What I'm thankful for, 2015

1. A daughter who is happy and healthy

2. Everyone else in my family, blood-related and otherwise.

3. Friends, new and old 

4.  Ayahuasca and the things it has shown me and all it will show me in thefuture 

5. A job that doesn't give me anxiety 

6. People who let me do their hair in the kitchen because my job doesn't pay very much

7. A car that gets me from point A to point B

8. A place of my own to live that is safe and adorable 

9. My kidney recipient for turning my world upside down and showing me what true courage and freedom can be

10. Adventure

This Thanksgiving is completely different than any I have ever had before. I was supposed to spend it with a friend, but I caught a cold and spent the day (mostly) alone. Other than the sniffling and stuff, it was one the best holidays I've ever had. I knew my kid was with her dad's family, eating turkey and running around with her cousins. I didn't have to entertain anyone or worry about what they wanted to eat or do all day.  I could just fix myself some food, sit on the couch, watch tv, read, write, and be by myself.  For the first time in years, I got to spend Thanksgiving thinking about the things I am thankful for. Like really thankful for. Like the fact that I was born a human in this time period in this country. It is a miracle that my body came to be formed at all, especially in a place and time where I don't have to worry about scarlet fever or gential mutilation, and isn't that what the holidays are really about?

I don't know if I would have appreciated my own company as much in the past, but it's pretty nice. Plus, as things change, as life goes on, I know that alone time may not always be so easy to come by. Spending this next summer out of state and living out of my car is probably one of the most exciting things I have to look forward to, but in the meantime, I'm going to appreciate this bathtub while I have it. And yes, I may or may not be typing this on my phone while in the bathtub. My only regret is not bringing a bowl of leftover mashed potatoes in here as well...

I hope that your Thanksgiving is filled with love and gratitude, whether you are surrounded my family or whether you are spending it alone. Either way, I hope you feel peaceful and free and genuinely happy.

Rebirth

There is no way for me to type out my Ayahuasca experience. The written word has no room, in any known language, for what I experienced six days ago. I can't even journal it in a way that makes sense.

 

So give me a little more time. 

I'll make a video post describing my ceremony, and even though I know it won't do it justice either, it will be something a little closer to the truth. But there are some things I can tell you now...

I know my purpose.

I know where I came from.

I have started to learn a second language.

I have physically experienced and relived what it was like for our fishy ancestors to crawl onto land for the first time.

I have a lot more work to do.

And most importantly...

The gut blob is gone. Just like that, it is no more. 

I promise more on all of this once I get a chance to make a video.

I hold so much love in my heart for every one of you.

Ayahuasca is absolutely, 100% the most pure and raw form of medicine that I have ever witnessed, and my soul has been healed.  I owe my life to Mama Ayahuasca and I will spend the rest of my life working to make the most of what I have been given. 

I have never felt so much love in my life.

It was incredible.

Famous Last Words

It's here.

I can't decide if I'm preparing for Disneyland or my execution. I think both are probably pretty close. 

I don't have a lot to say except that I don't have any expectations, really, but I am ready for whatever Mama Aya gives me.

I've got my list of things to pack. I have an offering for her. I have my intention. I bought a neon pink pair of long johns in the kids' section at Target because it's gonna be cold tonight. And I'm bringing my snow bear from when I was a kid.

I'll share as much as I can as soon as I can. I have no idea how long it will take me to process everything, so please be patient with me. 

I love you all. And I'm hoping to be capable of loving you (and myself) even harder once I come out of this on the other side.

Over and out, captain.

The Chemical Our Brain Releases When We Die.

What's it like drinking Ayahuasca?
 
Some people compare it to being shot out into space.
Others claim that it's more like dying.
Or being born.
Or an exorcism.
Years of therapy condensed into a few hours.
Lifetimes of memory recall.
Losing control completely.
It's loss of time.
Loss of ego.
It's being thrust into the deepest darkest parts of your mind.
It's being (quite literally) face-to-face with your demons.
Face-to-face with God.
With yourself.
It's realizing that all three of those things are the same.

I honestly have no idea what drinking Ayahuasca will be like.  But I'm doing it in two weeks, and I'm sure I will have a lot to say about it after Ceremony.  Right now, though, I can only compare it to falling in love.  Every song I hear is suddenly about Mama Aya, every conversation makes its way to ceremony, every day is a countdown to when I finally get to meet her. 


I understand how all of this sounds to most of you guys.  It is some crazy, hippie bullshit.  It gets weirder, so strap in tight, kids.

She started calling me over a month ago, waking me up at three o'clock in the morning, not in a menacing or an urgent way, but more playful.  "Let's go!" she would giggle.  "Come on!  Let's play!" 

