Toxic Mother's Day Special
Healing the Primordial Mother Wound with Ayuascha
Mother’s Day is awful if you have a difficult, strained, or no-contact relationship with your mother. If the relationship was full of more hardship than love, if any love at all. I have spent the past seven years estranged from my narcissistic mother by my own accord, and during that time, have experimented with different approaches to heal my brain and body from the ramifications that relationship left me with. It wasn’t until I embarked on a journey with Ayuascha (three, to be exact) that I had the breakthrough I feel I needed to heal my broken heart, integrate my shadow, and live my life free of the shackles trauma can bind us with.
I am not claiming to be done with the work by any means. This work requires a lifetime of self-discovery, integration, processing, and deepening. But Ayuascha did help me connect to the depths of myself that I had never been able to access before, depths I couldn't have imagined existed until I experienced them firsthand.
Audio Version
To listen to a raw and unfiltered account of my experience, tune in to my podcast here or below. I recorded it two days before Mother’s Day, after I noticed I had been in a depressive “funk” since realizing ‘tis the season. (Transmutation has been my favorite coping mechanism as of late.) If you prefer reading, stick around here (it’s probably a tad bit more cohesive).
This Mother’s Day Sucks More Than Usual
It's a really alienating feeling, having a mother who is alive but with whom you don't have a relationship. It's not as common, and it's not talked about openly. If you have a mother who has passed, for example, it's almost easier in a sick way. Because nobody then asks why you don’t talk to her anymore. You don’t have an inner conflict within yourself from choosing in your own free will to not have a relationship with your flesh and blood mother, the woman who brought forth life into you, an archetype your inner child so desperately wants and needs.
This is the first Mother's Day in seven years that has really been emotionally difficult for me. Historically, it hasn’t been “normal” or easy; at most, it’s maybe been somber, quiet, and a bit weird. Almost like a pervasive numbness, with something deeper brimming under the surface that I wouldn’t dare look at, let alone feel into.
But this year is different, in large part because of my journey with Ayuascha. This is not to say that this is the first time I've worked on this area of my life; I've been working on it since I went no contact with her, realizing who she really is and just how sick her mind is. I've been working not only to undo the impact she had on me and my development, and how I interact with the world, but also to forgive her, reconcile the bitterness I carried within myself, and move on.
However, this work is incredibly in-depth. It's the core wound. You quite literally came out of your mother. She is the start of your story, the inception of your life. So I can say now that most of the work I had done prior to Ayuascha was intellectual, some subconscious, but most of my trauma had been much deeper, on an emotional plane, and additionally, living in my physical body.
An Invitation to Go Deeper Instead of Detaching
If you are experiencing Mother’s Day or any day- a holiday, birthday, family event- feeling a quietness, almost calmness, with a sneaking suspicion that there is something underneath but find it easier to detach, or easier to eat, or easier to scroll on social media for hours, or tune out watching TV- All this is fine, I've done it all and continue still today. However, I would also suggest that you view today as an invitation to delve deeper within yourself and acknowledge what lies beneath the surface that wants to be heard and felt.
Which isn't easy. It's terribly painful. It's never not going to be deeply painful, and it's always going to suck. This was my main takeaway from my Ayahuasca experience- that having this wound, this relationship with my mother, is just never not gonna suck. It's always going to be there. But I think it's better for us to experience that pain instead of trying to numb it out with various coping mechanisms, drinking, spending money, various other distractions, and keen tools to practice avoidance.
It is better to experience our pain because, by doing so, we cast what is shrouded in darkness into the light, allowing us to integrate it, let it go, and heal. So, instead of avoiding and numbing, it’s possible to use today as an invitation to explore and feel safe. Because the truth is —and I've heard this in spiritual circles, but I never really understood it until this journey —that unless I experience my emotions, they will stay inside me, and they will hurt me even more.
