Member-only story
My First Time Taking Ayahuasca
How it taught me to soothe my scared and abandoned parts
It was just us; you and me alone for the first time. I knew who you were, but you had yet to understand our connection. You were scared, and so was I, though I knew I had to be brave for the both of us that night. Under dark Peruvian skies, I lay on the concrete empty, vulnerable, and finally understanding of one simple truth… the truth that we are alone and must learn to hold our own hand in times of fear.
People are right when they say you aren’t alone in feeling a certain way, but no one could ever truly understand your pain, grief, and mental turmoil. In that sense, we are alone. We come into the world greeted by love and adoration, and most of us — if we’re lucky — leave surrounded by that same love and adoration. Both the beginning and end of one’s life are sacred moments in time, but both require an isolated trek through uncertainty.
There is this part of me that has known isolation for most of her life. She’s felt the whips of abandonment and neglect clash against her cheeks and naked body over and over and over. For several years, she didn’t know a life without these things existed, and she grew to prefer dark and lonely corners over time spent with and around others. Her and my other parts knew they had a job, and that job was to protect at all costs.