I told you it got weirder.  But that's the only way I can describe it.  She would wake me up in the middle of the night until I did more research, I read books, I met with friends and shamans and made plans to take the medicine.   There is no other way for me to explain it, or believe me, I would.  I was being called. And just in time, too, I might add.  There are things I need to find out.  There are wounds that need to heal.  There is wisdom that needs to be shared.  And eventually... maybe in this ceremony, maybe in one years down the road, Aya and I will play.

Dieta is hard, I will admit.  Giving up weed was not fun, as much as I don't like admitting it.  Neither was giving up ice cream.  Bread.  Salt.  Everywhere I go, fried foods and pastries taunt my nose.  Oils and sugars have been the most difficult, for sure.  But I want this.  I want to go into this as honestly and as humbly as I can.

And I've noticed things changing.  My dreams are vivid.  She appears in them occasionally, telling me to write apology/forgiveness letters to my father.  She pushes me to write, to create, to share my stories.  She shows me old friends that had my back way before we even decided to come to Earth to be human.  She gives me flashes of information (like being shown a movie for just a split second on a black screen right in front of my face) of the vastness and overwhelming awe of time and space, and then she shoves me back into my living room couch.  "Everything is connected," she tells me, "You can see it if you stay open". 

All of this, and I don't even drink the medicine for another two weeks. 

It's going to be big...

I'm scared to see what she may show me.  All of this self-abuse that I've inflicted, all of these lies I've told, these walls and false faces I've put up for ones reason or another- I'm going to have to answer to it. But at the end of it all, I will come out of it with knowledge, with more questions, and being more Sophie than I have been since I can remember.  And that will be a beautiful thing.

Thank you so much, as you read this.  Whether you know me or not.  Whether you like me or not.  Whether we speak daily or if you just stumbled across my blog.  We are all connected, and we are here to learn from one another.  I raise my glass of black coffee to you, even though I still can't help but wish it had caramel in there, too.

Here's to freedom.  Here's to friends who understand and support, to friends who don't understand but support anyway.  Here's to being shot into space and lifting the veil and to dying and rebirth.  Here's to synchronicity.  Here's to being called to do something big and following it despite all rationality.  Here's to the panic attacks that show us how delicate we are.  Here's to the next day when we realize how strong we are for surviving.  Here's to feeling love on a bigger level.   Here's to heartbreak. Here's to feeling everything we possibly can while we are here on earth for a few precious years.  Here's to learning and failing and learning and failing and learning and failing. 
Here's to being connected.
Here's to being open.

La Medicina

Ceremony is October 30th.

While I haven't buckled down on Ayahuasca Dieta yet, I have seriously cut down on my weed, dairy, salt, and sugar intake.  I have been trying my best to journal all of it- my hopes to purge all of the dark blob that has lived in my gut since I can remember and also the fears I have of seeing everything in that dark blob manifested in front of me.  I'm both humbled and terrified by the idea of stripping down all of the layers of my personality, breaking through my ego, and seeing what is truly there.  Will I like what I see? Will I even recognize myself?  Sometimes I wonder if there will even be anything left once all the bullshit has been cleared away. 

If you think I'm doing this to trip balls in the desert, you are sorely mistaken.

I'm doing this because I am ready to face that dark blob in my gut.
I am sick of being stuck in the same relationship cycles.
I'm sick of feeling trapped.
I'm sick of superficial conversations and feeling like I'm pretending to be a human.
I'm sick of having to smoke weed to get through stressful times.
I'm sick of being tired all day.
I'm sick of comparing myself to other people.
I'm sick of worrying that revealing my true self will also reveal that I'm mentally ill.
I'm sick of lying.
I'm sick of grieving for people who died almost twenty years ago.
I'm sick.
And there's a reason they call it Medicine.

It's not a quick fix, by any means.  The work that I will do on the 30th of October will only be the start of a long process filled with its own ups and downs.  I am alright with that.  The pills I tried before this only treat the symptoms, and they make me apathetic and lethargic. 