Numbing ourselves out is our body's defense mechanism, protecting itself from experiencing emotions it perceives as too painful, which can cause us harm. When in reality, this is a short-term solution because our pain is still there, unaddressed, unheard. When we choose not to experience it, whether consciously or unconsciously, it manifests in other areas of our lives. Emotion is energy in motion- energy never dies. It just goes somewhere else, like a disease, for example. So I would challenge you to go there, even more than to invite. I’ll challenge you because these feelings do suck, but it sucks less after you process and release them.
My Ayuascha Journey
Disclaimer: I'm not overtly recommending Ayuascha. If you are called to this modality, amazing. Answer that call bravely. But if you're not, don't force yourself. I don't think it's for everyone, necessarily. I've heard more positive stories than negative and have certainly had positive experiences of my own, but that’s not to say that negative experiences don’t happen. I’m not advertising to experiment with serious, mind-altering substances.
As background, I have been on a healing journey for the past few years, experimenting with everything, including talk therapy, CBT, psychodynamic, CBD, plant medicine, cannabis, mushrooms, Hypnotherapy, and quantum reflex analysis. I’m a generally open-minded person and have taken this quest of healing pretty seriously. I feel that I owe it to myself to feel as well as I possibly can in this life.
This contextual background is important because I believe this experience I'm about to share is a culmination of many different things and an opening up on multiple levels. This mother wound was healed in three separate Ayuascha ceremonies, each a month apart.
First Ceremony
Once you agree to do Ayuascha, the plant begins to work on you. I began to feel the theme of my mom's influence creep into my reality through various different channels. And I resisted it, hard. I distinctly remember telling it “No. I do NOT want to go there. You could show me whatever else you want, but I'm not going there. Hard pass.”
By the time I arrived at the ceremony, I had become very quiet. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was low-key freaking out. I had zero control, was about to drink jungle juice, and basically lose my freaking mind. Just overall uncomfortable for a control freak like myself.
I saw some visions at the beginning, suggesting that I had adopted my shadow self from my mom. Not just her, but from my lineage, as if it were an ancestral inheritance. After that, I mainly just felt physical pain in my body, and it was showing me that I needed to experience all of the pain I had been ignoring my entire life. I didn’t throw up. It wasn’t underwhelming, but it definitely was not what I now know to be a fully surrendered experience. It felt like the plant was mainly working on my physical body.
Second Ceremony
It wasn't until my second ceremony that I realized I was very much resisting, closed off, and fearful during my first. I was just fighting. I was fighting it the whole time. My second ceremony came during a retreat where I engaged in a tobacco purge ceremony the night prior. They say that Ayuascha is the grandmother, mushrooms are los niños, “the children,” and tobacco is like the grandfather, a plant medicine. It can sometimes even be more powerful than Ayahuasca, but it's non-hallucinogenic. There's no DMT, it's all physical.
In the tobacco purge ceremony, you drink a large, warm cup of tobacco leaf tea, which is so disgusting. However, you must drink it within 10 minutes or less, as you will need to follow with a large amount of water afterward. And if you don't, you die. Very intense. That first tobacco ceremony I like purged like motherfucker. It was just three big purges all in a row. Violent, exorcism-like purges. It came out of my nose, and I projectile vomited into my bucket very aggressively. And at that moment, I felt something get unstuck, dislodge from my heart, my chest area. It was a little trippy.
I felt a little raw after that experience, just a little more tender and sensitive. I'm already pretty sensitive, so it was slightly overwhelming, but I just stayed in the cabins all day, relaxing the next day and preparing for the Ayuascha ceremony that night. This second Ayuascha ceremony was my most powerful experience of the three. I had my first pour and experienced some insights and visions, but the party really started when I had my second pour. I first saw the Matrix disintegrate, met the creator, learned who I really am, and the nature of this holographic reality. This was a very intense experience, and I purged very intensely afterward.
