Ayahuasca In The Sacred Valley, Peru

Sitting on my little mattress on the wood plank floor of the malloca, under the clear panels of the ceiling, I felt my body growing heavy and tired, my eyes drooping uncontrollably, and I fought to stay awake and witness the unfolding of the beginning of this ceremony, my first time drinking ayahuasca. 

I looked up to the stars in the night sky, seeing the tiniest shred of a sliver of the moon, too, and wondered if I’d just drank a sleeping potion and if this whole thing was fake, something we as a culture had fabricated collectively in order to convince ourselves we were *doing* something, something natural and ancient and mysterious, in order to heal. The first shadows of my resistance to this healing medicine journey were making themselves known. 

Soon I heard the close-teethed whisper-whistle of the maestro begin, a sweet half-melody / half-rhythm that felt like a voluptuous invitation, and somewhere deep inside my body I knew that he was calling gently and softly to the snake, the animus of this jungle plant cocktail, to awaken and welcome her/him into the ceremony space. 

My body swayed as my eyes started growing accustomed to the medicine, seeing the green sparkling iridescent patterns of the energetic structure that the separate voices of the three maestros were co-creating together as they began singing icaros — medicine songs. 

What unfolded that night of the first of four ayahuasca ceremonies was intense and mostly that sort of magic and journeying that is completely indescribable. My journey that night and over the following week at retreat wasn’t easy in any sense of that word, and two months later I am still trying to untangle the strings that make up the web of my experience within those days in Peru. 

But you know me, I am going to try to articulate it somehow, anyway :) 

My journey toward ayahuasca began some years ago, when I made a new friend who was heavily involved in the ayahuasca community in Sedona. I was aware of ayahuasca previously but never in such a close, second-hand way. This beautiful new friend of mine was a bright example of the way the medicine of this particular plant could be so seamlessly integrated into everyday living, in a way that seemed so… normal, grounded, balanced. 

I was in the midst of pregnancies and breastfeeding at that time, so I wasn’t sure how I felt about consuming ayahuasca myself, but I started receiving some pretty strong messaging as the years went on that I would eventually meet this mystically powerful healing plant in a very personal way. 

One day I was sitting on the couch nursing one of my boys, and watching Taylor out in the backyard through the windows of the living room, and I heard words in my mind, like someone was speaking to me, “It’s time for Taylor to sit with ayahuasca,” clear as if someone had been sitting next to me. But there was no one with me in the living room except my young baby and my dog. 

Fast forward a couple of years and Taylor had sat in three aya ceremonies at that point, and it was the longest I had NOT been pregnant since I started having kids over six years prior. 

I could feel that my time to experience this healing was drawing near, and I opened an email from a beloved mentor/now-sister of mine Caitlyn Howe, and she wrote this gorgeous long email and at the verrrrry bottom were a couple of lines about how she was hosting her first ayahuasca ceremony - not as a facilitator or maestra, but as a sister and host and guide. I clicked the link and the way she described the experience she was crafting for us, with poetry explorations, ecstatic dance, temazcal (sweat lodge), cacao ceremony, flower baths, altar-building workshops, and medicine ceremonies facilitated by real Shipibo maestros from the Peruvian jungle at a quaintly majestic little Shire-esque retreat center in the Sacred Valley of Peru…. 

It checked a LOT of my many boxes I had regarding my first ayahuasca ceremony experience. It felt so feminine and soft and heart-centered, just the type of container I was craving in general, and for ayahuasca in particular. To top it all off, the name of the retreat center at which this sumptuous healing journey would take place was Anam Cara, which is the same as my instagram handle @ashley.anamcara. The signs and synchronicities were really loud for me. 

Leading up to my trip to Peru, I decided / was informed by Spirit that I should do a Kambo medicine “full reset” AND that we should move to Costa Rica by DRIVING THERE, which… are perhaps stories for another day… but the lessons and messaging coming in from the ayahuasca plant itself were really strong and potent in those weeks leading up, which is something I have heard multiple times from many people, happens once you make the decision to sit with this special plant teacher. 

Life begins shifting and changing right away, before the physical plant has entered one’s physical body, the tendrils of the vine make their way energetically into one’s everyday lived experience in a marked and understandable way — there is a knowing: “Oh, this is clearly a message from ayahuasca.” 

