus began the adventure with her of hybrid dating. Not quite long distance, but not fully in-person either. We would travel nearly every weekend to see each other. I was staying in multiple locations in and around the Tampa and Clearwater area.
I had stopped therapy upon moving because of state licensure requirements, so I could no longer continue working with my therapists from New Mexico. This was hard to accept at first, but I tried to seize the opportunity for further venturing into different healing modalities and embrace this time for rest.
I also chose to hold onto one of the last pieces of advice my therapist of four years gave me, “Times of great change and transition are opportunities to lean into spirituality.” I did not anticipate being essentially unemployed for six months, but now looking back I understand that this time was designed and destined to be a season for me to spiritually seek and uncover.
Last summer, during one of the visits back to Gainesville, I registered for a breathwork ceremony at a local yoga studio. A woman at The Lynx (a bookstore I would spend time at while my girlfriend worked) referred me and something within me lit up knowing that I had to try it. It was described to me as, “a seven-year therapy session bottled into one experience where you’re like a snow globe and all of your emotions and trauma are going to get shaken up. Then when you leave you will feel so settled and grounded as the snow dissolves.”
I had never participated in something like it before. I was nervous, but I was open. At that time I had sat in many churches, read many spiritual books, attended meditation ceremonies, attempted laughter yoga, and tried so many other new and different things to try to find the answers my soul was craving. At that point, it was more like—why not?
We began by sitting in a ceremonial circle where they created a beautiful alter prepared with dried red rose petals, candles, and other delicate treasures from nature. In the center of the alter also rested a large bowl of cacao, which was intended to be shared after the breathwork portion of the ceremony took place.
The facilitators explained the expectations and what to prepare for. They guided us through practicing what type of breathing we would attempt. Essentially we were encouraged to take two quick breaths in and one short breath out, over and over again. We would breathe this way for forty-five minutes while music played.
They explained that sometimes people experience a tingling sensation in their hands and what they call “T-rex hands” will start to form. They reassured us that this is normal and to allow it to happen because it is emotional energy moving through your body and trying to fight the sensation would only make it worse.
They also revealed that sometimes people experience big emotions that may manifest through screaming, loud grieving, and uncontrollable laughter. We were asked to honor everyone’s unique journey with it and to try our best to remain in and with our own. We were told to trust that everyone else is safe and they will receive support when necessary from the facilitators. This was important to hear for my “need to fix everyone else’s emotional experience” ways.
I will never forget the energy I felt in the space. At the climax of the session, many of us were screaming and crying hysterically in harmony with the beating drums blaring from the speakers. I just kept breathing how they told us to, no matter what.
The more I breathed, the more my hands began to cramp like T-rex. Then visions started coming in. They were the most challenging to stay with. I began to not only see, but feel universal pain and suffering.
Trigger Warning
Flashes came in of beings who had been sexually assaulted or raped as I had or worse. Visions of oppression, violence, war, slavery— humans being caned, hung, and whipped. Darkness. Harm. Loneliness. Disconnectedness.
I was grieving uncontrollably for what felt like hours. I saw faces of strangers. I saw my dad and an energy of grief around him. I saw the silhouette of the man who sexually assaulted me in Uganda. I smelled him again. I saw him driving away on the motorcycle. Then I heard it.
My scream.
The same scream I screamed after it happened. My whole body shook and my hands tightened in a way that I thought they were going to stay forever. I remember almost giving up.
I did not want to stay in this.
The darkness.
End of Trigger Warning
I cannot remember exactly how I made it through or when it shifted. I just know I stayed with it and before I knew it I heard something else familiar—my laugh. And then a voice, “do you hear that? All that joy lives within YOU.”
Writing about that moment still brings tears to my eyes. That whisper from the facilitator still feels like a message from Spirit, from the Divine themself. Reminding me of the light within me that never truly blew out, even with how dark it got.
And then I was laughing hysterically and I saw a vision of a light, very bright, multicolored and multi-layered, in the top upper right corner of the darkness. It got brighter and brighter the more I laughed.
We closed the ceremony with shares expressing what we could formulate into words about what we saw and felt. We shared cacao and existed in the energy we had created together.
It was stunning.
My partner picked me up afterwards and I was honestly scared to tell her about it. Not because of anything other than fear of abandonment. I did not know how she would respond and then there was the thought— would she still want to stay with someone who claimed they had just received healing gifts from the Divine just by breathing a little weird? I had only just moved here after all!
I told her anyway.
I also jumped right into sharing about it with a dear friend of mine who I had only met a couple months prior. Someone whom I met when my partner randomly and bravely approached her at a sober gathering asking if I could potentially live with her family while this friend travelled to North Carolina for several months. Serendipitously this friend and I share a soul-sister-like connection and immediately became friends.
During the telling of what I had just seen and felt, she mentioned how I would probably experience something similarly profound if I ever decided to try a psilocybin journey. She knew as someone who grows them, how healing of a medicine mushrooms can be. I externally brushed it off, but internally knew she was right and tucked that Knowing and curiosity away for later.
That breathwork ceremony kickstarted something for me. I didn’t notice it at the time necessarily, but my life began to slowly shift in how I chose to interact with Mother Earth, with Spirit, with my Self, with prayer and sacred space, with art, and with wonder and awe.
All meanwhile feeling completely lost with my purpose as someone who didn’t have a job and who just left a state filled with so many people I love dearly.
Yet, I could not stop thinking about that feeling of joy and how beautiful that light was. It’s almost as though on my hardest days after, I could go back to it.
I still can.
I find deep comfort in it. It is as if it’s always there—holding me.
Loving me.
Guiding me through and never leaving my side. Reminding me, I am never alone.
To be continued…
How about you?
Have you ever tried healing approaches that you fear sharing with others or have you ever experienced something that you think others may see as impossible or too wild? How have you processed those? Feel free to share what you need here, you are always welcome!
Wow, this is fascinating. I have heard that breathwork ceremony can be powerful but have never heard it explained or how it can impact a person. And just to comment on your sharing of plant medicine, I for one think it comes from Spirit and not anything that would lead one back to "drugs and alcohol" (for what that's worth)!
Your healing journey has been so amazing to witness. And such medicine for me as you've shared. Love you!!