The Brew's Bitter Gift:

By my early fifties, grief and trauma had stacked so high I could barely hold myself up anymore — just numbness, barely existing and fake smiles along with small talk raised as armor when I had no choice but to be social. It felt like my life was already over and I was just waiting for time to pass.

It started young: my oldest sister Vicky died at 29 of cancer when I was 18. My first death dealt a shattering blow and I didn’t know how to deal with the grief. In an effort to understand death I read all I could find on death and dying, trying to ease the pain and to feel that somehow, she was okay wherever she is in the ethers. My mom followed suddenly at 20. She died from complications in surgery, leaving me reeling again, rudderless and feeling so alone in the world.

Jimmy, my best friend died at 22—AIDS diagnosis in 1988, then suicide shortly afterwards. He couldn’t handle the stigma. Dad died of a heart attack when I was 26. I could barely hang on anymore but by then I had two small children to care for, so I had to keep it together somehow—and I did.

Then, by 35, I had already lost most of my family and the wallop of abandonment hit me like a brick when I found out my husband and my high school bestie had an affair that shattered my trust. My two closest confidants and my only support system I had known collapsed in on me.

I tried to move on, to my old home town, but the roofie rape by my boss at 39 was the trauma that finally broke me—complete violation, frozen in terror, I couldn’t even keep myself safe anymore. The job loss and financial devastation after I wouldn’t carry on an affair with him. I had nothing left, family, friends, work.

For years afterwards, I kept everything bottled up and kept it surface-level with people I had interactions with at work or in the rare social occasions we all are expected to attend. I had no hope, no support, and no tools to keep myself in balance. I fell apart every night when I got home from whatever low-income job I could find – and keep.

Deep conversations felt dangerous; better to stay numb than risk more pain or reach out for that much needed support. One night I watched a documentary about ayahuasca on YouTube —an Amazonian plant medicine that could purge buried trauma and thin the veil between worlds—but I wasn't chasing enlightenment, I needed something to ease the compounded pain. I just wanted relief, something that might reach the frozen parts without destroying what was left of me and in my research on the subject, I found it could be as valuable as three years in therapy. I desperately needed a life preserver and decided to give that a quiet try.

In 2012, I joined a circle in Vancouver: twelve of us on mats, nervous. The room heavy with incense, sacred chants of the shaman and the gentle sounds of a chau gong in the distance.

The facilitator passed me a cup. The brew hit like dark earth and regret—thick, bitter, coating my tongue and throat. I swallowed and lay back, waiting for the tell-tale signs it was beginning to work. My stomach clenched first—hot, twisting—like a fist tightening inside. As instructed, I held off on the purge for as long as I could but when it came it was fast and brutal. Body convulsing, grief rising with the bile, then as I lay back on my mat the visuals started. Like a kaleidoscope, moving slowly at first, in a colorful paisley pattern shifting to snakes and spiders. It was surprisingly beautiful to watch - like moving art darting across my eyelids.

The first vision came on gently. Through the skylight in the ceiling of the ceremony room I could see the stars and felt entities were watching us all in that room. As I looked around at the other participants I could see they were dressed in uniforms, I imagined them to be like space suits. I started to breathe through the visions to help me stay grounded and as I did that the others seemed to join me in those breaths. In unison it ‘felt’ as if we were collectively birthing a new world and our breathing facilitated that.

Then, to my left, my rapist appeared—standing over me as I sat on my mat, looking down. I simply asked him, “Why?” He answered, “Because it needed to happen,” and walked away.

Days later, reflecting on it, I found it strange that I accepted that as reasonable closure—but it worked. I still don’t feel I can keep myself safe, to this day, but the closure I felt was essential to my overall healing.

Another vision gripped me soon after: I was inside a dark, teeming anthill nest. The massive queen loomed at the center. I hid behind a cluster of egg sacs—waxy, slightly warm under my palms, their faint earthy smell mixing with the incense still clinging to my clothes. Heart pounding in my ears, every tiny movement of the nest amplified, I prayed they wouldn’t discover me. The fear was primal, suffocating—but I stayed hidden, unseen, until it faded.

And finally, I felt the presence and heard the sound of Ganesh, an Indian God, to my right. He was so huge and powerful, I couldn’t look at him in the eyes and bowed my head in humility to him. I found myself gently floating high up in the solar system, looking at the stars and planets in wonder and amazement. I felt so small compared to the vastness of everything surrounding me.

The brew was bitter as hell—the purge, the re-living of every loss and violation. But the gift was undeniable: it cracked open a space where healing could finally start. Not erasure—the traumas are still there—but a beginning. A breath to cushion the pain instead of feeling oppressed underneath it. Permission to feel held, to recognize my familiar personal vibration showing up gently again, peeking through my shadows and giving me hope. And that feeling of immense love I’ve never felt before and have never felt since. A love I will never forget.

These days in Powell River, it shows up in softer ways: a stranger’s laugh that echoes something long gone and warms my chest for a moment, a walk along the shoreline with cool salt spray on my face where the world feels briefly kinder, or the rare moment when small talk turns unexpectedly deep and my throat loosens instead of tightening. The medicine didn’t take the pain away, but it left a quiet opening—a reminder that I’m not as alone as I once believed, and maybe never truly was.