How Psychedelics Changed my Mind and Healed my Heart (4 of 4)

Takeaways from My Ayahuasca Experience—I’m Forever Changed

Everyone I spent the week with at Rythmia Life Advancement Center underwent a transformation.

It was different for everyone, of course, as we all came to it with our own experiences. We came from all around the world (the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, South America), from many different walks of life. Our reasons for coming to the centre varied too: health, relationships, pain, grief, self-reflection. Some of the most initially skeptical people ended up having the most transformational experiences of their lives. Everyone I spoke to said there was no question: it was life-changing. For my last post in this series, I thought I’d share my thoughts and takeaways from the whole experience.

The ayahuasca journey, which I wrote about in my third post in this series, and the entire week at Rythmia (see post 1 and post 2), is about shedding the protective layers we have all grown over the course of our lives. It’s about becoming less of who you are not—bringing an end to an old way of being—and more of who you originally were and who you truly are.

Healing Intergenerational Trauma

One of my most profound realizations was that there were more parts of me that needed healing than I had thought. Coming into the retreat, I was sure that I would spend some time dealing with my emotions about my recent divorce. But the medicine goes to where you need it to go—you have no control over it. And in all my psychedelic experiences throughout the week, my relationship status barely came up.

Instead, what my subconscious needed to face, clean up and release were long-ago experiences and emotions from childhood and early adulthood, and even issues from past generations that I was unaware of.

I have long heard about the importance of loving oneself unconditionally, and as you know if you’ve been following my journey, I’ve been focusing hard on that goal in recent years. But I had an aha moment at Rythmia: You can’t love yourself unconditionally if you’re still staggering under the weight of generations of women before you that did not—could not—love themselves due to their circumstances in life. Research has found that trauma passes down from one generation to the next to the next. Even if I personally don’t have a specific traumatic event in my past that’s holding me back, and I don’t think I do, research supports the idea that I still carry intergenerational trauma even if I’m not aware of it. Here’s how it works: when a trauma is experienced by one person in a family—a grandparent, great grandparent or even a parent—it can actually alter the way their genes are expressed (this is studied in the field of epigenetics), and then be passed down to future generations. Which means it’s something we’re all born with; it’s in our DNA.

And at Rythmia, I truly did deal with the trauma of generations of women before me. I can feel that that weight has been lifted¼ which is allowing me now to have a whole new relationship with myself.

If you’re interested in learning more about trauma and healing, I recommend the latest book by Vancouver-based physician Dr. Gabor Maté called The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. In it, he looks at the connections between two of the most important factors in modern health: individual trauma and the pressures of modern-day living. You can also check out his interview on this podcast episode with one of my favourite functional medicine doctors, UK-based Dr. Rangan Chatterjee.

My Top takeaways: What Ayahuasca Helped Me See More Clearly

I took so much away from this experience; it would take me days to cover it all. But here are some of the big realizations I had through this journey.

1. Everyone has a story, much of which may be unknown. I now understand that if someone is mean, hurtful, judgemental, angry, addicted, depressed, anxious, etc., there’s a reason for it. It’s a sign that something happened to them in their past—something, that may be locked in their subconscious mind and driving their behaviour. Everyone has their layers, their pain, their wounds. This experience has given me so much more compassion for people. Oprah talks about this beautifully in her recent book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing, which you can hear her discuss on this episode of Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast.
2. The measure of a good life is not outward success; it’s how well you have loved. Feelings of love are among some of the most common experiences people report after taking psychedelics. And my experience in Costa Rica reinforced the idea that the way to judge a life well-lived is not by how successful you were or how much money you made, but by how well and how much you loved, including loving yourself. I’ve been working on self-acceptance for a long time, and it wasn’t until I understood why I couldn’t love myself unconditionally that I could actually start to move toward it.
3. We’re all interconnected. Everything that happens to me ripples outward and affects what happens to everyone else¼ and vice versa. Ayahuasca made me feel connected, even related, to each and every person at Rythmia, like they were my “brothers and sisters,” as the shamans would say. That feeling has lingered with me, and has made me deeply appreciative of how we are all, no matter where we live and what we do, interconnected.
4. Intention gives us the ability to create lives of joy, abundance and wisdom. At Rythmia, Kim Stanwood Terranova taught us that intentions give us the pathway to consciously steer our lives. They are a powerful force that focus our energy in the direction we want to go, helping to remind us of our goals and bring us back to our true selves. We were asked to set specific intentions for every ayahuasca ceremony, and I found the practice incredibly useful in guiding my journey. I’ve been purposely setting annual intentions for myself for the last few years, covering all the different aspects of my life, and the experience at Rythmia reminded me of how important this is even on a daily basis.
5. We all have trauma and we all have the ability to heal from it. It was surprising that a central theme of my week at Rythmia, and in this article series, became learning about trauma. Trauma is something that I thought happened to other people—not to me. But it actually happens to us all to varying degrees. Some of us are aware of it, some of us deliberately bury it and some of us find it so painful in the moment that it disappears on its own into our subconscious mind. What I learned is that each and every one of us has experienced some form of trauma, and unless we face it head on, it remains with us for life. What I also learned firsthand in that week is that trauma can be a very tough thing to get past using our western model of therapy and medication (which also involves a lot of time and money), and that psychedelics (ayahuasca, MDMA, psilocybin, iboga, San Petro, Peyote) are presenting new emerging ways to heal both known and unknown trauma in an expedited manner.