Back in the Sacred Valley of Peru, after my first ceremony, thankfully within the soft and loving container of the retreat center with some of the best facilitators in the world, I started experiencing a chaotic set of emotions and reactions to the medicine. 

I couldn’t see it in that exact moment of supreme vulnerability and rawness post-ceremony, but ayahuasca and my higher self were working together to show me some of my most deeply-held untrue beliefs and patterns of relating to the world, as well as helping me to uncover what my biggest Truth is at the same time. 

I guess if I could summarize my experience during that first ceremony, it would be by describing it as a huge back-and-forth between my heart and my brain… my truth and my ego. I could palpably feel and see and sense the multiple layers of ego and programming I embodied within my lived experience, and which existed between my story and my truth. My brain and my heart were literally sore and tender in a very physical way during most of that ceremony because of this (I hate to use this word, but..) battle they were in with each other. 

And I wanted to hang on to a lot of those layers, beliefs, programs, and mental matrixes that were being revealed! There were points during that first ceremony that my ego was showing just how massive it had grown over my lifetime. 

For example, I had thoughts several times throughout the ceremony that everyone else was there just for ME, and that MY experience was the most important out of all of the people there, because *I* was here on earth to do such important healing work. 

(Really rolling my eyes here at myself haha! Because it was sooooo egoic and also such a hidden part of how I operated in the world at that point, but now seems so foreign and silly to actually type out to share about myself. Just goes to show that no matter how evolved I feel I am, I still have blind spots in my awareness of where I am operating from untrue programs.) 

At each level of ego struggle, I had to convince myself to release and let go and surrender. And that was not easy, considering these layers were initially “installed” in order to protect my tender inner self in some way, against the intensity and harshness of my external reality at different points of my life. Each level felt like a battle I had to move on from before I could move down to the next level, which would be its own battle as well, and on and on, down and down. 

I am very grateful to the wisdom of the medicine for showing me exactly how much work I had to do, even if it felt super chaotic and overwhelming at the time. I am also extremely grateful for the container in which I experienced this journey and the unfolding and unraveling of the following days, because at no point as I expressed my disdain for the process or my disbelief that what was happening was helpful in any way, did anyone ever make me feel unsafe or shamed or like my expression wasn’t completely normal and absolutely wrapped in love by the facilitators. 

I left the first ceremony before the medicine actually had worn off, not wanting to be the last one in the malloca and not wanting, really, to be around other people anymore as I worked through my medicine experience. This is a truly deeply engrained coping mechanism of mine: to retreat. To put walls up around myself in a protective manner. 

And going back to my room while still with the medicine was NOT a good idea of course, and there were at least a couple of hours of trying to navigate normal activities like brushing my teeth and showering while feeling miserable in my body and resisting my experience, still very much in the mental space of transition out of the medicine but still enough medicine coursing through my veins to cause an altered state. 

At one point I kneeled in front of the toilet, pressing my palms together tightly in front of my heart, trying desperately to connect to the energy of the plants that make up the Ayahuasca brew, begging that energy to let my experience be over. I slid my fingers to the back of my throat over and over again, gagging at the feeling of my nails tickling my uvula, trying to make myself vomit the medicine within my system, trying to forcibly end my medicine journey out of pure desire to be back in “control,” and in pure resistance to my experience in all ways. 

I knew immediately after that experience that that is not how this medicine works… It wasn’t possible to empty my already empty stomach and force myself back into control of my experience. It wasn’t possible to regain control and some semblance of normalcy until it was time, Divine Time, for me to go back to that state of being. Which, for me, was not until midway through the next day (this is debatable still, because I was still very much “with the medicine” until many days after returning home). The medicine really affected me for a long time. 

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That next day, we had time to consult with the maestros, who are really Healers in the true sense of that word, and ask questions or get clarity on our intentions and our experiences. 

When I sat down, I was sure to express much gratitude for the experience I had, while also expressing some of my confusion. I really truly just felt confused. What was the point of my experience? Why was I there? Why wasn’t I with my family? I felt a TON of guilt about being on this medicine journey that was NOT what I was expecting while also causing my family strife by not being around to help with three kids, two animals, and three adults (my husband + our two friends and travel-mates) who were going through a big process of their own, back in our temporary home in Sayulita, Mexico. 

