Ep. 176- Healing with Plant Medicine: A New Path to Trauma Recovery for Cancer Survivors
In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Kibby shares her transformative experience at a healing retreat for breast cancer survivors, centered around a special plant medicine.
Can alternative forms of mental health treatment heal wounds that even therapy can't touch? In this episode, Dr. Kibby recounts journey of deep healing through plant medicine, facilitated by a supportive community of women and guided by expert facilitators. Alternative treatments like plant medicine (of all different types) offer new ways of addressing deep trauma. Dr. Kibby participated in a plant medicine healing retreat for breast cancer survivors, organized by The Survivorship Collective. What she thought was going to be just a fun week turned into a life-changing experience.
Dr. Kibby talks about the insights she gained about trauma, self-compassion, and the power of collective healing. She delves into the emotional aftermath of her cancer treatment, the unexpected connections between past traumas, and the unique healing potential of plant medicine within a sacred tradition practiced for generations. Dr. Kibby reflects on the importance of setting intentions, embracing vulnerability, and trusting the body's innate ability to heal.
Of course, as the field of psychiatry and clinical psychology are excited about the new treatment options- Dr. Kibby also discusses the need for caution. It's important to only engage in treatments that are legal, safe, regulated, evidence-based and monitored by careful medical supervision. Consult with your doctor or other medical provider before making treatment decisions for yourself.
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Dr. Kibby McMahon (00:00)
Hello, little helpers. Today will be a little bit different of an episode because I wanted to share really personal, very special experience that I just had. So this is going to be just really off the cuff, kind of free associating, telling you all. This will be the first time that I'm talking about this. So I'm going to be telling you all about my experience. And I don't even know what I'm going to say and what I remember.
I want to share my experience last week going on a special healing retreat for breast cancer survivors that centered around a special plant medicine. And unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to say what that plant medicine is because certain platforms I learned will actually block this episode if I do. But just rest assured that it was totally safe, legal, and super regulated. So it was...
monitored by doctors and ⁓ experts and it was just really, really carefully done. So I just wanted to share what I discovered in that and just a really new and alternative way of healing from intense trauma. ⁓ basically, I'll tell you a little bit about, I'll just tell you about the whole thing and then I'll tell you the insights that I...
came to. It was just really the most beautiful experience that I could have asked for. I am so grateful and this is going to be part of my integration and processing because I just had so many amazing insights that I want to cling to ⁓ and it's slowly unfolding during these weeks after and so I'm sharing with you my healing process in real time. So
The funny thing is that I went on this healing retreat because it is run by one of my husband's ex-girlfriends. Her name is Anne Hamilton. I really want to get her on this podcast. She is amazing. She had breast cancer as well at a young age. She started their Survivorship Collective, an amazing nonprofit that is dedicated to providing these healing experiences to
cancer survivors, breast cancer survivors specifically right now. So it was funny because she reached out through my husband and I've only heard about her from my husband as an ex and only very good things that she was like amazing, very smart, very talented. ⁓ But she reached out to me and said, I heard you have breast cancer. Do you want to come on this healing retreat? ⁓
And I immediately said yes, mostly because I wanted to meet her and for the story. But I also was like, yeah, if I'm really thinking about it, I've had a really hard time recently. And it was weird. I mean, I've spoken on this platform about how I've had childhood trauma and different kinds of traumas throughout my life, a lot of loss. But cancer is fresh. I mean, I was doing this podcast.
with Jacqueline through chemo, through the treatment. And I was just so focused on surviving.
that it was kind of anti-climactic when it ended, right? was, people often ask, like, what did you learn? How did you grow? And I'm just kind of, there are days I didn't even remember that I had it. Like, I think, I always think to myself like, I'm not more productive or why am I so tired or what? I don't have enough energy. But I completely forgot that I had a year and a half where I was just, thought I might've died. I thought I might die actually. And...
It's only in the aftermath, only in the, when every part of the major treatment was done, that I felt the emotional effects of it. And I've been feeling more like my old trauma's coming up and feeling really stuck. ⁓ And what that felt like was...
I guess I felt like I was trying to draw water out of a dry well. I've been, you know, coming, you know, doing this podcast, building this community and support program for loved ones that people with mental illness cool the mind. Parenting a toddler, just living my life trying to be a wife and daughter and everything like that, but just feeling like I have nothing in me. Not that anything felt...
bad, like I didn't dislike any of these things, but it just felt like, it felt like you're trying to run a marathon on no food, right? It just was like, hey, I have no fuel in me. I have, I feel like drained. I felt flat and I was constantly beating myself up. I guess I still am, but like I was constantly, like every morning I'd wake up being like, why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you faster? Why aren't you better? Why aren't you getting up and doing more yoga? Why, you know, just constantly.
steeped in my self-hatred or my self-criticism. And I really cherish the moments where I spend time with clients or people that I'm working with because that, you know, pouring love into other people was very healing for me. But I just kind of felt like for myself, I was really running on empty. And so when Anne invited me to this, I immediately was like, yes, please, I...
