"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 little studio downtown and got a part-time job.
On my first day, my manager shared her healing journey with psilocybin, and something about that story moved me. The following day, she arrived at work with a bag of mushrooms in little capsules and generously gifted them to me.
I went home and took one. I was not prepared for what happened next. 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.
In the following winter months, 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 locked it away deep down in my body where no one could see it, especially me.
I was also doing Yin training — deep, long, patient poses. These poses opened my body to free old energies and emotions. I learned how to be present for what is without running away. Mindfulness in motion was my first experience of somatic healing.
Yoga and mushrooms (sometimes combined) became my ritual. For many months, I cried alone in the forest and practiced Yin religiously. I intentionally isolated myself to focus on feeling it all without interruption. The wise part of me knew this was a purge, so I purged.
This is where the therapist I have become was born.
The experience of somatic and psychedelics brought a new dimension to my understanding and felt experience of healing. This was raw, real, and unbelievably challenging. This worked!
During that inward immersion, I spent hours in coffee shops, journaling about my desired life and the guide I would become for others. Held by the powerful indigenous land of Squamish, my life now was first crafted on pieces of paper, and countless tear drops shed on the snow.
I could not have manifested this life and become the therapist I am today without letting go of the emotional charge that was constricting me. It took a lot of courage to feel it all and then take action to create the reality I am currently typing this from. I am so grateful to my 31-year-old self for being so brave to feel it all.
Comments