The Most Personal Thing I’ve Ever Written
Honesty is its own kind of medicine. When we’re honest about our journeys, we open the way for others to step into their own truth. We normalize everyone’s experience and then each one of us can realize that we are not alone.
Today I want to share my story, my whole story so you can see how perfect your whole story is too. And I’m going to start by talking about the one place on our bodies we’re told never to talk about… (can you guess what it is?)
I’ve been practicing as an herbalist for almost a decade. Over the years I’ve sat with thousands of students and reached hundreds of thousands more through my blog.
But the truth is, I never started out wanting to be an herbalist.
I began my journey thinking I’d become a vagina healer.
It all started in my teens when a single yeast infection spiraled into a chronic state of infection and pain. In my twenties I was finally diagnosed as having vulvodynia, a mysterious vaginal pain condition with no mainstream way of being treated. While most of my college classmates were enjoying this carefree era of their lives, I was running home from class to hide. Sex was excruciating, pants became impossible. My relationship and sense of self hit rock bottom.
Dealing with back issues is hard. Stomach issues are upsetting and heart issues are scary. But vaginal issues have the ability to emotionally debilitate those experiencing them in a way I’ve never seen with imbalances in any other part of the body.Dealing with health issues in our root seems to bring us right down into the underworld— the deep, unlooked at things of our own journey and the underbelly of the culture that we live in. Sometimes that hurt brings us as deep as our ancestors unsettled bones, and the core of this earth we call home.
The hardest part about vaginal issues is that we’re not supposed to talk about it. The culture of silence is so deafening you begin to feel as if you are buried six feet underground.
But the breakthrough moments always come, and when they do it feels just like the first sharp hope of spring.
My own breakthrough came after I hit a final wall with Western medicine. After going to more specialists than I could count, I was told the only solution would be to get surgery to remove nerve endings from my vulva….
In that moment, I heard a small, still voice inside me say: no. It was my intuition, rising to the surface in a small feline roar. I turned away from the medical model I had been handed, and my real journey got underway.
I became a seeker.
I got into fertility charting, natural menstruation and herbs.
I began shamanic journeywork.
The world inside my body became so uncomfortable, I went outside— into the woods and fields, into the heart of the living world. I began to see meaning, pattern, significance. I started talking to trees, and they talked back. I stepped outside of the parameters of the life I had been given and discovered a whole, numinious world of spirit, possibility and truth.
I found my destiny, I found myself.
And slowly, I healed.
I healed my chronic yeast. And then, years later, my vulvodynia.
I developed BV and healed from that too.
I turned around to face the sexual trauma I had experienced earlier in my life. And I turned inward and found something truly incredibly inside— my goodness, my gifts, and my power.
I learned how to work with this part of my body. How to love it, tend it, listen to it.
And I arrived here.
If it weren’t for my journey with vaginal healing, I wouldn’t be here writing you this email today. My vagina was the gatekeeper who initiated me into the path that was waiting for me in this lifetime. And over the years of working with others who have also dealt with similar issues, I’ve realized that I’m not alone.
Vaginas are portals and oracles. And they are safeguarding the secret of your life’s vast potential.
One day, when I was still in the midst of dealing with chronic pain, I made a promise to myself and the earth. When I’m ready, I will compile all the pieces that helped me to heal. I will gather some of the most emergent pussy, sexuality, sensuality, and embodiment healers on the planet. And I will create a library, a sanctuary of healing and learning, for others with pussies to come, reconnect, and heal.
I’m ready. That day is today. The P U S S Y portal is here waiting for you.
Or test the out waters with our low cost introductory course Multidimensional Vaginal Healing and decide to upgrade at a reduced price later.
