How a Crisis, a Dieta, and a Dream Led Me Back to Myself
In December 2020, a spiritual crisis split me open in a way that changed everything. At the time, I didn't see it as a spiritual crisis, but now, looking back, it certainly was. I wrote about that experience here for anyone who wants the deeper story.
I also had no idea that this crisis would eventually lead me to Ayahuasca, which would then, eventually, lead me to a better understanding of my purpose. I say "eventually" because the path between insight and understanding was long; far longer than I thought it would be.
Here's how it unfolded.
May 2023: The First Ceremony
My husband and I traveled to New Life Rising in Costa Rica for our first Ayahuasca retreat, called there by that same unresolved crisis. I left with pieces of personal insight, but not a full picture. That would come later, piece by piece, over the next three years.
November 2023: A Conversation Outside of Ceremony
We returned to New Life Rising that same year for a second retreat. Again, over the course of three Ayahuasca ceremonies, the medicine delivered valuable insight. But one of the real turning points didn't happen in ceremony at all. It happened in a conversation with a fellow journeyer who introduced me to a book called Human Design: Discover the Person You Were Born to Be.
When I got home, I dove into it immediately. Then, when I shared what I was learning with a friend who had also sat with the medicine, she recommended a second book: Gene Keys: Embracing Your Higher Purpose.
Using these two books, I spent the next two years studying my own human design, specifically what makes me uniquely me.
July 2024: The Master Plant Dieta in Iquitos
As my study continued, my husband and I had an opportunity to complete a seven-day, seven-night Master Plant Dieta at El Purguero in Iquitos, Peru, confined to a cabin in complete isolation. (I wrote briefly about that experience here.)
We were allowed to leave the cabin only twice for Ayahuasca ceremonies. After our first Ayahuasca ceremony, as I always do, I captured everything I could remember, including the visuals, emotions, insights gained, and how I was thinking and feeling. In those notes, I wrote:
As my study continued, my husband and I had an opportunity to complete a seven-day, seven-night Master Plant Dieta at El Purguero in Iquitos, Peru, confined to a cabin in complete isolation. (I wrote briefly about that experience here.)
We were allowed to leave the cabin only twice for Ayahuasca ceremonies. After our first Ayahuasca ceremony, as I always do, I captured everything I could remember, including the visuals, emotions, insights gained, and how I was thinking and feeling. In those notes, I wrote:
"I'm stuck here in this cabin, and I can't do things that make me who I am."
I was frustrated because I couldn't leave the cabin to talk with the others, compare notes, share stories, and process what we were learning. But then I wrote the lines that actually cracked something open for me:
"Ironically, I've created that same cage for myself in the real world. I'm in a cage within a cage. I've been searching for meaning and purpose, but perhaps I need to return to it? It's not a matter of finding but returning."
I still don't remember what happened in ceremony that led to those words, but they landed hard once I was back in my cabin. The cage I wanted to escape wasn't isolation. It was the version of myself I had built over years of overthinking, over‑preparing, and over-functioning. It was the version that had been holding back who I truly was.
I knew those sentences mattered, but I didn't yet understand how much. That understanding came almost two years later.
June 2026: The Dream
Last week, the night before a new moon, I had a dream. It was a version of a dream I've had throughout my adult life, always with the same throughline: I show up unprepared, whether I'm leading or performing. Sometimes I'm facilitating training with no prep or materials. Other times I'm in a dance recital with no idea what the choreography is.
This time, it was a play.
I was fully dressed in costume with no idea what my lines were, and I had never been to rehearsal. No one around me seemed concerned, not the way I was. They just rolled their eyes and told me I'd be fine.
In the dream, I wasn't part of the first half of the play at all. I spent it backstage running from person to person, begging for a script. No one would give me one. By intermission, I was even more frantic.
When I finally got a script, I flipped straight to the second half. It opened with a chapter titled "Return of the Queen."
My stomach dropped. I was dressed as the Queen!
And when I reached my part, I was surprised to find that I barely had any lines. My role was simply to show up, say a few words, and that was it.
