Shira and the City

Walking with the Medicine

Oct 3, 2022

As my train pulled away from Granada and all of Andalusia, tears welled up from my guts. I closed my eyes into my heart and took deep breaths wondering how I would ever integrate the profound beauty, healing and magic of my pilgrimage. The portal was closing. The goodbyes to people and places landing in me like a boulder on sand. Grief is a mainstay of walking the path of deep self love.

That last day in Spain the rains came after the long blaze of a heat filled month that drove my body down into little coves for naked swims in the Mediterranean Sea with him and the tribe that took me in like kin. The stories between the first day and this last day are mine for now. To hold close. To keep sacred. To make medicine from.

Each time I lifted my eyes from my heart to watch the landscape slide by through the train’s plexi glass window there was a rainbow. I counted five. “There is no place like home” they kept saying. Is this my home? Everywhere is your home.

I was headed to Madrid to crash in a hostel so I could fly back to the states the next morning. I was resistant to being in such a big city. But as my dear sister in Granada said to me- “I sense there is a reason you have to be there. You know how you roll.” ;)

My hostel was right in the heart of downtown above late night bars and nightclubs. I was exhausted and feeling extra tense anticipating the night of no sleep I had not even had yet. The other women in my dorm were young, shoppers, goer outers, likely up late on their cell phone talkers- or so I assumed and it turned out to be true.

I made my bed with the one starched white sheet and surprisingly fluffy pillow they allocated me (I persuaded the woman at the front desk for an extra pillow), locked up my belongings in one of the creaky gym lockers and headed out into the streets to find something to eat.

My head was wrapped in a scarf and I was wearing a mottled Earth colored onesie and old sandals. I looked out of place. Like a stray busker; ragtag twinkly eyed and clearly not from here- the city. I took a deep breath into those old feelings of not belonging and being out of place and found a new anchor of peace in who I am, an embodied sensation of owning my path and whether my path takes me here or there it is always where I belong. Earth is my home. When I conform and contort to something I am not I will always lose the way I am supposed to go, even if it is to find food in a busy city.

As I set out into the madness I heard a voice whisper “Indian food” that I batted away because all I could see were endless tapas bars. I meandered for about an hour looking for something other than wine and fried fish (had enough), or somewhere not completely packed and finally became so overwhelmed I just wandered back to my hostel fully surrendered to eating a protein bar in my luggage and going to bed. I took a breath and told myself to stay open to the magic and let go.

Just when I gave in I turned to see an Indian restaurant across the street from my hostel that I missed on my first five walks by. It was packed of course and there was one man waiting inside the door to be seated. I was hesitant to wait as it was already 9pm but felt a strong nudge to go in. The man waiting was Indian, an obvious visitor and somewhere in his late 40s. They motioned that his table would be ready soon and I looked at him, with my stomach in command, and said “Let’s share a table. We are both here to eat, get our needs met. You don’t have to talk to me.”

His eyes laughed a little at my openness and we were quickly seated together. Two strangers. We immediately launched into conversation. He told me he was traveling for work. He is a medical device rep, lives in Florida with his wife and two kiddos and was born in India.

Then he asked me what it is I do. This question. How do I explain this? Never in my life had I ever expressed the path I walk more clearly and with more authority in my life. My natural inheritance flowed from me. I told him about my service to psychedelic mushrooms, the Earth and plants. My devotion to understanding and reframing trauma, my path as a womb priestess, my venture in music, what guided me to Spain and what guides my life. His eyes welled up with tears.

Our conversation deepened into what modern medicine has become and how the separation from our natural ways, from the Earth and from ritual have created so many devastating illnesses in people. His immersion in the medical world has given him a full glimpse into how little they know about healing and how he only sees people getting more sick despite the advancements. His work is in the realm of the brain and he was hyper curious about how instead of putting stents in people’s heads, what if the trauma was addressed? What if ritual and prayer and plant medicine were a foundation of health again? What if people could learn to access their feelings and confront their fears and walk a path similar to mine, even one little footstep in one of these directions? He was astonished. He was excited about the mushrooms, about meeting me, about his life in a little way again.

Then something magical happened. Something began to wake up in him. I could feel his whole heart emerge into the space between us and land on the table as he began to tell me about his mother’s recent passing. He swallowed his tears into a sludge that he could feel was on the edge of making him sick if he didn’t let himself feel her loss, and therefore her ability to take up a new presence in his life.

Why are we all so afraid to feel the real depth of our love? Only in the cracking open can we ever know what we are made of and thereby meet what made us. And that one encounter will bring us to our knees in praise and awareness that we have always been on our path. Something clicks, the life review flashing across our hearts with new awareness and we are reborn in gratitude for it all. Here in this moment is where the path takes a new turn, a new texture, and we begin to walk as dreamers again.

The busy-ness of his life was hiding the pain and grief of losing her. He could feel an empty ache that wanted to be filled by something bigger, something that was forgotten. He was putting the pieces of his life together before my eyes. The mystery of our meeting was not lost on him. He leaned in a little more.

Then the memories of his grandfather began to fill him. A man who would guide him through meditations, prayer and spiritual teachings as a child. He wanted that back. He wanted to stop everything and reclaim his faith in life, like I had, like I devote myself to everyday unafraid of the layers of fear that must be melted away by a bigger force, by love. For his soul, for his children, for his mother and grandfather.

I offered him a ritual to help grieve and contact his mother. Something simple. He was deeply grateful and I know he will follow through, that his life will shift just enough to allow that seed of faith tucked far away in fear to tumble forth and find fertile soil again. He bought me dinner, got my email and thanked me deeply. He said “my life just changed a little because of you.”

As did mine.

My girlfriend heard my story and said “if you can’t be a priestess in the city then…”. We laughed.

I don’t share this to gloat. But to presence how the medicine moves, how it is carried and how it works in mysterious ways to weave us all together in perfection. That being a medicine carrier isn’t much about the actual medicine or modality, or some thing I learned in a three day seminar, as it is about how I walk with the medicine in my day to day life. And that I will get called to serve in ways that I can’t see that will always, also serve me when I stay open, rooted in my faith and claim the path the Goddess carved for me under my feet. The medicine bag is in my heart. It opens with a prayer and is delivered through my listening to the mysterious still small voice and the my/wecelium network that wraps itself into every living thing- including you.

Stay open to the magic in every moment.

Blessed be.

(Pic in the Alhambra)