A Healer’s Journey

I first felt the calling to be a healer when I was 20 and my Uncle committed suicide. Or maybe it was at the age of 2 and witnessing my 3 year old sister be sexually abused, and feeling helpless to protect her. Or at the age of 6 the first time I can remember witnessing my dad cry, after my mom and him had another fight, and she asked him to leave. Little me just felt so helpless in not knowing how to get my parents to get along and keep our family together. Little me didn’t understand or have support from anyone to help me understand the trauma’s we were experiencing at an early age.

At 20, I was finally able to understand that my whole childhood had not been normal, that I was a survivor of childhood traumas that no one was willing to name. I was able to see the generational patterns of trauma, and just felt strongly I had to do something to break free of these cycles. I was committed to breaking the pattern for myself, I was not going to continue to let Trauma effect my life. This is when I changed my major and pursued a bachelor's in counseling. I wanted to help people like me heal from their traumas and cultivate a life with more joy and peace. Through my studies, most of what we were taught was that regardless of our past, or early childhood experiences we could choose different. As I deepened my studies and worked on my Masters in Psychology, the message was pretty much the same, if we could change our thoughts we could change our lives. And this was the same messaging I heard all throughout my 20’s and 30’s from different new age spiritual leaders. We could meditate, chant, ascend to higher levels of consciousness, forget our traumas and manifest a better life. But as hard as I tried to meditate my traumas away, I couldn’t understand why my traumas were still unconsciously controlling so much of my life.

25 years later, as I have continued down this path of healing, and began taking certification courses to help me be better trauma informed, I eventually came back to Ancestral medicines.

I thought I finally found the answer, the right formula to help me heal from my own traumas and help others heal from theirs. But here is the thing I have been integrating and understanding after 25 years of intentionally learning about trauma, psychology, healing, and the human experience… there are no quick fixes to healing and recovering from Trauma.

A limpia will not magically take away all of your problems, no more than a session of talk therapy, or even being put on prescription medication. Our Ancestral medicines are not quick fixes, what they are is a remembrance of how we can ritualize our pain.

Our Ancestors knew how to work with the elements, and the seasons and cycles of life. They knew there were no quick fixes. They knew that there are periods of our life that are going to require more rest and slowness. That we need to allow our pain to take up space, or it will constantly consume us and run our lives.

Especially after Trauma, because living in a constant state of Trauma, fragments you, re-wires your nervous system, causes you to be hypervigilant and mistrusting of life. Causes you to be in a constant state of fight or flight and survival.

So much to my disillusionment, my practices were not going to save me by giving me a quick fix, but they did bring me back to slowness. To move slower, with the rhythm of nature, to allow the Ancestral Wisdom to reach me, to allow the Ancestral medicine to do its work in healing me. By moving slower I could also see the many layers of my trauma, and how each part of me had to be tended to, to bring me back to wholeness.

Meditation alone wasn’t going to heal me, because it wasn’t just up to my mind to convince me that I was safe, my body needed slowness, gentleness, release, rest, recovery, tenderness, and care. I needed to give my heart a safe space and time to feel the depths of what I had experienced, and remember how to breathe again. I needed to re-learn how to be present with the miracles and sacredness of life, but I can’t, we can’t open up to this medicine, if our bodies and minds are constantly scanning the room for threats and danger.

Unlearning and re-learning all of this takes time, and it takes the medicine of patience. Patience, grace and unconditional love for ourselves as we navigate the many layers of our own healing. And patience with each other and those we hold space for while they navigate healing from the many traumas this sick society exposes us to.

Walking the path of the Medicine Woman and healer, doesn’t mean I am all seeing and powerful, if anything the path constantly provides me with EGO checks so raw and real to remind me of my flawed humanity.

As a healer, I don’t make any claims of quick fixes or taking away your pain instantly. Instead, I offer your my heart to witness you as you pour your feelings out, my arms to hold you and help you regulate. As a Medicine Woman, I commit to sharing our Ancestral Medicines with you, to help you remember your inter-connectedness with this web of life. To help you understand that there is nothing wrong with being an imperfectly flawed human… and to create a safe space to help you face your shadows and traumas and come back to unconditional love over and over again.