After speaking with the facilitators and the maestros, I came to the still-unhealed conclusion that I just needed to double-down on my intention, which I had switched once I arrived to the retreat center, from: 

“I want to experience more Love, to exist within Love and in Love more often.” 

To

“I want to receive an activation, to awaken my true magical special healing abilities, in order to be able to help the world around me to heal and release our collective connection to pain and suffering.” 

What I realized after my second ceremony, which I will just briefly describe as —  ego-destruction — was that I had been holding onto this story of not-enoughness, and this was very clear by my doubling-down attempt and my newly revised intention. 

I had been living in this highly spiritual bubble of a community in Sedona, where everyone and their sister has a special healing power or some special “tap” into Spirit with which they better the community and their own lives as well (sound healers, breathwork facilitators, reiki masters, oracles, priestesses, channels, readers, etc)… and I had been only consuming social media and YouTube videos created by these same sorts of people… in my own energy of neediness… I was seeking the same sort of specialness that I was witnessing and surrounding myself with externally, while not realizing or validating my own true worth and my own version of special that I bring to the world. 

I needed to feel that the world is a special place and that we are all on this upward spiral towards magic and deep relationship with Spirit… and what’s more is that I felt that I needed to contribute to that vision as well. I *needed* to be “special” in a way that I had previously dictated was “special.” Which of course was negating the Truth that I AM special, even if I am a completely “normal” human being with no “special” powers… if that makes sense. 

I think part of this seeking of specialness was a bit of escapism, too, which is another deep pattern of mine from childhood. Life was hard and is still hard sometimes, and I didn’t — especially in childhood — have tools to be Presence. There was a seeking externally for something “better.” And I carried this forward into adulthood in a very real way, constantly seeking spiritual enlightenment and evolution and betterment. It was exhausting, truly. 

I had so much ego attachment to this part of myself that compared myself to and idealized others’ lives and gifts more so than my own. I had so much resistance, so many layers of this aspect of myself to release, that the second ceremony felt very chaotic, like I was really struggling through this sludge and muck of resistance based on all the years of this program running the show in my own life, even more so than the first ceremony. Like ayahuasca saw the strength of my resistance and also doubled-down on her attempts to help me heal by completely destroying me. 

The beautiful part of that release in that second ceremony was that once I was finally able to release my I-need-to-be-more-special-so-give-me-an-activation intention, and this HUGE part of myself that didn’t feel whole, there was some (actually a LOT of) sadness for me to work through… but mostly this expansive (although mournfully resigned) feeling of LOVE. And expansion INTO the Love of who I AM, and of the perfection of ME. 

The wave of realization that overtook me, this realization of what a gift this medicine is.. of how potently it can help shift ancient stories and programs in the span of just two ceremonies, mere hours of time investment, just like THAT. And in such a feminine way, in a way that felt kind of like a firm-but-fair grandmother lovingly calling me out on my shit and holding space as I dragged my feet every step of the way. 

Another pretty massive realization that came through thanks to that first ceremony and the help of the facilitators afterward as I was trying to piece my way through my emotional experience, was the enormity of the rootedness of some of my coping patterns. 

In the second ceremony before my big ego-release, I was getting these waves of paranoia. I was wondering what the hell this experience was for, I was thinking that the maestros were taking advantage of all of us on an energetic level, that the ceremony space was dark and dangerous, how all these people were just in on some dark scheme to swindle us out of our money and energy and leave us broken and helpless, (plant) medicated and vulnerable…. I kept thinking I just wanted to leave, book a flight home to my family, and never look back.. never sit with ayahuasca again. 

I thought of all the influencers and social media personalities I know of who have sat with this medicine hundreds.. HUNDREDS.. of times.. and wondered why, how they must be tricked into doing that somehow, how it was this whole scam of just gathering many people into one room, drugging them, and taking their money for nothing in return, or worse, to steal their life force energy in some way... 

My mind was really running away with negative and paranoid thoughts. 

What I was able to piece together afterward was that I have these deep coping mechanisms of retreating, escapism, blame, and then *creating a story to make whatever is happening make sense to those deep wounded scared parts of myself.* I have a resistance to receiving love. 

I put up walls and create a story that might make sense to my mind on some level, at least in that it reinforces my story that there are no truly good and loving people or energies in the world. Which on a very superficial level I knew was not true, but in some deep kernel of my internal landscape, this seed was really driving my lived experience in a powerful way. 