The other night, I let myself cry, really cry, for a long time.  It started out with tears of frustration, but once I opened up and let myself feel the sadness, it wouldn't stop.  Every bad thing that I had seen or done or heard or thought, every death I had mourned, every mistake I had made, it all came crashing down onto my chest. I felt judged in the worst possible way, like I was sitting in a courtroom across from every other human being in the world and they were pronouncing me guilty before I could even open my mouth to defend myself.  For the first time in my life, it was too much. 
I didn't know what else to do.
"PLEASE," I called out to my ceiling and whatever was out there that would listen.
"Please, please, please make it stop!  No more!  I can't take any more!"
The contents of entire rivers poured down the sides of my face while I continued to pray for the first time since Brandon died.
I wasn't praying to the Christian God that I had been raised with.  I wasn't praying to the Patron Saint of anything.  I wasn't even praying to Mother Ayahuasca.  I was pleading with anyone, anything that would take mercy on me.  A higher power.   A lower life form.  Anything that could turn the volume down on my life just until I got my shit together. 
After another minute or so of bawling on my bed, I wiped away my tears, I sat up, and I pulled my shoulders back.
You are a force, a powerful being, I told myself.  You have no other choice except to deal with this shit.  Now DEAL.  After my mental pep talk, I pulled myself off my bed.  From somewhere in my brain, the idea came to me that all of these bad things that I was dealing with- the bad decisions, the abuse, the mistakes, everything that has been beating me down this summer- it was all my doing.  I became aware that I had CHOSEN to have these things happen to me before I even started out in this life.  I had decided before I was even born that I needed all of these terrible things to happen so that I could learn from it.  And that thought, while it disappeared as quickly as it came, did not make me feel any better; it only continued to frighten me.
I marched into my living room with a sense of purpose and general ass-kickery to combat this depressive episode.  In my head, I personified it into this slimy, giant creature, and I was coming out swinging.  I am going to do some yoga, I told myself, to bring myself to center and to remind myself how strong I can be.
And then it happened...
As I pulled my mat from its spot in the corner of the room, I looked over at the framed photographs I keep of my family.  My sister, my mother, my stepsister, my beautiful daughter.  All of them stared at me behind glass, and I did not recognize a goddamned one of them.
I'm not being metaphorical.  I'm not exaggerating.
I could process that these people were related to me and I was aware that they were people in my life, but there was no emotional connection to them.  They could have been any four strangers on the street for all my heart knew.  The more I tried to attach myself to my family, the more distant they felt from me.
It had never gotten this bad before. 
I unrolled my mat with shaking hands and repeated out loud to myself the only thing I could think to say, "There is good.  There is love.  There is good.  There is love".
If you have ever been to my house, you know that I fill it full of things that make me feel good (because, let's face it, when you make eight dollars an hour, you tend to spend a lot of time at home).  My bookshelf, my walls, everything in my home has a purpose, and it all has been put together in a way that makes me feel like I am in my own space.  But my living room that night may as well have been a dark, empty cave on another planet in another dimension.  The bookshelf, the books, the art, even the crayon drawings on my fridge were foreign to me.  Nothing felt normal or comforting.  From where I was standing, I could see no good, no love.  But I didn't know what to do so I just kept repeating it to myself while I tried to stretch and breathe. 
After about an hour or so of poses, I wrapped my arms around myself.  I felt so tiny and weak.  I wondered if this is how my friends feel when I hug them.  I have lost a shit ton of weight since the surgery and the divorce, and I could feel it when my fingers found homes in the gaps in my rib cage.  Nevertheless, I pulled myself even closer, digging my fingertips in further.  "There is good.  There is love". Over and over again.  I felt a little better.
More poses.  More hugging.  More chanting out loud like a lunatic.
Once my house began to feel more familiar, I turned on all of my lights and burned some sage, leading the smoke out the front door of my tiny apartment.  Yes, it's a hippie thing to do.  But after an evening of praying to my ceiling and not recognizing my own family, feeling silly for burning some sage was the least of my worries.
I felt a little better, but I was shaken up for the rest of the night.  To be honest, I 'm still recovering from it.


I debated for days about whether or not to post this story.  It's not a happy one.  It's not even a sane one.  It negates logic and reason and everything that I have held true, and it only reaffirms the idea that I am crazy and incurable.  But the truth is, this is something real that happened to me.  It could happen again.  That's the bad news.

The good news is, wounded and broken, I'm still standing. 
The good news is, somewhere in space and time, I've already taken the Medicine.
The good news is that there IS good.  There IS love.
And I'm going to find it in myself, over and over, until it has become a part of me.

Turn to Face the Strange

I have some big stuff brewing in my life, both literally and figuratively. Once I can say things with more certainty, there will definitely be a longer, less cryptic blog post. 

Until then, here is a page from my journal that can give you a little peek.

On failing

I asked a few of my friends to tell me about a time that they failed.  I asked them if they felt like it was worth it to try something, even though it didn't work out.

I am really lucky to have friends who will tell me things like this.  Their responses were honest and raw and revealing.  All day today,  I've received texts and emails describing how each of them came up short in his or her life.  I know people who have lived through death, divorce, drugs, poverty, abusive relationships, and sex addiction.  They have let down their children, their parents, their siblings, and their friends.  And on top of that, they were willing to share their failures with me and have me type them up and put them on the internet. 

I don't think I knew what I was getting into.


There were short text message responses like: I'll take life for 1000.  Still waiting to see if it was worth it.  Other, longer responses came via email.  One friend of mine has started writing six different novels, none of which were ever finished, and he sent me the stories behind each of them.  With every email and text, every tale of humility and disappointment, I felt closer to these people, like having this information about them somehow made them more human and fragile while also making them more badass and admirable. 