This dream was so vivid and memorable that the following day I turned to AI to help me unpack it. I mentioned that I'd had it the night before a new moon, which Claude pointed out is traditionally a threshold moment in the lunar cycle, the dark pause before new growth, often associated with return.
As I pieced the dream together, everything clicked back into place: the crisis in 2020, the ceremonies, the books, the dieta, the sentence in my cabin in Iquitos.
How This All Connects
The first half of the dream, all that frantic searching for someone else's script, was a season of my life spent looking outward for direction and permission before taking action. That's where I lived for a long time: studying Human Design, studying Gene Keys, gathering information, waiting to feel ready.
Skipping straight to the second half was the giveaway. I wasn't interested in revisiting what came before. I was oriented toward what was next. And what was next wasn't more performing or pretending. It was sovereignty, the return of a part of myself that had always been there, waiting to be reclaimed rather than newly built.
And the role itself? Barely any lines. Not a center‑stage performance. Just presence. Show up, say what's true, and let that be enough.
That is my purpose, my friends! It is the reason I exist in this beautiful world of ours.
I didn't realize this in the dream. I realized it afterward, as I sat with what the dream had handed me. And once I named it, I recognized it as the same thing Chetan Parkyn's Human Design and Richard Rudd's Gene Keys had already been confirming for two years: I'm here to bring revolution into the world - to help facilitate personal revolutions, not through a performance of reaction or outrage, but through calm, clear, purposeful change.
I'm here to turn my own life experience into something that makes life easier for others to navigate, through precise words and a gift for getting to the heart of things. It's about showing up fully, saying what only I can say, and trusting that a few well‑placed truths can do more for my clients than an entire performance ever could. I'm not here to hand my clients a script. I'm here to help them return to who they already are, the way I had to return to who I already was.
The Bigger Point
Here's what I want you to take from this, more than the dream or the dieta itself: the plant ceremony is the beginning, not the ending. Mama Aya handed me one sentence in July 2024. It took until June 2026, almost two full years and a dream about a play for me to fully understand what that sentence meant.
If you're considering plant medicine, or you've recently returned from a ceremony, don't expect the insight to arrive whole. Sometimes it does, but most of the time it doesn't. It arrives in pieces. Some show up in ceremony. Some show up in conversations with others. Some show up two years later in a dream the night before a new moon. Making meaning of it is our job, and it takes patience, curiosity, and a willingness to stay open long after the ceremony ends.
I'm grateful for the crisis that began all of this in 2020. I wouldn't undo a single moment of the slow unfolding that followed.
If you're somewhere in your own unfolding, whether it started with a plant medicine ceremony or a career change, a loss, or simply a season of life that asked more of you than you expected, I hope this reminds you that insight has its own timing. And if you ever want support in making sense of your pieces, I'm here.
Here's what I want you to take from this, more than the dream or the dieta itself: the plant ceremony is the beginning, not the ending. Mama Aya handed me one sentence in July 2024. It took until June 2026, almost two full years and a dream about a play for me to fully understand what that sentence meant.
If you're somewhere in your own unfolding, whether it started with a plant medicine ceremony or a career change, a loss, or simply a season of life that asked more of you than you expected, I hope this reminds you that insight has its own timing. And if you ever want support in making sense of your pieces, I'm here.
If you're considering plant medicine, or you've recently returned from a ceremony, don't expect the insight to arrive whole. Sometimes it does, but most of the time it doesn't. It arrives in pieces. Some show up in ceremony. Some show up in conversations with others. Some show up two years later in a dream the night before a new moon. Making meaning of it is our job, and it takes patience, curiosity, and a willingness to stay open long after the ceremony ends.
I'm grateful for the crisis that began all of this in 2020. I wouldn't undo a single moment of the slow unfolding that followed.
If you're somewhere in your own unfolding, whether it started with a plant medicine ceremony or a career change, a loss, or simply a season of life that asked more of you than you expected, I hope this reminds you that insight has its own timing. And if you ever want support in making sense of your pieces, I'm here.