And my massive ego death really left those deep wounded scared parts of myself EXPOSED. 

With the guidance of the facilitators, I was able to think back to my childhood and remember that as a very tenderly sensitive little child, I felt so much love toward the people in my family, the people around me, as a matter of course, and in return I felt often mistreated, shamed, punished, very much conditionally loved, abused at times even. There was love there, for sure, but it was this confusing experience of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which — as a parent now, I understand is completely normal for unsupported and wounded adult humans to flow back and forth between so many varying confusing emotions within the span of one day — set this tone and program for me to not trust Love. To not trust caregivers. To not trust myself. To not trust. Period. 

This would explain my complete lack of trust in the healing process I found myself (I CHOSE to be) in the midst of. This would explain my panic, my story-creation, my withdrawal, my confusion, my distrust, and my seeking the darkness in this experience that was actually in reality completely in-line with my desires to profoundly heal myself. 

This plant medicine was and is pure Love energy. It was showing me how to heal myself within a container of pure Loving Consciousness. And I was not able to receive that because of my survival programs that were so deeply rooted that I had no ability to see the macro perspective outside of my own intense cocktail of emotional intensity. 

“It must be dark because I had a picture of what it should be like but it feels painful and it is not easy.” 

Phew! With the help of these amazing facilitators, the Shipibo maestros, the perspective of folks like Caitlyn Howe and Erik Godsey and others who were there alongside me and who have much more experience with this medicine and were able to help me see that I was just in the middle of a process that I should allow myself to complete while within the safety of this retreat container (instead of fleeing back to my family the next day, which is what I came THISCLOSE to doing). 

Because of those two sequential ceremonies, the ego destruction, and the perspective on my coping programs, I was able to release a LOT and really surrender into curiosity, into trust of my body, into trusting the goodness of life, the tenderness of Nature, the truth of my Truth (which is also Love). 

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Between the second and third ceremonies, we had a day off of drinking ayahuasca to just come into ourselves a bit. That evening we had a breathwork ceremony, which was the most intense experience of my life in some ways, even more so than the previous two nights of drinking ayahuasca… 

Doing breathwork while still having ayahuasca in my system really blasted me off to another level of expression of some of the deepest darkest emotions I held within my energetic body. I spent a lot of minutes in that ceremony just screaming and writhing uncontrollably, which if you know me is not my norm but it REALLY needed to happen, apparently. 

This was the halfway point of my week there, and I equate it to that point of a cleanse where you meet the most resistance to move forward instead of just quitting the cleanse and eating a cheeseburger because “why make myself miserable, right?”  

My physical heart literally ached with longing for my family, especially my youngest son who was/is still breastfeeding. The abrupt stop to nursing him so I could travel to Peru, I think triggered a cascade of hormones in my body that was a bit desperate… 

Like some primal Mother inside myself thought my baby was no longer alive. My breasts swelled and engorged with a ton of milk that I had to hand-express in the shower multiple times per day just to maintain a semblance of comfort in my body, and just watch it go down the drain with the water, wishing I was giving it to my own son instead. 

So, that longing for him (and for all my kids, and my husband) and for the experience of holding my child and emptying my swollen painful breasts and experiencing that beautiful symphony of oxytocin exchange with him, was really physically real for me. And contributed a lot to my emotional tenderness and feeling of vulnerability and panic in some ways.

I had been so blasé about leaving my family, leaving my nursling, and taking this time for myself. I thought it would be so easeful and nourishing to come sit with the medicine away from them as an independent woman, and “receive my activation” and then go home and heal my family and change the world. So beautiful and easy-peasy! 

I never imagined I would feel such a *physical* sense of grief and longing, not to mention the *emotional* tidal waves to go along with that. 

During the breathwork ceremony that activated me so intensely, the song that really tipped the scales for me was Peyote Healing, which my husband literally played on repeat all day for weeks at a time when we lived in Sedona. Once that song started playing in that breathwork ceremony, I screamed and cried and writhed on my mat, my body and heart no longer able to hold the emotions I had been acknowledging but not fully expressing. I really felt like one of those mourning women from other cultures you might have seen in videos, “writhing and gnashing of teeth,” begging and pleading with God and asking “WHY” and showcasing the intensity of my emotions in such an outward way that was so foreign to me. 

