How does someone go from working as a cultural and linguistic consultant for the government to walking barefoot in the snow under the mentorship of a tribal elder?
I didn’t go searching for the supernatural. I was living a successful, stable, by-the-book life. I was doing everything “right.”
And then I died.
Not metaphorically - literally.
As a child, I nearly drowned. And I remember the tunnel of light. It was as real to me as the earth beneath my feet. Once you see it, you don’t forget. Later, in a car accident, my head went through a windshield. I was missing for hours. The light came again—this time with voices. Pillars of light that wouldn’t show their faces because if they did, they said, I’d never return.
They sent me back.
And the question became: Why?
It would take 20 years to return to “normal” as I sit here at my desk having completed my PhD, and 15 years of private practice and Retreats with 1,000s of clients in need of help, much like I was when this began. It’s my life’s calling to translate ancient culture for the benefit of modern people who very much need the support in opening legitimate holistic pathways to profound healing and connection.
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…What followed was a years-long unraveling. A slow-motion initiation. E. coli poisoning, a failing body, doctors who didn’t care, tests that showed nothing—but I was dying. I kept losing weight, chasing infections. The Western medical system had no answers. But I was also, quietly, studying herbalism with Susan Weed. Living on a biodynamic farm. Walking barefoot in ice and snow. My soul was entering another reality.
I began to feel like I was in a prolonged ayahuasca ceremony… but without drinking any brew.
It was a two-year-long liminal state.
No doctor could name it. No machine could track it. But I was getting closer and closer to the spirit world, and further from this one.
Eventually, I realized I needed help—but not the kind that wears a white coat.
I remembered what my grandmother once said: that our people were once powerful. That we’d lost our way. That the trauma of conquest had severed something vital.
She didn’t talk much about it. She was adamant about education, success, and adopting a new way of life. It was like she was trying to escape something—terrified of the neighborhoods she grew up in, unwilling to look back.
But I needed to look back.
So I left the city, left my consulting work, left everything… and went to Albuquerque.
I wasn’t looking for a psychedelic trip. This was more than 20 years ago—before the headlines, before the trend.
I went searching for what had happened to us.
To find the traces of a story we weren’t allowed to tell.
What happened there felt less like a decision and more like destiny—synchronicities, visions, guidance from something older than memory. It was the beginning of a return. Not to a hobby, or a lifestyle. But to a legacy.
I wasn’t looking for plant medicine. I was looking to carry my culture. And my elders made it clear: plant medicine is the car keys—you don’t get to drive until you’ve walked the road.
And that road was long.
But it brought me home.