"I failed at being the manager at (my job).  No matter how hard I tried or didn't try, once I was promoted, my team was consistently unhappy and so was I.  I was so wrapped up in...family stuff that I didn't have compassion for me, and even though I knew I shouldn't be the manager, I never did anything to release the stress."
 

"Last year I tried to pass the Motorcycle Rider basic course to get my license and failed 2 times, then the third time I crashed and dislocated my knee and sprained my whole leg.  Embarrassing and sad as I come from a 'long line' of riders and enthusiasts and both my 17 year old nieces and my 22 year old nephew were successful in passing and have went on to buy their own bikes and ride happy."

"One that comes to mind is school, mainly high school, I failed it because of the time I was in my life. Moving to 3 different high schools in 3 different states when your dad tries to send you to a mental house and when your mom kicks you out at 15 when all she was doing was beating and abusing made it hard. I had to focus on being happy and self worth, while struggling to pass my classes."


Sometimes we failed at things no matter how hard we tried, no matter how badly we wanted them.  Sometimes we failed people. 

The inspiration to write this blog came to me the other day, when I was running some errands with a friend of mine and her six-year-old son.  While we shopped and ate lunch, I watched the two of them together and made a note to try and be more like that with my daughter- more patient and considerate of her age and how she thinks. I unloaded all of my anxieties and some future plans onto my friend, and I was relieved when she responded with excitement and support.  Her opinion of me as a fellow mom means a lot, and I felt way better about my decisions once we had spent the afternoon together. The very next day, she sent me text messages about how she felt like a "shitty mom" because she feels like she is constantly making wrong decisions with her son.  This same woman that I use as an example of how to be a good mother, she is so worried about failing her child.  We do this with our siblings.  Our mothers.  Our lovers.  Failing people is something that a lot of my friends wanted to tell me about.


"I feel like I failed (at my marriage) because no matter what I did, said, showed, it was never enough.  It was never enough to prove I was throwing every piece of myself into the marriage...marriage is a two way street, both spouses need to put in the effort and I felt  like the only one drowning in both our problems trying to fix them and make it all work."
 

We've all felt like this.  The sentiment is still the same.  We've failed at things that we wanted soooo badly- like getting a motorcycle license or a marriage- and that is terrible. When we're kids, we're told to try our hardest, and it didn't matter if we succeeded, as long as we tried.  But we also are told that failure is not an option and that it's important to finish what you start.  Sometimes our best is not enough.  Eventually, we fail the people we love.  We can't always give them what we feel they deserve, and we take them for granted. The failure cuts extra deep on those days. 


"I failed as a big sister when I was younger.  I am 22 months older than her.  We should have been tight, but we just seemed to have two different childhoods, even though we had the exact same living situation.  I can still remember her coming up to me when she was a freshman, I was a junior.  She had gotten her period and needed help.  I showed her where the nurse's office was and went about my day. I still cry about it and tell her I am sorry. I was just an asshole at that age."  


"My marriage.  I thought I was ready to be with her for the rest of my life, but I didn't realize that I had many more years ahead that would alter and change me into a person that didn't need her around anymore.  I failed her and I failed our marriage."


We also failed at things that we didn't even care about, and that is such a strange sort of failure, like a double whammy.  Not only did we fail, we didn't even really want it in the first place and we STILL failed.


"I feel like I failed (college) because well...I literally did fail....but also because I failed to push myself to be better and actually try.  Looking back at it now, I feel like I was afraid to succeed and do the hard work I knew I was easily able to do but I failed to put in the effort."

"I moved away from home to another state when I was 22.  I lasted less than a year in Ohio before (I) moved back in with my parents.  Even though I didn't like living in Ohio, I still feel like I failed because I ended up going back to Kentucky, even though I'm happier here than there." 



These stories, they all feel important, like I should do more with them than just put them in a blog.  These are the stories that made the people I love into who they are.  These are the hard times that took the hardest blows to their spirits and made them look at themselves in new ways.  Success is a wonderful, beautiful thing, but it rarely makes anyone introspective.  Failure is so powerful, it can easily discourage us from ever trying again, but it can also motivate us to be better next time, to change and evolve to adapt to what life has given us.  My friends, they are experts on survival, and not only that, they are all way more optimistic than they should be. Nearly everyone said that they would love to go back in time and warn themselves to make better decisions.  But they ALL say that it was worth it to try something new, to gain the experience, to have the stories.  Despite the broken bones, broken hearts, broken egos, and broken homes, despite all of us having this underlying dread that we don't know what we are doing with our lives, despite all of that... we would take failure over nothing at all.

And that means everything.