I Walked through The Garden with Bare Feet ~My Psilocybin Journey

My whole life I have loved having bare feet.  My feet on the ground, grass, sand, dirt gives me a sense of connection—connection to the earth. I even preferred a bare body as a toddler. My mother tells the stories of me stripping off all of my clothes, after she had bathed me and dressed me, to sit in the dirt. I liked to sit in the dirt and the sand and eat it. I even ate leaves from the trees until one of them burned my tongue. For as long as I can remember, I experienced bare feet and the earth as pleasurable, as comfortable as freeing.

When I travelled to Costa Rica for the first time in 2015, I was filled with awe and excitement and a little fear about living in this wilderness of sorts.  Everything that I learned in my research about the country had to do with the natural wonders and wild jungles and the many species of animals that camouflage themselves in the trees and grass and boundless flora.  I read about people doing expeditions, going on treacherous hikes, exploring the wildest and deepest parts of this magnificent and untamed jungle. In fact, my first visit was not as a tourist.  I didn’t land on a pristine beach with romantic resorts and cocktails with umbrellas.  I landed in the jungle. I lived on a campus with a banana plantation, a river with caimans, and a seven-mile drive to get on and off the campus.  While I stood in wonderment and excitement about this unknown wilderness, I also had fear.  The fear would not allow me to walk in the grass without a careful assessment of the ground, let alone walk in the grass with bare feet.  The times when I felt comfortable and a sense of security was when I put on my botas and walked through the farms and fields. The botas protected me from what was there or, more accurately, what was in my mind.

My mind had cultivated a minefield of fear over 49 years.  Not external fear.  No one knew that I secretly harbored deep doubt and insecurity about my ability to move through the world as a human being, as a person.  On the outside, I was confident, competent, capable and brave.  I projected who I wanted to be rather than where I really was emotionally and spiritually. I experienced a fragmented sense of self.  The ego shined brightly. The self was buried. The self was protected by the botas. My decision to explore the deepest part of myself through the ancient medicine, psilocybin, was not particularly odd, in theory, as I had been seeking, and searching for truth through talk therapy, self-help books and varying spiritual ideologies for many years.  I had been on a path. But the medicine was in direct contradiction to my need for control. In all aspects of my life, I fought for control. I needed to be in control because I was deeply afraid of falling apart. Falling apart meant revealing the weakness and insecurity and helplessness that I felt inside. Falling apart meant revealing the little girl that was hiding in the closet, hiding in the darkness of my history.

I generally thought of myself as an emotionally transparent person. I would express my feelings; I would cry when I felt like crying. But I had a gauge that turned off the tears and emotions before the flood came.  I built a strong dam around my emotions that protected me from the deluge for many years. By the time I neared year 49, the emotions began to crest. It was all about to overflow.  I knew this.  I felt this deeply in my being.  I had had enough.  As I neared the completion of my first book, a collection of personal essays on marriage, motherhood, identity and feminism, the flood gates started to open.  The weight of my history, the pack on my back, became unbearable and apparent to me. The decisions I made in a twelve-month period were in direct relation to this deep knowing. I divested from work that was emotionally taxing, I completed and self-published my book, and I took a sabbatical and left the country for four months. Not coincidentally, I returned to Costa Rica. Costa Rica for me is the wild.  It’s a place of self-exploration.  It’s where I push the boundaries and face my fears.  

For the first time in my life, I started to fall apart.  I felt safe and cared for.  I was out of control and totally safe. The woman was watching me. She saw me fall apart.  She was my witness. She knows what went down that day, the day I let the medicine lead me. She is the medicine woman. 

