Hello dear friends, family, readers! I have just returned from a two week trip to Costa Rica. A multidimensional adventure and personal healing journey! An experience that, all together, feels like a deep, profound, and restorative dream… a dream that planted seeds of hope and life deep in the soil of my consciousness and body, which I will be reflecting on, walking with, nourishing, and learning from… perhaps into eternity, as a soul. This trip was a prayer, and an answer to a prayer, and to say it touched very deep parts of me would only scratch the surface of the truth.

As I begin to walk away from the heart of this dream, I come back to myself and back to the waking world of my life, feeling better and more alive than I have in months, better even than I felt in Hawaii in January at Embodifest (yes!). For I have had a deep communion with the medicine – The Medicine of the lungs of our Earth, the great jungle!

Would you like to hear about it?

Bueno!

First, a nice Pause and Deep Breath…

…Did you take a deep breath? (Do it. I’ll wait. In my memory I hear the bugs of the jungle around me. Pauses are full of sweetness, and the air is full of life for us… it feels so good! Thank you air!)

I want to start with a prayer. For I’ve just been reminded that in all ceremonies and things that matter, it is good to start with prayer.

I offer my deepest gratitude to the Universe for bringing me to Costa Rica at a time when my soul needed some serious rejuvenation. Gratitude to Costa Rica itself – the country, the land, the special spirit of regeneration and hope that is there. To the plants and the soil. To the communities who carry sacred traditions that support all of Life. To the ancestors, who came before us and gifted us life. To the Earth, our home, our mother. To my employer for gifting me volunteer time and helping me go at this time to do work with plants and the Earth and my inner self. To Nature, that great wild spirit that animates and harmonizes the life force. To my own life force, that animates my body. To my fingers for typing, my eyes for seeing, my body for experiencing, my heart for sharing. May my words come from my heart. And to you, for being here to receive my words. May we both be blessed by this sharing!

An Ancient Process Bigger Than The Sum Of Its Parts

La Medicina goes by many names and has been carried and revered by many cultures over thousands of years. I wrote in 2018 about my encounters with a Peruvian indigenous tribe called the Shipibo, who carry a tradition with a medicine they (and many) name Ayahuasca. And on this trip I have sat in ceremony with a Columbian tradition, with their variation of La Medicina, which they name Yagé.

Yagé! Yagé! It brings me much joy simply to summon the name Yagé! It brings music to my spirit, and remembrance of a sacred space of healing and celebration and great aliveness, where I was just embraced and in communion with something that I have unspeakably deep reverence and gratitude for.

It’s not just the plants, you have to understand. It’s a partnership between a people and their plants, a partnership with spirit of life itself. A sacred tradition that has been carried in devotion… for thousands of years.

This medicine is at the heart, the core, of many cultures of people. It is the Master Teacher. And the ceremony that surrounds it is a very intelligent and intentional process that allows us to properly prepare ourselves to meet that medicine and commune with it.

So, a big part of the medicine experience is the plants. The whole experience is a direct communication with very ancient and wise and loving plants, plants who stay very close to the Source itself, the raw force of Nature.

Each cup I drank in ceremony… this time around, I really understood it to be a cup of the Spirit of Nature. A cup of Nature to work itself through my body, mind, emotions, spirit, and help cleanse me of anything unnatural, be it substances or thought/belief systems or stuck energies, or whatever! Anything that hinders the pure, harmonious, intelligent life process.

Nature moves everything towards harmony and health. It works in ways that we can’t fully comprehend. And when I humbly took that concentrated dose of Nature medicine into me and said “yes” to letting Nature help me reorganize myself… it did.

So I’ll do my best today to share the story, or at least give it a start.

Four Ceremonies: Set and Setting

I sat in ceremony four times, Friday and Saturday nights over two weekends. Between and around the weekend ceremonies, I was visiting with my good friend and former serious significant other, Mateo (AKA Mathew… I use both names for him now), offering my hands and labor to some permaculture and natural building projects that he is working on.

It was a potent space for healing for both of us… for me, to be close to the land like that and working with the Earth, when my current “normal life” is deeply embedded in a city, inside, in a computer, in the Tech world… that, by itself, was healing. And then for both of us, being close with each other for the first time since our separation two years ago, and having the capacity to be in the love we have for each other and to witness & heal the various aspects of our relationship that surfaced to be worked through… that alone, as well, was a healing experience.

But when you work with the Medicine you come to realize there are no accidents. They say the Medicine starts working with you as soon as you make the decision to work with it. That whatever happens before ceremony, whatever gets stirred up, is completely intentional and perfect.