After that experience, I felt the most raw yet… I felt completely tapped out, and also completely resolved to leave the Sacred Valley the next day. I felt 100% sure — because of that achingly beautiful Peyote Healing song — that the messaging from Spirit was very clear, actually.. that my family is where I belong and I was making a mistake by being there. 

I talked to one of the lovely facilitators Francesca after the ceremony and of course she talked me down from the ledge and said a lot of really beautiful things about this process and my specific point within the process. 

What stuck out to me the most was the feeling of clarity about who I am and where I am supposed to be. My realization and my longing for my family was showing me *exactly* who I am: I am Mother. I am Wife. I am a part of a Sacred Family. 

I have had in my lifetime so much confusion about who I am supposed to be and how I am supposed to contribute to the world, and this medicine experience truly really beautifully showed me my path and my heart’s longing. Motherhood. Family life. And helped shift my perspective on all of these small daily tasks that I thought were *keeping me* from my purpose (never ending nursing sessions, cooking dinner every night, keeping my home in order, putting everything else on hold to tend to my kids and their emotions), they actually *are* my purpose. 

Maybe in past lives I have had a different role in my community, but in this lifetime I chose this path for the exact growth and deepening my soul needs. 

I am exceedingly grateful to the medicine for helping me have the awareness of my love and deep connection to my family. I am not a lone wolf, and I don’t have to be that archetype energetically — even within family — anymore. I am so lucky to have what and who I have. 

And unfortunately for me haha, my process of untangling programs and coping mechanisms in order to get to this point of clarity on who I BE, was not easy. Is not easy, still, although now, thanks to the medicine experience it is much easier to remember. 

Maybe sometime in the future when I am able to seamlessly release enough in order to surrender into the flow of the Divine Plan and the present moment, this part of my experience will feel much more flowy… but for now, there is real work to be done. And I can’t and couldn’t take the easy way out of that. 

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The next day, before our third aya ceremony we spent some time in nature, hiking to a nearby waterfall in the daytime (which was amazing and so clarifying and grounding). 

That day, I wrote in my journal:

Expansion sometimes feels like death, 

But I’ve died before.

So I know that after I dissolve into goo

Inside the damp dark womb of this cocoon, 

I will emerge

And with the ability to soar,

My shimmering opalescent wings

Carrying me into new timelines

With sweeter nectar.

Thankful to my higher self for giving me this sweet glimmer of hope to cling to :) 

That night’s aya ceremony was pure bliss. 

I found myself going down through my layers of ego and programming almost instantly, whereas in the previous ceremonies each layer held its own version of struggle and turmoil as I navigated down down down through the years of resistance I had built up. 

Warmth spread through my veins and I found some part of myself leaving my body through the top of my head. There was almost a sensation of looking through an old school View-Master (anyone remember those from childhood?) or a VR headset as I laid on the mat in the malloca.. but not just viewing something.. more of a projection up and out, into another view of reality.. very much a release of my physical body with my energy “looking” and “flowing” out and up toward some spectacular views. 

These views intensified and kept flowing seamlessly from one to the next, carrying me into more and more profound visions of beauty, while concurrently releasing all of the feel-good hormones to course through my body and carry my *body* into the same bliss that my brain was perceiving. 

The malloca melted away and I became everything in the world all at once, all of the ancient stony mountains and graceful animals filled with all their innocent *power* … and flowers with their intoxicating smells which lured me drunkenly into their Beingness while also at the same time being the essence *of* me and not some separate external thing… and wind that raced happily over the fields and through the forest branches in order to feel the tickle of the swaying grains and smooth green leaves against itself and experience awareness..  and clouds full with the weight of tons of water and a sense of duty and honor and perspective to contribute to the survival of this beautiful Earth… and people and crystals and everything currently in existence in the world was me and I was it. 

Then the world turned into heaven, which meant *I* turned into heaven too, and everything that exists there was me, too. I flowed through everything like water moving rapidly over rocks in a riverbed, quickly and intimately touching each vision and inhabiting each experience fully, before flowing beautifully into the next Being-ness of something in particular but also everything all at once… moving through each embodiment and moving onto the next while also not fully leaving the experiential oneness with all. Like the reality that water has memory, layering each individual experience of oneness-with-something, into a conglomerate of oneness-with-all and carrying it all forward into the future within me. 