After this experience, I lay in my spot on the yoga mat, and it just hit me. I just remembered how much I loved my mom. It was as if I had forgotten how much I loved her, which was wild. This woman really hated my sister and me. There was no love that I would say she felt for us. She made it very difficult growing up, not in an overt sense. It was all covert, which is even more of a mindf*ck, because everything looked perfect.
But under the surface, it was so emotionally and mentally abusive and caused me a lot of trauma. Complex trauma that I've spent years working to undo. And I've harbored a lot of anger and resentment about it. When I looked back on her and the relationship, it was never in a positive light at all. It was hard. It was massive heaviness.
But I still found myself lying there just remembering how much I loved this woman. I loved her so much. And I was just weeping. I had never cried like that. I was just weeping, just continually crying, hysterical. Just sitting and thinking about how much I love her and how much I've missed her. I just missed her. And it was really beautiful. I truly saw her, and beyond just loving her, I felt reverence for her and immense gratitude for all the gifts she had given me and passed down to me. Like beauty, femininity, and writing ability. She was cool, interesting, and had such a powerful mind. She was a powerful woman, both spiritually and overall.
And I found myself sitting in a state of reverence and honor for her, which, if you had told me I would feel any of this a month prior, I would have laughed and rolled my eyes. But here I was just sitting in the utmost respect and gratitude for this woman who abused me my whole life. And I saw her and I anointed her hair and her feet in oil. And I was dancing around her and throwing rose petals all over her and just celebrating her in love. It was f*cking wild. The insight that I received was that, yes, that was my experience growing up.
But it is better for me to feel love for her- better for me. Feeling bitterness and anger was hurting me. It was hurting my body. It's not healthy for me to sit in those feelings. And it's not to say that what she did was okay. And how she raised me was okay by any means. But it's just it showed me that she can't hurt me anymore. That it’s over. That happened in the past, and it's safe for me to love her now. It's safe.
I’ve learned that when you're raised by a narcissist, there's a lot of betrayal trauma leftover. You love your mom, of course. You can't not love your mom. You're wired to love your mom. And when your mom doesn't return, that or hurts you in various ways, or takes advantage of that love and that position in your life, that's a massive betrayal. It's a deep, deep, deep wound, and there's abandonment, emotional abandonment that comes with that. And so, if you're not in contact with your mom or have a very limited relationship with her, or a relationship with a lot of boundaries, I just offer you that. It can be safe to love her from a distance. It is better for you to love her than to hold bitterness. It is better for YOU. And does not take away the gravity of the abuse you faced.
This is also not to say that this is not painful. I'm coming to you on this Mother's Day season, crying more than I ever have on any Mother's Day. But it's for a different reason. I just miss her so much. It's as if I feel my inner child, just wanting to be around her.
And I know as an adult, that's not possible. The plant didn't tell me to reach out to her tomorrow. It said, No, she's not in your life anymore. And so it's safe to feel these things. And sometimes it's essential to distinguish the past from the present. Yes. This is our story. Yes. My mother did not treat me right growing up. She abused me, and she took a lot of my innocence. And there are a lot of awful things I would never wish upon anyone. I never wish this relationship on anyone. I never wish anyone had to go no contact with their mom. It's a really hard thing to experience, but it's also in the past. And just because you delineate that doesn't mean that it's okay that any of those things happened.
But it does free you in a way because the whole point of self-mastery and self-sovereignty is self-ownership. I'm an adult now. I am responsible for everything that happens in my life. I'm responsible for my emotional state. I choose what will and will not hurt me. I choose. And if I continue to let a story from the past influence my life today, then that's not productive. That's not facilitating my happiness or me feeling the best I possibly can every day. So, I just offer you that and ask you to sit with it for a little while and try to separate the past from your present. It's liberating. I just feel very free from these chains that were pulling me down every day, chains of anger and pain and betrayal.
Since this experience, I have felt very free in a way. Lighter, more integrated, as if more of myself is open. I feel like it really opened my heart. I feel like I had a lot of anger bottled up inside. And I had to keep my walls up to protect myself. And just a lot of betrayal. Betrayal trauma really closes you off because you learn that you have to protect yourself so that you don't become betrayed again.
