Last night, the final day of the year of the snake, I went to the home of a dear friend and was supported in a heroic journey with a mushroom by the name of Golden Teacher. My intention for this journey was twofold: close the chapter of my life that revolved around fertility and monogamy (two marriages that did not serve me), and open a new chapter of chosen infertility (I had my fallopian tubes removed on February 6th) and non-monogamy. A very important part of this ritual would be feeding the marriage certificate from my abusive second marriage into the fire.

The journey always begins the same way. First I get cold. Then with eyes closed, colors, shapes, patterns in a constant kaleidoscope of morphing from one to the next that happens so fast I often can’t keep up with it. I always find myself wishing I could somehow record the images that flood my brain because some of them are so exquisitely beautiful that words cannot possibly describe what I “see” when I’m in the presence of the medicine. Every time I have worked with mushroom medicine no matter the other images that come in there is always one that returns time and time again. The Tibetan eternal knot. At times the knot morphs into a similar shape that I’m still working out the source and meaning of. At times it becomes less formed, more organic, almost like tree roots emerging through the soil. What I find particularly poignant is when I lower my head the internal visual landscape always shifts to a vibrant glowing green. When I raise my head other colors emerge again.

Once I stabilize myself inside of the shapeshifting colors and shapes animal medicine usually appears. This time it was birds. The first one to present itself was a South American raptor of some kind, I’m not sure which one. After the bird medicine came and went I spent time just being present in my environment. There’s always a moment when time and space get different. Though only a few feet away my friend seemed all the way on the other side of the room. Anytime he’d get up to put more wood on the fire or get me water there was a disconnect between where my brain perceived him to be versus where he actually was. I told him that there were two of him, that he was Loki, and that Loki is such an asshole. With tears streaming down our faces we both laughed at that.

I sat for a while on the floor, the fire to my left, his cat sprawled out next to me with his paw on the marriage certificate. My friend had put another log on the fire and at that moment I knew that it was time to burn it. I told him I was ready and could he safely help me access the fire because I didn’t think I could do it on my own. He moved the fire screen out of the way. I crawled over to face the fire. I held the piece of paper to my mouth. I bit it. I let my tears fall on to it. Then, I placed it on the fire and watched it burn. That was the moment I broke into sobs. I let my tears wash away all the hurt, the rage, the betrayal, the criticism, the control, the ownership, the abuse, and the fact that I had no idea who I married until it was too late. I let the fire eat all of my heartbreak. As I lay on the floor in child’s pose, my belly facing the earth, hands outstretched towards the fire, my friend knelt beside me and put his hand on my back. A deeply reassuring gesture letting me know I wasn’t alone in my grief. I don’t know how long I was on the floor for but he stayed with me the whole time. Every so often I’d look up at the fire, see the remnants of what had just burned, cry some more, and look again until it was nothing more than ash.

Eventually I stretched out my legs and let the earth fully hold me as I quietly shed more tears. Letting my newly prodded and healing belly be held by the floor felt like nothing else had up to this point in my recovery. Between gentle upward pressure from below and gravity doing its thing from above my soft tissue was able to find its way back together in a way that resting with a heating pad for ten days hadn’t. In so many ways it felt like the internal structure of my abdomen had been woven back together.

After a while I was ready for oranges. If you’re not already aware eating citrus during a mushroom journey enhances the effects of the medicine. It’s also a part of the journey I find incredibly nourishing. My friend went into the kitchen and brought back a plate of beautifully sliced oranges. I slowly devoured them. As I separated the flesh from the peel I let the juices run down my fingers. I let soft moans of ecstasy escape from my mouth. Oranges taste the most delicious when I’m working with medicine, every time. I didn’t just eat these slices of orange, I worshiped them. I made love to them as they slid down my throat and landed in my stomach. I inhaled their essence and had a memory of when I was in labor with my daughter, feeling like I couldn’t go on, and my midwife waved a bottle of orange essential oil under my nose to revive me. Once again orange supported me in the arduous process of closing and opening.

After the orange I had a little bit more medicine and some water and was able to continue the journey. By now I had moved towards thoughts of my daughter, my pregnancy with her, her birth, and the overall experience of motherhood. I shared stories with my friend from poignant moments of my journey with her. Every memory came with soft tears that flowed down my cheeks, over my neck, and settled in between my breasts. I spoke to the difficulty of letting her go so that she can embark on a move to the other side of the world in a matter of weeks with her father and her new stepmom. I shared how how hard it had been to be fully in my practice while also mothering, about the sacrifices I’ve made in being the primary parent for all of her life even after the divorce from her father. I finally spoke to the resentment I’ve felt in all of the financial set backs as the parent who always seems to be nursing a sick child back to health and then usually getting sick myself. I let myself give voice to frustrations that I hadn’t before. Then I spoke to some of the more beautiful moments that I’ve had with my child…the moment she discovered her hands while nursing, appreciating that I was the parent who witnessed all the developmental firsts in her life…crawling, standing, walking, reading, etc. I had taken two years off from my practice so that I could nurse her and be as present as possible during those early years. Then, in August of 2017, during a full solar eclipse, I understood that I was ready to reenter my practice and did so a few months later. Yesterday, during another full solar eclipse I realized that with her departure in a few weeks I’d be able to once again step fully into my practice in a way that I had not ever been able to do before now. That the last ten years of the difficult dance of mothering and private practice are about to come to an end, all because I’m letting her go.

As we sat there for another hour or so completing the evening, sharing more stories, sometimes giggling uncontrollably, I felt a new sense of lightness in my entire body. A lightness I had not felt in many years. I thanked my friend for his guidance and presence as I worked through some of the pain of the last decade of my life. At midnight it was time to go to bed. I slept deeply and soundly, something that often evades me. I hadn’t slept like that in years. The next morning we had breakfast and did our check in. I shared that something that came through last night was that I still have work to do around the first three years of my daughter’s life where I was drowning in the darkness of postpartum depression. I shared that it’s still painful to see pictures of her from that time knowing what the hell that I was in. But that work is for another time, another journey, and another evening of medicine. For what I just had the courage to face I am eternally grateful. This morning I awoke to the first day of the year of the fire horse. A year of unbridled propulsion, passion, breakthroughs, reinvention, and momentum.