My Healing Journey
I’ve always been drawn to spirituality. Even as a small child I was fascinated with the concept of God and angels. I liked going to church. My first crush was on the pastor’s son. I remember a guardian angel coming to my bed every single night. It’s fair to say that I’ve always been in a spiritual mindset. So it's not a surprise to me that I am teaching people how to walk a spiritual path, the Path of the Sacred Ordinary. But it took more than just a natural interest to bring me to this path.
If you ask what pivotal moments brought me here, I would say there were two things: a health crisis and a transcendent experience at the beginning of my shamanic studies. A health crisis that led me to visit a healer who worked in shamanism. When all other methods were failing me--from allopathic medicine to oxygen chambers and acupuncture—a little elf of a woman working as a shamanic practitioner brought me to the source of healing And then, as I was undergoing initiation into the Q’ero shamanic tradition, a transcendent experience brought me to full awareness of the Oneness of all. Guaranteeing that I found the way I could serve the world. I had found my soul's purpose.
There was a time in my life when I went from being an investment banker, totally in control of my universe, having everything going for me to debilitated so much that I wasn't able to stay awake for 3 hours. In the span of one year, I broke my back and contracted Lyme’s disease. At first, I was too busy healing my bones and nerves to notice the Lyme’s symptoms. Then after the bones healed, I had too much to make up for to slow down enough to recognize that I was sick. I spent years suffering and ignoring it, pushing through the pain until it laid me out flat; until I had no choice.
When I finally went to a doctor, I was diagnosed with advanced chronic Lyme’s disease. It wasn’t just in my body and my brain, it had woven its way into every fiber of my being, every part of my life. I couldn’t function, was angry and depressed, in constant pain, hypersensitive to light and sound, exhausted, short of breath, suffering severe short-term memory loss and the illness was affecting my marriage.
But the disease was more stubborn than I was and I didn’t get better. I tried every antibiotic available, eastern medicine, and some pretty wacky alternative treatments. I was desperate. The last straw was when I ended up on a daily intravenous antibiotic drip for seven months. Seven months is a long time to live with a port in your arm and a tube running through a vein directly to your heart. The doctor told me the next step was to live in complete darkness. New studies had shown that the spirochete and co-bacteria couldn't survive without light. I was just not willing to bury myself underground while I was still breathing.
It was then that someone mentioned a shamanic practitioner who lived a few towns over. It would turn out to be what brought full healing. Finally allowing everything to unravel so that I could re-weave my life into the beautiful tapestry it is today. For me, the crucial step in healing was the path inward. With shamanism, I embarked on deep internal reflection on how this illness, the broken back, and everything that I had been through, was serving me in this lifetime. What was it here to teach me? What was I getting out of it? When I learned the lessons, I saw myself as a different person. With shamanic tools, I cleared away what wasn’t working and made peace with everything else. That is what brought me to a place of complete wholeness.
I recognized that so much of the shift from high functioning successful woman into completely broken person was the blunt force trauma of Spirit saying “Enough, you need to go a different direction and you need to ask for help!” At the time I thought it was just human help, I didn’t yet know I was being cracked open to much more. I would come to know such a deep connection to the spirit world and to Source, God, Goddess, Allah, Great Spirit whatever you are comfortable calling it. Best of all, I healed, finally once and for all. With the help of modern and ancient healing methods I healed my body, soul, heart and brain. I even healed my marriage. It was a miracle.
I wanted to understand it, I wanted to learn it. I had to know more! I began studying shamanism. First with the shamanic practitioner who helped bring me to a state of wholeness, then onto other teachers in the US, Europe, and Central America. Eventually trusting my spirit teachers most of all. In that exploration, I woke to our true nature. The true nature of you and me and that tree over there. I remember one exercise in particular, the exercise was to die. As part of the rites we were receiving in the initiation into shamanism, we had to die, and experience life crossed over and then come back.
It was the most beautiful thing I will ever experience. I was everything and nothing all at the same time. There was no longer an “I” there was only the “All” and the “One.” I was every blade of grass and every drop of water, and every emotion, and every human. I was the fox in the field and the field and the human watching the fox in the field. There was no separation. The ego dissolved into nothing. I was everything and I was nothing simultaneously. And it was overwhelmingly beautiful. Even now I feel into that place as a source of absolute Love, of unconditional, universal Love. I know that we are all One. I am that Love, and you are that Love.
