Write — Because My Heart Yearns to Sing!
This edition of The Container, and the subsequent to follow, are going to be a departure from the usual format. There are many changes afoot, but ultimately, they are what is necessary to elevate a message I’ve been yearning to share.
When I experienced my first psychedelic journey, I asked the medicine what my purpose was. The message I received was, “let my life be an invitation for others.” This message gradually changed with time, allowing me to confront the martyr archetype that followed me from childhood. The shadow side prevailed in my earlier years – to suffer. Self-sacrificing to a fault, doing it alone, endlessly refusing help or recognition, but desperately seeking both connection and support; it was exhausting. Eventually, I became aware of the light side of this archetype, “to let my suffering help humankind.” This mantra was informative, but not at all instructive. Building a life around integrity, boundaries, and authentic attachment allowed me to recognize how I’d elevated this archetype into my daily life, into my service, into my purpose and meaning, but it wasn’t quite the road map I’d hoped for. Everyone around me was receiving downloads on what to do, how to do it, why and when – blueprints for their lives. I, on the other hand, was getting spiritual nudges to follow the breadcrumbs that didn’t readily translate into easily actionable behaviors or plans.
At the time, I was still working 96-120 hour surgical shifts at a busy level 2 trauma center in Modesto, California. I was traveling back and forth from my home in Los Angeles - defeated, sleep-deprived, and questioning the externalities of my life. What was my purpose? Where was I going? Was this it? I was preparing for my surgical board exam but feeling immense resistance to the idea of committing to the life of a surgeon, condemned to sleepless nights in a hospital, practicing within a system I didn’t believe in, defending myself against 24/7 affronts and demands I had no agency over, all while struggling to hold onto any semblance of humanity before it was stripped from me. There had to be more.
“The message I received was, ‘let my life be an invitation for others.’”
Fortunately, through my sobriety and recovery, I didn’t have to question myself any longer. I remembered who I was. It took relearning how to accept myself, to honestly like myself, before I found a deep love for who I was – imperfections and all. Married and divorced twice, I had always been looking for something more. I was running from myself, but was fortunate enough to re-find and re-love me. It was in this state that I met an incredible woman, someone to share a life and co-create love with. We gently and intentionally blended our families together, accounting for 6 kids in total. It wasn’t easy, but it was important, worth it, and necessary. Love was necessary.
As I questioned my place and purpose within the western medical model, that mantra finally started to materialize into a road map like a lens coming into focus. I had spent years witnessing and treating trauma. The “Medical Years,” I will call them, encompassing my time in medical school and residency – 12 years in total – accounted for the most self-destructive of my life. Alcohol and infidelity were the fixes I compulsively clung to out of desperation to salve the insatiable internal turmoil. The lack. The void. Grappling with paradox of living and treating trauma in so many forms. There was no place for me to thrive in this confinement. Sobriety gave me the first steppingstone towards realizing my purpose and meaning. Love gave me the second; I left medicine. I encountered much unsolicited feedback questioning my choice, my logic, hell, even my sanity. But everything in my being knew I was right. My body relaxed. Trust and resolve fortified. Clarity followed. The unnamable but palpable tension that had permeated my life dissipated. This is what it felt to be in alignment, allowing my mind to take influence from my heart and my intuition. This is what it felt like to be in collaboration with Spirit.
What came to me during this transition was the idea to “heal it before it happens.” It meaning the developmental trauma that creates the conditioned beliefs and behaviors that keep us trapped within constricted versions of our lives. It meaning the cataclysmic consequences of those choices played out over a lifetime. We don’t have to get to a point where our demise is imminent – physically, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually. Every problem, every obstacle, every challenge is an opportunity to choose something different. A chance to choose ourselves. A chance to choose our liberation. A chance to heal ourselves before anything worse happens.
"Sobriety gave me the first steppingstone towards realizing my purpose and meaning. Love gave me the second;…"
My transition out of surgery and traditional medicine was my living embodiment of “heal it before it happens.” Over the next few years, I prepared to open my clinical space for psychedelic medicine, Soul Surgeon. Soul Surgeon had been in the ether with me since 2016, but it wasn’t until 2021 that this vision started to take shape in the form of principles, practice, space, and impact. It was during these early years that my mission come to fruition, “to create the conditions for love and light to shine.”
Since that time, I have dedicated countless hours to translating and interpreting these beliefs into a novel philosophy of care. This philosophy evolved with every client experience - challenging and beautiful, with every time I sat down to reflect on healing, with every time I created a piece of content to elevate the conversation around trauma and recovery, and with hefty infusions of love drawn from past failures and current successes. This philosophy has been an ever-evolving entity incubating, growing, and living within me, and now is reaching a point where it needs to be shared and released.
In the upcoming weeks, I will be transitioning my focus to two main priorities: 1) continuing to support clients through journey work and 2) starting to write my book. There is a saying, “if everything is a priority, nothing is.” Maintaining an open aperture has helped me to broaden my experience, diversity, and capacity within the psychedelic healing space, but at the cost of focus. It is now time to eliminate other creative distractions so that I can focus on writing my book, Heal It Before It Happens: Creating the Conditions for Love and Light to Shine. I will be stopping the regular routine around social media content, LinkedIn posts, and previous newsletter offerings. However, I will be planning to share this journey as it unfolds. I will continue to offer monthly newsletter updates focusing on the challenges, opportunities, insights, and discoveries along the way, and sharing segments of the writing as it progresses. If I post on social or LinkedIn, it will be spontaneous and not to meet a content calendar or deadline. I am liberating my creative energy so that I can create out of desire, and not out of necessity.
I’ve left myself a Post-it note on my laptop as a reminder to show up:
So please, I invite you, walk with me as I start this next journey.