So there couldn’t have been a more perfect setup, for either of us. We’ve each done enough personal healing work to be with each other with love front and center. And now, after this long break, Life has decided that we’re ready to work through some of our shared wounds, some of the places in need of healing that can only be brought up by us in relationship to each other.

Step One: Being Invited, and Saying Yes

Mateo and I have kept in sporadic but deep contact over the past couple years. Mostly walking our own paths, but having deep shares when we do check in.

It was almost exactly a year ago that he drank Yagé for his first time, and a couple months after that when he started sharing his experiences with me, as well as an invitation to come join him in ceremony. He told me that the medicine had a message for me through him, that it was calling me, and I felt that as true.

I sat with his invitation for some months, feeling the call while also feeling fully occupied with other parts of my life and somewhat hesitant to fully trust Mathew, if I’m honest. We had gone through a pretty intense process together, after all, and I’d basically run away from him and our life together two years ago, feeling unsafe, lost, alone, and in some deep down place completely terrified.

Many people turn to medicine work from the lowest places of their lives, and that’s definitely true for me. A lot of this year has been an experience of prolonged misery for me, which I have been increasingly vocal about in conversation with everyone in my life (lol, sorry — and also not sorry at all, because there has been deep truth in my pain and I found through sharing with others that I am nowhere near the only one feeling it) as well as recent posts on my blog.

Truthfully it got “bad enough” long before, but the relapse into bulimia was the final straw. All my other methods of trying to help myself weren’t working. I needed help – serious, deep, magical, spiritual help. And though I was kind of afraid to jump into Mathew’s world, I also could feel into it… and when I was honest with myself, I actually did feel deeply safe about going to him, at this point. After watching him do his own healing work for months, I felt that I could trust him and that I would be safe and okay with him. My heart actually felt warm and excited to see him again.

When your heart talks, that’s the best signal of all to say Yes to something. So that’s where my Yes came from. From my misery and helplessness, but also from my heart, from whatever was left of my weak, flickering spirit, signaling to me what my next step needed to be.

I also need to give thanks where it’s due… To everyone in my life who has been able to be present with my pain, but particularly to two humans. Mathew of course, who was consistently present to talk with me through fears that came up, and my mom who has been very deeply there with and for me in my low places, nourishing me with words of love and hope, encouraging me, and helping me intuit what was right.

Mom, you’ve been my best friend this year. There’s no one I’ve been able to break down with so fully and be so seen and understood. Somehow you knew what this trip could be for me, and you helped me be brave enough to buy my ticket. Thank you.

It was the Fourth of July when I finally pulled the trigger. I was on a long walk from one friend gathering to another, living in my compulsive behavior with food while trying to simultaneously run away from it and protect it from the sights of others, feeling totally surreal and lost and like I belonged nowhere in the world at all. I had actually had a short visit with a close friend where we both cried about how bad things have felt lately, and I basically ran away from her that day to binge eat granola bars and puke in a public toilet. Then I called my mom, and cried to her yet again, and got the guts to buy my tickets. It calmed me enough that I could show up at a friend gathering and actually be present. Friends who saw me that day commented on how good a mood I seemed to be in. Oh, how fragile those present happy moments have been for me lately.

What the heck now?… Getting ready for a voyage

I want to talk a bit about the process I went through, between Saying Yes and actually Showing Up.

To be blunt – It got worse before it got better. If you don’t want to hear about that, feel free to skip to the next section, no offense taken by me.

I was already spiritually crippled and limping, metaphorically, when I bought my tickets. And that didn’t magically change overnight. Nope… I had to really feel the yuck of the patterns I was stuck in.

Spiritual disease is no joke and no fun. Mine, manifested most strongly in bulimia, had pierced through the bubble of self-protection and self-control I’d been in for months… and suddenly, very few spaces felt “safe” for me.

The office wasn’t safe. Food was everywhere. A binge eater’s dream.

Home wasn’t safe. I wanted to compulsively eat everything in my cabinet, and to steal food from my roommates.

The only “safe place” for my spirit seemed to be breaking down left and right, and being as honest as I could be with the people in my life. That, and running away to Nature and movement practices – the medicines I have stayed in contact with – when I was given opportunities to do so.

I was breaking down to my manager, to my coworkers, to everyone in my family, to my housemates, to my friends. To myself. To my blog.

And honestly, there was a beauty to that. It was a rough place but I had some deep and real connections inside that space. It was hard to be in a dark place and seeing darkness everywhere, but it also felt honest to me. Like I would rather visit those places and be able to look them in the face, and own my darkness and wear it, and connect with other humans about it, than try to pretend it isn’t there. So there were gems here inside my darkness. In the moments of breakdown, there was beauty.