My cells remember the feeling of Oneness with each unique Being, like the experience was a strip of film within my DNA that was exposed to All That Is, and by proxy to Truth, so my everyday reality could keep these memories archived within myself to touch back on at any time, just like old photos in a box under the bed. 

What it felt like was Home, a homecoming, like Rightness, like a hawk gliding effortlessly in a blue autumn sky, like the feeling of a warm blackberry picked on a hot summer day squishing between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, like the sound of ocean waves crashing on an empty beach through open windows as you fall asleep at night, like witnessing the first toddling unsteady steps of your first born child.. It was perfect, like wild and free stallions running, leading their herd over the green grassy plains of undisturbed nature. 

The impact of this experience had so much weight and power that it crushed me flat onto my mat for the entire length of the ceremony. It took a massive amount of effort to lift my weighted hands up to my swollen ecstatic breasts to empty some of the milk throughout the night, and was even stranger to feel the milk spraying up on my face with such ejectile force, emphasizing this bodily feeling of being Life and at the same time receiving Life.

I realized toward the end of the ceremony that my face hurt from smiling and laughing so much, like I must have had the most giant goofy grin plastered across my mouth the entire time haha :) It was pure Joy.

This experience changed my chemical makeup and helped my heart to beat for something so immense I can not articulate it…. It was a life-restoring experience so saturating that it penetrated deeply into my heart down to the innermost kernel of Truth and connection to Source, refining and rearranging all the layers I had built on top of that seed. It physically massaged my tense ever-stressed, always in some form of fight-or-flight body with curious and gentle motion, altering my somatic experience in a way no body-worker could or would ever be able to. 

My soul’s thirst was quenched as I experienced the simultaneous remembrance of Truth and liberation from individuality and otherness, while paradoxically remembering my own unique Truth of who *I* Am as a precious unique Being. 

That ceremony, I found a way to slip into full trust and surrender to the medicine and the experience.. I left my brain and spent the ceremony in my heart and in Oneness with God. 

As a result of my devotion, surrender, and trust, I was able to experience full presence, spiritual ecstasy, and true Beauty and Love and Bliss. I really believe that I had the same sort of experience of Bliss that Ram Dass or the Buddha were able to experience all the time once they experienced full presence.

It was enlightenment, Nirvana, and true liberation.

I am liberated, freed from so many layers of programming and conditioning that were keeping me from living in Love. (Which, if you remember, was my initial intention anyway, to exist in Love!) 

I felt so safe, because I had helped myself feel so safe on the deepest levels before even entering into that third ceremony, thanks to the medicine. I had released so much distrust and unsafety in my own body and my own lived experience because of the work and the destruction of the first two ceremonies, and took a leap of faith into surrender and trust that paid off big time with the most Love and Bliss and Perfection I’ve ever experienced in my life, more than I ever imagined I would be ABLE to experience in this lifetime. 

I have experienced really blissful ceremonies with mushroom medicine before, and I thought maybe if I got to that point with ayahuasca again it would be a positive experience.

But, I’m telling you, the previous experiences of bliss during medicine journeys were *nothing.* They were mere whisps of hints of the totality of having my whole body and ego structure dismantled in order to merge into Oneness with All That Is. This was true surrender and submission to Presence. 

I wish I could explain it more clearly in details that would be intelligible to anyone besides myself, but …. I think that is the nature of these sorts of experiences. They are unexplainable, unintelligible, beyond words. They don’t exist in the mind. They exist in Beingness. 

All that I can say is that I took a giant leap toward releasing the sense of seeking that I have been holding within my heart for my entire lifetime. An entire lifetime of feeling like what was happening in the present moment *couldn’t* have been *it,* couldn’t have been the best there could have been, couldn’t have been all there was for me. An entire lifetime of feeling that there must be something just outside of my purview that would make my life easeful and blissful at all times, or at least more often. 

I wrote in my journal after this ceremony: “I am done seeking. I am being. I am knowing. I am present.” 

This is when I felt true liberation. Release of the program of constantly searching for something outside of myself or constantly trying to better myself enough to be worthy of a life of bliss and love. Even my past *seeking* of presence was making me miserable because it wasn’t just *being* presence. It was still seeking. 