When You Change, Everyone Around You Changes

My kids say I'm way more chill than I was before I went to Rythmia. In fact I think we all changed during those weeks apart. I grew a lot at Rythmia, and the kids grew a lot at camp too—and I have to say the energy in the house has actually been different since we all returned (not to mention that I “smudged” the house with sage upon my return, as suggested by my Rythmia teachers, which is meant to bring harmony, calm and peace). We’ve started giving acknowledgements to each other at dinner, taking turns to list a few specific things we appreciate about each other, and that has been a really nice addition to our routine—their faces just light up when someone else praises or thanks them for something. As a family we are much more loving, kind and accepting of each other.

And guess what? We’re getting a dog. I have resisted getting a dog forever, mostly due to logistics. But in one of my ayahuasca visions I was shown the open-heartedness and joy that a dog can bring to our household, in particular to teenagers as they navigate adolescence. I was shown that it will draw my kids and me closer together through their adolescence and give us more opportunities to connect as a family. Besides, I might just benefit more than them—this dog may well fulfill my need for the playfulness, connection and cuddles that my kids are starting to resist as they head into their teenage years.

When I told my kids where I’d been while they were at camp, I started out by saying, “I did drugs in the Costa Rican jungle.” Their eyes bugged out and their jaws dropped. “Actually?” said my 14-year-old son, Dylan, incredulous (but also knowing me well enough to suspect there was a kernel of truth in there). Then of course I laughed, and explained all about plant medicine and the incredible experience I’d had.

I’ve even offered to send them on this same retreat when they each turn eighteen—no pressure, but the offer stands if they’re interested. What a gift this would be to do this earlier in life, to clean up all the layers you’ve accumulated in childhood and adolescence before you head off into the world! I can't even imagine who I'd be today if I'd done this when I was younger. I could have predicted their responses: My son said, “That would be so amazing—I would love to!” and Thea, my 11-year-old daughter, said, “no, I'm good.” And that’s fine, too, of course. Since going on this adventure I have found so much more compassion for different points of view and different ways of being. Somehow this experience has made me love my kids more than ever, which I can’t believe was even possible, and I have even more appreciation for their different traits, perspectives and personalities.

I Love Doing Hard Things

Since I started posting about this experience, a lot of you have reached out to tell me I was brave to do it (and thank you for all your wonderful comments!). But I honestly never saw it as brave. I just saw it as something adventurous, something I was curious about. Ayahuasca is an emerging field that has incredible potential to heal so many people around the world, and I wondered what it could do for me. Besides, I just like to do hard things. Always have, always will; that’s just part of who I am.

And upon reflection, this week at Rythmia—my version of summer camp—wasn’t difficult for me at all. It was an intentional, purposeful gift I gave to myself, my children, my family and my greater community—including you.

Why I’m Sharing My Experiences 

Many people, interestingly many men, have asked me why I’m writing these articles. Why would I so publicly share my experiences as I work to find my deepest, truest self? The simple answer is that I’m finding such peace with my life that I want to both document my journey for my kids (and for their kids) and also share it widely, in the hope that other people might be helped or inspired to seek their own truth. This is who I am. This is my real life. And I’m actually quite proud of my resilience and my journey. There’s also a teacher in me who wants to help others—maybe that’s one of the reasons I love serving clients while I work largely in the background, building their executive profiles to show the world what incredible, smart and strategic leaders they are.

An unintended but delightful consequence of opening myself up to the world has been that it’s allowed me to reconnect with people I haven’t heard from in years, including some from high school and university and from my time in Paris and Washington, D.C. I’ve received an incredible number of emails and calls—people have shared that they have had similar experiences, that they are struggling with things and see that this might help them, or that they didn’t know anyone who had done this and that they’d wanted to try it but were too afraid. This has led to authentic, real and important conversations about life issues—nothing like the superficial pleasantries that so many of us exchange all day long. These articles have opened up conversations about people’s lives that we never would have had otherwise. That’s where true friendship lies, when you can have a real conversation with someone who really knows you and gets you and hears you.

Why I’m Using LinkedIn as My Platform

I use LinkedIn as my platform because more and more I’m realizing that we all have just one life—not a work life and a personal life. I am not an executive and a mom—I’m one unified person made up of many parts. And we’re all struggling with something. We all need to heal from something. LinkedIn is not typically a platform where you read about this kind of thing, so I thought this would be a good place to reach those who might need it most. And based on the outpouring of messages I have received over the last few years, it seems it was the right choice.

I’m Filled with Gratitude for this Life Changing Experience

When I left on the bus for the airport at the end of the week at Rythmia, I felt like my head was empty. I was grinning nonstop, and I felt pure love, bliss and contentedness. I've never been so joyful. There was nothing on my mind; I wasn’t worrying or planning or anticipating or ruminating¼ I wasn’t thinking about anything except how grateful and full of love I was. I’d had such a surreal experience, and it made me realize just how much I have to be grateful for—myself, my family, my friends, my community, my hard work, my growth.

If you’re thinking about exploring ayahuasca, I’d be more than happy to talk to you about it. Please don’t hesitate to ask! It truly was a life-changing experience.