Healing Grief With Psychedelics

"Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life." – Anne Roiphe

Eight years ago, arriving hand in hand with fall, I moved to Squamish, a mountainous town in BC, Canada, to pursue a Yin Yoga teacher training.

I found a small studio downtown and picked up a part-time job. On my very first day, my manager shared her healing journey with psilocybin. Something in her story touched me deeply. The next day, she arrived at work with a bag of mushrooms in capsules and generously gifted them to me.

I went home, took one without hesitation, and was not prepared for what followed. A massive wave of grief washed over me, and I spent the next hours crying the most honest and unrestrained tears of my life. It was a mixture of distress and liberation.

That winter, I took small doses of mushrooms once, or sometimes multiple times a week, and tapped into grief that was both mine and ancestral. Grief was not something I had ever been able to feel. I had buried it where no one could see it, especially me.

I was also doing Yin training—deep, long, patient poses. These poses opened my body and freed old energies. I learned how to stay present with what is, without running away.

Mindfulness in motion was my first taste of somatic healing. For months, my ritual was simple: mushrooms, Yin, the forest. I cried, often alone among the trees, and practiced yoga daily. I intentionally withdrew from the world so I could feel it all without interruption. Some part of me knew this was a purge, so I allowed it.

This is where the psychedelic therapist I have become was born.

The union of somatic work and psychedelics gave me a new dimension of healing—raw, real, unbelievably challenging, yet profoundly effective. During this inward immersion, I spent hours in coffee shops journaling about the life I envisioned for myself and the guide I would become for others. Held by the powerful Indigenous land of Squamish, my life was first crafted on pieces of paper, with countless teardrops shed on the snow.

I could not have become who I am today without releasing the emotional weight that was holding me back. It took courage to feel it all, and courage again to act on the vision that emerged. I am endlessly grateful to my 31-year-old self for her bravery, for opening the door I now walk through every day.