But equally strong as my spirit’s desire to be clean was my ego and disease’s desire to stay alive and avoid transformation. For those fearful parts of me it felt “safe” to go on as though nothing was wrong. To keep feeding my compulsions numbly and to do the minimum required to “get by” in my work and relationships. All while carrying deep misery and fear inside of me that I was unable to escape from except in breakthrough moments with my movement practices.

The week before my scheduled departure date, I got into a completely surreal internal place where nothing felt sure or real. Like I couldn’t trust anything that was planned. I couldn’t trust that I would be able to to the most basic of things: just to feed myself and take care of the daily maintenance of my body. I couldn’t trust that I could get myself to show up to work. How could I trust that I would be able to get all the things done that needed to get done before I left? To attend to the needs of my job, to make decisions about what to pack, and to do what I needed to show up at the airport on time?

And, if I did make it to Costa Rica… what the heck was the Yagé going to do with me?! Here I was during the lead-in to these sacred ceremonies… supposed to be observing “dieta” and cleaning myself out in preparation by avoiding various foods and substances… and I was doing well in some moments but deeply failing in others! Was the medicine going to punish me for my “bad behavior” leading up to ceremony? All kinds of doubts, fears, shames, and personal nightmares surfaced.

Alas, as they say… it was all part of the process.

I got through it. I journaled through it. I cried through it. I talked to Mateo. I talked to one of the medicine facilitators. They reassured me. Just do your best, they said. It will all be taken care of. It’s not too much.

I call my mom again and cried to her…. again. “Your medicine will meet you exactly where you are, and will help build you up,” she told me. I sobbed.

I journaled. I wrote letters to Yagé, working on what exactly my intention was for these ceremonies… how I wanted to present myself and my problems, what I wanted to ask for.

Day by day, time passed… I got enough work done to be able to leave. I got enough of a “dieta” experience and managed to abstain from processed food and salt a few days before leaving purely out of respect for the medicine and process. I did enough, as much as I could, really, in my crippled state.

And, though it was hard, it was worth it. And I don’t think it could have been different, really.

I showed up at the airport the night of August 8th, with a bag packed and time to spare!

Costa Rica! Bueno! A mostly gentle landing

I slept en route, taking a red-eye through Mexico City and landing in San Jose, Costa Rica the next afternoon. This beautiful beloved country greeted me with a nearly-two-hour customs line 🙂

Mateo was there to pick me up with his red Tacoma from the 90’s. “Hot Jerry!” he exclaimed, patting the hood proudly and making me smile – it felt so like him to me. Our reunion was loving and good from the beginning. He felt solid and familiar and safe. As travel-weary and spiritually battle-worn as I was, and standing in the middle of a lot of city energy and chemicals, part of me started to relax. I knew I was in good hands, and had two days to settle in, connect with the Earth, get some distance from my scary diseased life at home, and prepare myself before the first ceremony.

We started our adventure with a drive to a retreat center called Brave Earth – as it happened to be close enough to our weekend destination, and we were both curious to see it. This was a pretty perfect place for me to drop in with Mathew and gently transition myself towards ceremony space. We volunteered in their gardens and toured their various gorgeous natural structures, and in they nourished us with beautiful organic vegan food and tea. I spent time with my yoga and movement practices.

Mateo and I, friends and former lovers with a long and deep history, connected with each other… gently negotiating a mostly comfortable rhythm, familiar yet also new. By chance or fate, a friend of Mateo’s from a ceremony in Columbia was also there, so we shared company and conversation with him as well.

We bumped up against some friction and triggers between us, too… which seems laughably predictable, looking back on it now.

For any reader considering traveling for medicine ceremonies, I highly recommend building in some kind of transition time like this. It helps.

An Unexpected Trial Before Ceremony

They say there are no accidents. But there can be surprises… and we had our first sooner than we expected.

Mateo and I both were chewing on our internal processes as we drove to the site of our weekend ceremonies Friday afternoon – a home in fact, belonging to someone in the greater medicine “family”, near the town of Atenas. 10 minutes short of arriving, the road turned steep and suddenly changed from pavement to deeply rutted gravel heading steeply towards a creek crossing. I got a sinking feeling about the situation immediately, but Mateo proceeded confidently, switching into 4WD.

Long story short… we got seriously stuck.

Hot Jerry’s tires spun out on multiple attempts to exit the creek up the steep other side. Mateo turned the truck around, and the same thing happened coming back the way we’d come in. At a couple places it felt like we were going to slip sideways down the steep hill. I got pretty scared and actually got out. Mateo tried to back up out of an awkward position. He ended up in a ditch. Like, really deep in a ditch. And possibly with engine damage.