It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.  The wild jungle and the Garden of Eden all at once. I trusted her.  I trusted him. I trusted my intuition, my inner knowing. My inner knowing led me there.  I brought my book to the ceremony. I brought my book for her–the medicine woman. I signed: “Thank you for sharing your gifts with me.” I wanted to share my gifts with her. My words. My backstory. She placed it on the altar.  I wanted her to know me, to see me.  It’s one of the only things I have ever really wanted from anyone. I wrote the book to tell the truth, my truth. This journey felt like a closing ceremony to this chapter of my life. Or, maybe it wasn’t a closing at all; it was an opening.  I put my story on paper. I gave the little girl a voice. I broke the silence.  Now it was time to get rid of the pain that had been locked inside my body and give it to mother earth.  She can handle it.  She is much bigger than me. The earth can hold my pain and grow flowers with it, grow trees, feed the streams and wildlife. I didn’t know then that my journey would be a purging of all the pain.  But it makes so much sense now.  The pieces began to come together as I began to fall apart.  

 As we sat in “noble silence,” I dared to speak.  “I don’t want to do this,” I said to her.  I spoke the same words when I went into labor with my first child.  This was big. I knew it.  Something was coming out of me, and I could not control how it happened. It was too late. I drank the medicine. The birth of something new was inevitable.  I would have to surrender my body to the experience, to the pain. I did, indeed, surrender.  As the medicine set in, I immediately felt the emotions.  They were strong, stronger than they had ever been or than I had ever allowed. The darkness and the sadness overtook me. I sat mostly without moving and staring into the mountains and feeling the darkness. The tears started flowing, and they didn’t stop for, at least, three hours. The view and the music shifted from light to dark.  The tone changed and my emotions changed. I couldn’t move from the safety of the pallet and the pillows… and the woman. When I closed my eyes and held the pillow tight, my mind swirled.  There were kaleidoscopes and circus-like visuals. There was disjointed music, noise in my head. I saw and felt a split consciousness. I felt myself as the watcher.  I watched myself fall apart.

I didn’t see people. I just felt them, intensely. When I was able to bring my body to an upright position, I felt like I was releasing the people. They had been living inside of me.   My ancestors flowed through me. I felt movement from my body outward. It was like vomiting emotions. I felt my mother and my sisters. I felt one of my girl cousins. I kept seeing and feeling my book. My book. My stories were alive in me, and they needed to be freed. I felt the spirits- bad energy move through my body.  I felt like I was purging. It was physically difficult. I felt the tension. I felt my mother and my father’s sadness and pain and history. It was all there buried in me. I was holding everyone’s pain. I was holding the history of my ancestors.

The little girl was there. She was scared and alone. When I opened my eyes each time, I saw the trees on the mountaintops, and I saw the birds flying. I wanted to be free like the birds. The colors intensified each time I opened my eyes.  I kept remembering the woman and feeling so much gratitude that she was there.  She moved to different parts of the room. Even when I couldn’t see her, I could feel her watching. I could hear her voice. I could hear her singing.  She was singing to me. Behind the disjointed circus music, I could hear her singing. Her music was loving and comforting. But the music in my head was sad and dark. I cried, and I cried, and I cried.  I cried snotty tears, and they kept falling, and I felt safe there–there on my pillows with the woman singing in the background and the birds flying over the mountaintop.  I felt safe there.  There I was safe. The little girl was safe. She was me. I was the little girl. The little girl is me. I am the little girl. 

I saw the garden. I saw the grass. I stood in the doorway staring at the garden. I saw the light, the birds, the butterflies, the trees and flowers. I saw the grass. I wanted to walk in the grass, but I was unsure. My legs were unstable. I was afraid. I was afraid something in the grass would harm me, but the sunlight calmed me. The sunlight caressed me.  The fear started to fade.  I stepped out into the grass slowly and carefully. The more I stepped, the more pleasure I felt with my feet, my bare feet in the grass. With each step, I felt freedom. I felt a release of my mother’s fears and my sister’s fears. I released my own fears. I felt the light on my face and the garden around me. The woman was in the distance, but she was there. I felt him, and I smiled. I sighed. It was a sigh of relief. It was safe to embrace the pleasure. My legs felt weak and a little uneasy, but I kept walking. I walked through the garden with bare feet.