My first steps into Shamanism

How I Found Shamanism

I had just had my third baby and the postpartum hit me for the third time. I in counseling and had finally hit wall and went back on antidepressants to handle it for at least the first 6 months or so. I was up late every night watching Medium, Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural. Shows about the unseen, about people who could see what others couldn't. I didn't know why I was drawn to them. I just was.

My husband at the time was super emotionally disconnected. He would rather be in the garage with his speakers and his music than with the family, except for meals or his chores. Even when he was with me it was all about what he knew about electronics and I was pushing him aside by trying to talk about feelings, intuitions, and us needing marriage counseling. It was the third time in 5 years I had tried to get him to do counseling with me. I kept getting gas lit even when I would ask him about his day. I was crying all the time. Super lonely. Depressed. Anxiety ridden. I felt like I was disappearing inside my own life.

On the outside you would have seen a good mom, wife, daughter, friend. I was involved at the kids' school, extracurriculars, volunteering. My two girls were in creative arts magnet programs. My oldest in dance, theatre and backstage in middle school and my younger daughter in a school where I attended with her two times per week to learn violin together. My son was two at this time and I just finished my online Bachelor's degree the year before. We hiked trails all over San Diego County and beyond. I was a healthy eater, mostly vegetarian and cooked all our meals. But on the inside, those late nights were filled with deep trauma surfacing.

Counseling wasn't helping. I have always been a natural healer and I believe in alternative health, but nothing I tried was reaching the place that hurt. Then one night, up late again, something snapped in me. Not a breakdown. A knowing. I got on my laptop and started searching, and I found the words "soul retrieval." I didn't know what it was. I had never heard of it. But I knew, deep in my body, that I needed it.

That search led me to two shamanic women healers in town. I tossed between them for a while, and then I landed with one of them. I begged my husband to spend the money on a session for my birthday present that year. And who knew, finding out years later those two women worked together and one had trained the other. Spirit was guiding me either way.

That first session changed everything for me. It led me to seven years of shamanic training. Peruvian, Celtic, Nordic. It led me to the work I do now. But that night, I was just a lonely mama, depressed, up too late, typing words into a screen and feeling something wake up inside me for the first time in a long time.

If you are up late right now feeling like I felt, I want you to know the snap is coming. The knowing is already in you.