This medicine is so potent and .. BIG.. that it was initially overwhelming to my psyche to the point that I viewed it as dangerous. Like a projection from my childhood when the people I loved hurt me.. when love was mixed with lack of physical and emotional safety. But as I was able to release that wall, that coping mechanism, that safety valve, and surrender to the experience no matter if it meant total dissolution of my Self in order to really go there, I was deeply rewarded and completely liberated into bliss. 

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The day of my last ceremony in the Sacred Valley began with journaling: 

“I’m feeling like I miss the family still, but that it’s easier to be here. They feel so far away — maybe I was just so attached to them that the first few days here were about individuating in order to heal myself as an individual without the interference of my family’s energy, and then bringing this healing back into the fold to spread from there.” 

That night’s ceremony was really sweet and gentle, and included more experiences of surrender and bliss. More exploration of the safety of my body, more trust in the present moment. 

I didn’t drink as much medicine as I had on previous nights, because I wanted to be more present for the Arkana, which is the completion process the maestros facilitated during the ceremony, in order to close everyone’s energetic bodies up a bit and add some protection in order for the work to be able to integrate into our ways of being without interference from outside energies. 

I really made an effort (and for me — making an effort while on this medicine and experiencing bliss and oneness with all that is, is really challenging haha!) to be present in the 3D world of reality and to energetically and consciously open myself to receive the prayers and protection from the maestros. Drinking less medicine helped with that a lot, and curated this really sweet gentle experience in general to close out my ceremonies. Like a nice perfect pink sparkly bow tied around it. :) 

The rest of my time in the Sacred Valley in the two days that followed were full of lounging around in the grass outside with my now-friends, all those who sat in the malloca each night with me and had their own versions of death and rebirth, soaking in the sunshine and the energetics of the earth and the mountains of that beautiful sacred ancient land. 

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As I journeyed home from the Sacred Valley back to Cusco, from Cusco back to Mexico, from the airport in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, back to our temporary rental in Sayulita, I could feel the medicine gently wrapping me in one last sweet hug as it gently worked its way through and out of my system. 

The lessons of my time in the Sacred Valley with this potent medicine — that I am safe, that I can release control and surrender to what is, that I don’t have to struggle, that I can open myself up to love more deeply with those around me who truly care about me… That I can Trust again. I trust the goodness of life. I trust my connection to the Divine and to my inner knowing and to my higher self — helped me to rewrite my story. 

Thank you to the plants. Thank you to the maestros. Thank you to the magic of that land. The ancestors of that land. Thank you to the facilitators, my sister-guide Caitlyn, and all the folks who sat in ceremony by my side. Thank you to my family for supporting me in my explorations and my growth. 

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Transitioning from ceremony life to normal everyday life (although our life at this moment may not seem super normal to others or even to me haha), of course had its ups and downs, but was for the most part pretty smooth compared to how I thought it would be. 

There were times when my kids and husband were Divinely triggering to me, which was annoying and my nervous system was kind of set on edge because of this, but of course it was all perfect and helped fuel some massive growth and realization that has continued in the weeks and months following ceremony. 

Especially in the early days back home, I missed the simplicity of ceremony life. And I missed my maestros and mentors and friends. I missed the beautiful tenderness of being surrounded by men and women who were so focused and dedicated to the work. 

It has been challenging at times, too, the fact that I can’t live in that state of spiritual ecstasy and bliss forever.. that the magic of the Sacred Valley with that medicine and those people was only a place visited, an experience my higher self orchestrated temporarily to maintain a much duller and normal everyday life. 

I have really tried to hold onto this idea that my time in ceremony wasn’t done for the sake of just the ceremony, but for the maintenance of my regular beautifully mundane life, of minutiae, of doing dishes, of wiping tears from my children’s eyes after they explain why they’re hurting, of trying to navigate communication and intimacy with my husband while spinning 14 other plates in the air… honestly, it’s a life humanness, which includes struggle.. not of bliss and transcendence all day, every day, all the time. And that was and still is challenging at times to swallow.

But I now have the beautiful seed within, that kernel that I unearthed and rehomed into more fertile soil, the realization that “what is” is what is perfect. That the ability to walk through the everydayness of existence is the harvest of all that work I did there in Peru in that malloca. 

That the alternative to sinking into presence is — for me — sinking into misery.