It started raining.

The rain deepened into a downpour.

There was no phone service.

LOL.

This was definitely the hairiest situation we’d been in together.

We walked up the road in the rain. I walked up to a house where a man was sitting outside and gestured stupidly to him while standing in the downpour on his front lawn, unable to find any Spanish words – Mateo took over the communication more skillfully and this new friend invited us under his awning and helped us make a call for a tow. Soon enough things were in motion, but it would take some time for the tow to show up, and darkness would be arriving soon. Mateo, mortified at himself for getting us into this situation but insistent that at least I would be able to make it to ceremony, tried to call me an Uber that never arrived, and then sent me off walking with directions (and my consent – I like to walk) since our destination looked to be about 25 minutes away by foot.

So I left the men to deal with the truck and stomped off across the creek. The rain had passed.

I took some enjoyment in the physicality of the walk after some hours cramped in the truck, while also feeling a little surreal again. What just happened…? What was about to happen? Would Mathew be able to show up and join me? Where was I going? What did this mean? I noticed with trepidation a thin exterior wall of false confidence in my psyche… a wall that promptly collapsed as soon as I arrived at the house, having no idea where I was or who anyone was and what I had gotten myself into, really.

I didn’t have my phone connected for international roaming, so I didn’t have a direct line to Mathew. He’d told me to find his friend Mischy and communicate through her to him that I’d arrived safely.

That seemed like a fine plan at the time I’d left him. But as soon as I arrived alone, I felt… well… alone. And scared. Super scared. I’d been in a sphere of psychological protection by being with Mateo for a couple days… a little haven of safe space inside many weeks and months of very scary-feeling space… so when I arrived unexpectedly without him and had to navigate my own way, disoriented, my frayed nervous system just freaked out – despite the total chillness of the space I’d just arrived in.

There were probably 20 or 30 people around, some standing, some sitting or lying on mats, gently chatting and laughing, soft medicine music playing from a speaker in the background. Many were wearing white, a tradition of this lineage for ceremonies. Mats were arranged inside in a living room as well as outside on a covered porch area.

There was absolutely nothing to be in a panic about, but… that’s just how broken I was. Actively losing my cool and coming apart at whatever frail seams were left of me. Regretting coming alone. Wishing I was with Mathew or could talk to him. Worrying about where he was. Feeling like I was a bad person for leaving him alone. I finally found Mischy and promptly started crying and asked if she could help me get in contact with him, and orient me to the space.

“Everything is okay,” she said. “Everything that happens before ceremony is perfect. It’s all going to be okay. He says he’s on his way. We’re going to have a great time tonight. It’s going to be a Celestial party. You’re in good hands.” She seemed so serene and non-reactive to my deep and kind of pathetic state of fear… I was almost offended by it.

But I did feel better knowing Mateo was on his way and I wouldn’t be alone for the night. I felt myself glued to him somehow in this process. Like it wouldn’t make sense at all to proceed with the ceremony without him.

Which is so interesting, because I’ve always thought of myself as pretty independent. And most of our partnership, I was pretty independent. Almost defiantly independent. Not to mention, I’d traveled internationally to do medicine ceremonies on my own, twice. The reality of this trip actually flew in the face of how I used to be when I was “with” him. This time around I was in a very vulnerable place, in need of serious repair… and I was following Mateo’s lead. Completely dependent on him and trusting my wellbeing to him in a really big way.

Kind of beautiful, actually.

Anyway, I was shown to a room. I went to try to take a shower, and the showerhead fell off. (Really?? Another thing?) So I got in the tub and just splashed myself with some water and toweled off. I felt sick and scared. I decided to pay the international data fee to send some messages and texted Mathew, and my mom. I got on my ceremony clothes and my journal with my intentions and found a couple of unclaimed mats out on the porch next to some women who seemed approachable and friendly. Donna, in the corner just next to me, had two little dogs with her and wore an energy of ease, wellbeing, and lightness.

I didn’t really relax until Mateo showed up. We had a big hug and I sighed a huge sigh of relief.

What the heck? Our eyes seemed to say as we looked at each other.

“That was really intense.”

He apologized a whole bunch. I probably cried more.

And then I felt my sense of safety return, and I could actually relax a bit and settle in. Mateo introduced me to some of his friends, which made me feel more at ease. I liked their energy. Everyone, really… seemed so friendly and chill. Warm. Earnest.

Mateo took a shower and changed.

The first of my four Yagé ceremonies would start in a couple hours.

To Be Continued…