Seeing Our Shadow through Sacred Mushrooms
When I asked my ten year old what I still needed to work on he said “Dad gets mad more easily, but he doesn’t get as angry as you. You get mad less easily, but when you do get mad, you completely lose control of your emotions. It’s like this mom: your amygdala gets activated, and you completely lose access to your prefrontal cortex.” “That’s exactly right!” I told him. Where did you learn about how the brain works?! “Oh, at school. They taught us how the brain works in a kid-friendly way. But then, I interpreted it for you in a more complex, adult way…” And suddenly, my hope in our education system was redeemed. And I realize that I am still working on my own redemption. He continued…”and blame shifting. And defensiveness. But you do take accountability when you mess up. Daddy needs to work on taking accountability and defensiveness. And he needs to work on blame shifting too, but he is worse with blame shifting than you are.” He was on point.
So we sat down as a family and discussed it. Our son drew diagrams while we talked. It was a cycle: I would ask for my needs to be met, their dad would feel like I was criticizing him and get defensive, which triggered me, then I would get angry, and he would get more defensive. We knew we needed to disrupt the cycle. Our son has witnessed this cycle so many times. That night, he said that seeing us sitting down together to solve it gives him hope for the future of our family. That gave us hope that we could redeem ourselves in our son’s eyes. So their:dad and I sat down and decided we needed to do more to prepare ourselves to coparent more effectively.
I had recently begun experimenting with microdosing with psilocybin and amanita. The psilocybin was helping me to recognize when I was in my ego, reacting in all the ways our son listed. I was starting to see myself more objectively. I was starting to see and integrate my shadow. The amanita was helping me to get back into my body. Throughout childhood, I coped with pain by dissociating, and the amanita, and healing sessions with Ry, were helping me to feel safe being in my body again. Their dad was nervous, but he was seeing the difference in me in real time, so he wanted to try it. He took his first dose of psilocybin on the Saturday before Halloween.
We went to a farm to go on a hayride and pick pumpkins. I saw him smiling and asked how he was feeling. “I’m actually enjoying myself. You know how hard that is for me…and my senses…it’s like they’re heightened. But I don’t feel high or anything. Just…more present. More content. I could see the difference in him. And feel it. There was a long line for the hayride. Normally, he would be irritable, checking his phone, fussing at the boys, and sighing. On this day, he was smiling and pointing out the sunflowers in the field.
When we got back, he said “This stuff works!” We worked with Ryanna Batiste, owner of Embodied Microdosing, to come up with a dosing schedule for him. He is doing a dropper full of the original sacrament every other day. On the days he doesn’t do it, he is more agitated, but not as much as before he started microdosing. The effect is lasting longer each time. Ry described his nervous system as “a wreck.” The psilocybin is helping to soothe it, to elevate his mood. He is also on psychotropics. He feels that the meds stabilize his mood and the psilocybin elevates it. The net result for both of us is that we are laying down new neural pathways in our brains. We are able to be more responsive than reactive. I see what a gift it has been that he has not been able to move out yet. We needed to do more healing first. We needed to break this cycle so that when we separate, we can have a peaceful coparenting relationship.
I did healing sessions with Ry to process trauma from childhood, the energy of which was stored in my root chakra. I had been struggling with a cyst in my spine that was causing debilitating sciatica, as it was pressing on the sciatic nerve. As I worked through the trauma, the cyst shrunk. I went from barely being able to walk to walking easily again. Because so much of my trauma is from the first seven years of my life, my medical issues have manifested in the root chakra, where trauma from that time period is stored. I asked Ry why I couldn't just have healed it myself, and why I needed other people to heal me when I had cancer in the same area. I asked why, when the cyst was pressing on my colon, causing me to fear a recurrence, I had to get my best friends to use the symbols to see what was going on with my health. And why I had to do the same for them when they had a scare, why they couldn't do it for themselves.
“Because you’re not meant to face these terrifying things alone, the possibility that you may have a life-threatening illness. The ego will protect you from devastating news. We are meant to heal in community. You needed me to hold space for you so you could dive headfirst into the shadows of that trauma.” She was right. Because she was there, holding that space for me, I was able to be brave and look at that trauma. And release it. And I was able to talk to the cyst in my spine, asking it “why are you here?” And the cyst replied “to protect you. You need to walk, not run.” And I realized, as in all things in life, I need to walk through, not run from, the pain.
If you are interested in working with Ry and/or her sacred mushrooms and plant medicine, you can contact her at:
