Bestselling author and spiritual teacher Rebecca Campbell and I sit down to explore the themes of her latest book, Your Soul Had a Dream – Your Life is It. Together, we dive into the sacred journey of healing the mother line, the experience of awakening, and the profound initiations of motherhood.

We reflect on how grief, rage, and joy are all part of life’s initiatory process, and how avoiding pain also numbs us to life’s ecstasy. Rebecca shares how we are collectively being called by the Great Mother Earth to wake up, heal ancestral trauma, and attune our nervous systems to the rhythm of the Earth.

Amid what she calls “rebirthing times,” we discuss how embracing the sacred in everything — even in the descent — can guide us through personal and collective transformation. This is a conversation about deep feeling, sacred reconnection, and navigating the birth of a new humanity.

Psychedelic experiences are notoriously hard to render in words; to try is necessarily to do violence to what has been seen and felt, which is in some fundamental way pre- or post-linguistic or, as students of mysticism say, ineffable. Emotions arrive in all their newborn nakedness, unprotected from the harsh light of scrutiny and, especially, the pitiless glare of irony. Platitudes that wouldn't seem out of place on a Hallmark card flow with the force of revealed truth.   -Michael Pollan   Themes in this personal episode:

• The importance of set, setting, and safe facilitators.
• Individual and Collective healing in a group setting.
• Noticing my analytical mind before and during ceremony.
• Healing the feminine wound - the resonant emotional waves we would go through.
• Boundaries of not caretaking other women (for all of us).
• Up front and personal with my shadow material. Whoa!
• The presence of a Benevolent spirit (AKA God, the Universe, Spirit).
• Feeling my emotions on the deepest level.
• The power and impact of sound (moaning, grunting, humming, and releasing).
• We were held in the feminine (The divine mother, the facilitators, nature).
• Mirrors (Everyone is a mirror).
• We are here to grow, learn, and open our hearts.
• The beauty of being alive is magical and mysterious.

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In this conversation, I sit down with my friend Jenna K., to discuss her ceremonies with MDMA and psilocybin.  

We discussed her "Why?" and this space of pain and trauma living in her body - that she couldn't quite access for over a decade with other modalities. It led Jenna to want to explore on a deeper level with plant medicine, to heal what was held in her body for so many years.    Themes within the discussion:

• Feeling the "call" to sit with the plant medicine. 
• The deep surrender to letting go of control.
• Feeling safe enough in the life that she had created, to feel like she would be held through these experiences.
• How her life made sense to her after the initial MDMA journey.
• Her body purging out the trauma during the ceremony.
• The shame and feeling of brokenness when the childhood trauma was revealed.
• That her childhood abuse was not her fault.
• Stepping into her Knowing - that her body and these memories were the truth.
• The deep healing, illuminations, and heart opening within herself.
• The continual and necessary work between ceremonies.
• How to resource oneself after uncovering traumatic material.
• How anger and rage have protected her.
• The need for continual softening.
• That plant medicine is not a "cure all" but dives deeply into traumatic material that needs to be seen and held.
• The connection to spirit in these experiences. 

@jennakristina

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After being a therapist for over a decade and being committed to my personal therapy for years... I decided it was time for me to heal on a deeper level.  Every bit of my intuitive being knew that  I needed to heal trauma and imprints from life on a cellular level. To show up as a better partner and mother, but most importantly... healing the relationship with myself.  What I learned is that talking through our problems only goes so far and we must tap into the body to truly heal trauma.

Themes in this episode:

• Trusting myself and trusting life
• A complete surrender to the unknown
• We know the way back home to ourselves
• Individual and Collective projected pain - the pain body
• We all have things to heal (Look at the state of our world)
• We are all temperature dials in a room (What energy are you bringing?)
• How do we come back to the heart and heal from the heart...not the mind
• Old spaces of trauma held in my body
• The release through movement and sound
• Release control and allow
• The non-negotiable of set and setting and safe facilitators

  

I’ve been thinking a lot about individual and collective shadow. How do we keep our hearts open during dark times? We all must become closely acquainted with our shadow or dark side. 

Each of us has a dual nature: we are light (conscious) and dark (unconscious). The dark side of our personality—the “other,” the shadow side—is made up of what we think is our primitive, primal, negative impulses—our “existential kink.” Our existential kink also drives the dark or negative repeating patterns in our life: always choosing the abusive partner or boss, settling for less, thinking that we’re undeserving, not worthy. But it also is the source of our greatest power.

I do a deep dive into Carolyn Elliot’s book, Existential Kink, which offers a truth-telling guide for bringing our shadow into the light. Inviting us to make conscious the unconscious, Elliott asks us to own the subconscious pleasure we get from the stuck, painful patterns of our existence.

The predominant theme for me in 2023 was transitioning to becoming a mother and how that impacted all areas of my life. The most profound initiation, unraveling of my old self, and opening to the fiercest love that I’ve ever experienced. The deep vulnerability in that. The expansion and contraction of my heart from current world affairs and the climate crisis. To a deep commitment to keeping my heart open to all of it.

“Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.” 

The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

-Viktor E. Frankl  

Humanity feels like it is on a precipice and that we are in the eye of the storm collectively.  I understand that humanity has experienced 200,000+ years of war, but these times feel particularly charged right now.  In this episode I talk about:

• Whether or not humanity can ever live in a peaceful way, or if it is naive to even ask that question?
• Is part of being human, being violent on some level?  Whether that means violence with our thoughts, speech, energy, and behaviors?
• My thoughts on "evil" and I discuss my feelings on darkness in the individual and collective.  
• The need for each of us to heal our own inner wars which become outer wars.
• How can we all soften and live more from our hearts versus ego righteousness, pain, and reactivity
• Love is the answer to our evolution
• I believe the alternative is going to be catastrophic globally

I sit down with Psychotherapist and Journey Clinical KAP provider, Holly Forman. We discuss Holly’s decision to have a home birth, the balance of preparation and surrender, and ultimately birthing a new version of yourself.    We discuss:   

• The similarities of psychedelic journeys and birth
• Women advocating for themselves, gaining knowledge about the birthing process, and not feeling like you have to give your power away
• The balance of preparation and complete surrender to the unknown
• Humans fear what they don’t know
• Birthing yourself
• How as humans we often want to avoid the wild, raw, messy, and painful sides of life
• How important integration is after birth and a psychedelic journey
• Ketamine therapy
• Internal Family Systems 

In this episode back, after an almost 9 month hiatus from podcasting, I explore my experience birthing a human. The big tears of overwhelm and joy shed in the postpartum period, as well as my feelings around the often bullshit narratives around motherhood.   In this episode I explore:

• The humility and surrender that I experienced both with birth and new motherhood
• Embracing the total unknown and liminal spaces between
• Women stepping fully into their power and not overriding their deep intuitive knowing
• The deep feminine wounding that still continues to play out amongst mothers (Insert judgment and shaming)
• Gifting yourself compassion and forgiveness as a new mom
• The death of self and your old identity and how it's not linear
• My big feelings on privilege and resources in this country for new parents
• The desperate need for more postpartum care for families
• The overwhelming amount of opinions when you become pregnant and then have the child
• The impact of having a baby on your relationship
• A deep and wild connection to the life cycle

I decided to write this episode on the very last leg of my third trimester in pregnancy . I have had the most illuminating experience of what living in the “Spaces Between” in life really means.

It is a potent energetic space which is both awe inspiring and completely overwhelming. To fully surrender to the unknown or attempt to control how you think life is going to unfold.

The only life experience that I can compare it to - is the passing of my mother at 17 years old. It is impossible to know or intellectually understand the full magnitude of a major life transition. All of us humans have gone through them in birth, death, marriage, divorce, illness, etc.

It is my intention in this episode to open up a conversation of how to approach these life situations with more presence, mindfulness, and ability to feel into these spaces. Versus our society which tends to shy away and avoid the large tidal waves of emotions that come with them.