However, I've noticed a difference in my emotional state in that regard and the kinds of men I'm dating, for example. I do believe that we attract what we put out and that relationships are mirrors. I’ve just noticed that the tide is shifting lately. And it's because I'm shifting. I'm just showing up more open, authentic, integrated, and less fearful. That fearful quality is really big, I think, with betrayal, trauma, and being raised by a narcissist. You learn to operate in fear instead of love.
Third Ceremony
At my third Ayuascha ceremony, my mother came up again at the very end. The plant showed me everything I had developed from being raised by a narcissist, like perfectionism, believing I was inherently bad, all of these false beliefs, and the ways I was treating myself. I've known that they're there through other therapies, but I really didn't see their magnitude, how prevalent, or how much of an impact they were having on my life in various different ways until this ceremony.
And even still, after facing a lot of the symptoms of trauma, the negative repercussions of that experience, still, at the end of seeing all of it, how I've been objectifying myself because I was raised as an object, for another example. Looking at all of these really hard things. Still, at the end of this whole experience, looking at these things one by one, I was still crying again in mourning over her. I realized that I had never mourned that relationship. I just never mourned her. And I just missed her so much.
It was during this ceremony that I realized I had never truly mourned that relationship. She and I were close at a certain period, the last kind of stage before I moved out of the house. We would have these girls’ nights where we would put on some silly romantic comedy. It was this guilty pleasure, almost like junk food. And we would paint our nails, she would cook, and we would drink wine and eat popcorn while doing face masks. And she would put her lotions on and her hand and foot masks on. And we would just talk about all different things. We were just close. And I really miss her.
It was as if all of a sudden, she just wasn't in my life anymore right after going no contact. And granted, for good reason. There were huge blow-up fights and a lot of abuse, reactive abuse. The last thing that happened before I went no contact, I was just left catatonic in bed for a week in a really dark place. So it's not like I had a choice, but I had never really mourned that relationship.
And so I spent that third ceremony really, just mourning that loss of those good times because they were good. And again, it isn't to say you take the good with the bad or the bad with the good. Nothing like that. It's not just because we had fun together and were close. Doesn't negate the fact that she will always try to hurt me. And now I see it. I just didn't see it back then.
But even if it's just mourning the construct of the relationship you had in your head. Like the point in time I’m referring to, even during that time, there was emotional abuse happening. It's all covert. That's the other thing about betrayal trauma, that's a b*tch. You then have to go through every single memory you've ever had, analyze it, and ask yourself what was going on there. What was going on there? And I've had to do that, too. But there were some things that I still just I miss even if they're just my head. And so mourning that and feeling safe in being able to mourn. That I can mourn and miss her and not be taken advantage of again. And not have that come back to bite me in the ass because she's not in my life anymore.
Overall, the experiences were insanely transformational. I never thought that I would feel these things from my mom. It's been a very challenging thing in my life and something I've just come to terms with. I never used to be emotional about it. I just closed the book and told myself that was it. I thought I was done and teh relationship was just over and I was moving on with m life. I committed to undoing all of the negative patterns I was left with.
I want this to serve as a testament to the depth of this work. And not to say I'm done at all, not even close. However, I didn't realize this level of the game existed until I experienced it. And it really just blew my mind. And I just feel better. It feels better to miss her than to feel nothing, or to feel anger, slighted, or victimized, or any of that. It feels way better to love her and miss her. And that is crucial for healing, letting go, and simply being free to live your life on your own terms.
Because the truth is, if you still let your abuser control how you're feeling, then they're still abusing you. They're still controlling you. And I personally don't want that. I'm ending that. I don't consent to anybody having control over me except for me, and I will do whatever I have to make sure that that happens. Even if it's flying to Mexico and driving an hour into the middle of the jungle and drinking DMT juice with a bunch of strangers and puking in a bucket all night.