That is where my teachings come from. They come from a healing crisis that brought me to a whole new understanding of who and what I was and then it brought me out to that transcendent experience of who and what we ALL are. I walked through crisis into healing, through pain and suffering and ego identity into universal love, health, wealth, and true lasting happiness.
I am forever grateful for this journey.
If you ask what pivotal moments brought me here, I would say there were two things: a health crisis and a transcendent experience at the beginning of my shamanic studies. A health crisis that led me to visit a healer who worked in shamanism. When all other methods were failing me--from allopathic medicine to oxygen chambers and acupuncture—a little elf of a woman working as a shamanic practitioner brought me to the source of healing And then, as I was undergoing initiation into the Q’ero shamanic tradition, a transcendent experience brought me to full awareness of the Oneness of all. Guaranteeing that I found the way I could serve the world. I had found my soul's purpose.
There was a time in my life when I went from being an investment banker, totally in control of my universe, having everything going for me to debilitated so much that I wasn't able to stay awake for 3 hours. In the span of one year, I broke my back and contracted Lyme’s disease. At first, I was too busy healing my bones and nerves to notice the Lyme’s symptoms. Then after the bones healed, I had too much to make up for to slow down enough to recognize that I was sick. I spent years suffering and ignoring it, pushing through the pain until it laid me out flat; until I had no choice.
When I finally went to a doctor, I was diagnosed with advanced chronic Lyme’s disease. It wasn’t just in my body and my brain, it had woven its way into every fiber of my being, every part of my life. I couldn’t function, was angry and depressed, in constant pain, hypersensitive to light and sound, exhausted, short of breath, suffering severe short-term memory loss and the illness was affecting my marriage.
But the disease was more stubborn than I was and I didn’t get better. I tried every antibiotic available, eastern medicine, and some pretty wacky alternative treatments. I was desperate. The last straw was when I ended up on a daily intravenous antibiotic drip for seven months. Seven months is a long time to live with a port in your arm and a tube running through a vein directly to your heart. The doctor told me the next step was to live in complete darkness. New studies had shown that the spirochete and co-bacteria couldn't survive without light. I was just not willing to bury myself underground while I was still breathing.
It was then that someone mentioned a shamanic practitioner who lived a few towns over. It would turn out to be what brought full healing. Finally allowing everything to unravel so that I could re-weave my life into the beautiful tapestry it is today. For me, the crucial step in healing was the path inward. With shamanism, I embarked on deep internal reflection on how this illness, the broken back, and everything that I had been through, was serving me in this lifetime. What was it here to teach me? What was I getting out of it? When I learned the lessons, I saw myself as a different person. With shamanic tools, I cleared away what wasn’t working and made peace with everything else. That is what brought me to a place of complete wholeness.
I recognized that so much of the shift from high functioning successful woman into completely broken person was the blunt force trauma of Spirit saying “Enough, you need to go a different direction and you need to ask for help!” At the time I thought it was just human help, I didn’t yet know I was being cracked open to much more. I would come to know such a deep connection to the spirit world and to Source, God, Goddess, Allah, Great Spirit whatever you are comfortable calling it. Best of all, I healed, finally once and for all. With the help of modern and ancient healing methods I healed my body, soul, heart and brain. I even healed my marriage. It was a miracle.
I wanted to understand it, I wanted to learn it. I had to know more! I began studying shamanism. First with the shamanic practitioner who helped bring me to a state of wholeness, then onto other teachers in the US, Europe, and Central America. Eventually trusting my spirit teachers most of all. In that exploration, I woke to our true nature. The true nature of you and me and that tree over there. I remember one exercise in particular, the exercise was to die. As part of the rites we were receiving in the initiation into shamanism, we had to die, and experience life crossed over and then come back.
It was the most beautiful thing I will ever experience. I was everything and nothing all at the same time. There was no longer an “I” there was only the “All” and the “One.” I was every blade of grass and every drop of water, and every emotion, and every human. I was the fox in the field and the field and the human watching the fox in the field. There was no separation. The ego dissolved into nothing. I was everything and I was nothing simultaneously. And it was overwhelmingly beautiful. Even now I feel into that place as a source of absolute Love, of unconditional, universal Love. I know that we are all One. I am that Love, and you are that Love.
That is where my teachings come from. They come from a healing crisis that brought me to a whole new understanding of who and what I was and then it brought me out to that transcendent experience of who and what we ALL are. I walked through crisis into healing, through pain and suffering and ego identity into universal love, health, wealth, and true lasting happiness.
I am forever grateful for this journey.