I love the idea of having a space to just sit with the fact that I went through a trauma, that I almost died. ⁓ I hadn't done that in a while. I had just been trying to pretend, move on and pretend it didn't happen. But I was like, you know what? This might be a good time for me to just see what comes up. So we, I mean, the other thing that told me was the beautiful Airbnb that she booked for it. So. ⁓
Last week I flew there and it was nine of us, nine of us women, all different ages, spanning from like 70s to 20s. I hadn't been, I realized I hadn't been in a room with other breast cancer survivors ever, except for sitting in the waiting room at chemo, which is never a healing. Well, it is a healing setting, but it doesn't feel like one. it was just, first of all, it just struck me as like, wow, every, all these different women, different walks of life.
have gotten this disease, most of us have no idea why. Like don't have a genetic predisposition. There wasn't anything in common that we all had. It just like popped up out of nowhere. And I was fascinated that we all were dealing with the trauma of cancer, but that also brought up so many other traumas. Like it made all the other ones that we were dealing with so complex.
I can't speak for everyone, but I know a lot of us were struggling with holding someone else's pain or feeling responsible. Like there were people who are mothers, people who just like working with intergenerational trauma, like their moms were having a hard time. Like there was just so much collective pain that we were holding. I'm literally just like processing this out loud. So you're all here for the ride.
So immediately it was just an amazing group of women who were just all there to heal and work through and go deep into our traumas. So it was a really well thought out retreat and I think that it just built a really nice container for just deep introspection. The plant medicine was the key ingredient, but I almost feel like the whole retreat and thoughtfulness around.
⁓ this approach was, you know, even if we didn't have the plant medicine, I think it still would have been pretty profound. So we got there and the first day we got there, it was just almost like a fairy tale. mean, the Airbnb was gorgeous. It had this fireplace and it was just like had this giant hot tub overlooking ⁓ the sunset. And when we got there, it had just rained. So there was a double rainbow.
that filled the whole sky and the rest of the group got pictures of me wearing my bathrobe, running just to see the rest of the rainbow. I wasn't even on the medicine at the time. I just like, I got there and I was like, oh my God, and I ran and I got through a clearing in the forest and I saw that the rainbow, the double rainbow was end to end, like unbroken. was one of the most beautiful.
scenes I've ever seen. And already I was like, wow, just, just being able to stand in awe of nature was just healing on its own. I went back and I joked, I was like, I'm done healing, done. I'm to go home now. but then we had, ⁓ we had a few meetings before we even came to get to know each other and really talk about the parameters and expectations around this experience.
Some parts that were really amazing were just talking about like, what are you supposed to do? I love that we talked about like, what does confidentiality mean? ⁓ Right? Like not sharing personal stories of anyone else outside, which means that I'm not going to go into other people's ⁓ journeys. And ⁓ we were, we talked very, very carefully about ⁓ our medical histories, mental health histories.
with a facilitator and a doctor and we shared ⁓ parts about ourselves to get to know the group so we feel safe around each other and talk about like we can't touch each other and you know the facilitators can hold our hands and everything like that so it really set the stage for okay we're going to make sure that you feel safe in this group and let's get it out of the way do you feel weird about people touching you or do you have a certain snack that you need like what
What do you need to feel safe to go deep and do your own healing work? And something that I really loved was that there was a big focus of this experience was setting an intention. So we talked about it before and we wrote it down, ⁓ but we really thought carefully about like, what do we want to get out of this experience? What are we working with?
what are the blocks and the things that we're trying to work through? And our facilitator was named Julian. He is a therapist in Ecuador, and he also learned a lot of this sacred working with the plant medicine back in his country from these elders. And he was saying that you have to have a conversation with the plant medicine. You have to tell it what you're looking for. I mean, you could also just say,
just give me what I need to know, it was this ⁓ real process. kept saying this, co-creating the healing experience. You're not being, we weren't like getting healing done to us. We are healing with it. And I think that was just such a different way of thinking about healing, right? Cause like even all my experiences with getting healed in Western medicine.
I'm sitting there receiving chemotherapy. I'm sitting there receiving a ⁓ surgery. I hope that I'm alive when I wake up. It is very passive, right? Things being done to us. Even childbirth, was like, there's a doctor who's like, you're lying on your back and we're gonna take that baby out of you, right? It's like being a patient and healing has a lot of like passivity. But this was talked about like, no, this is the medicine that's gonna...
This is gonna open up your healing, but you have to set an intention. So we talked a lot about it, we thought about it, and we had our journals and we wrote.
of what our intentions were. And when we got there, we had some meditations, we took a walk in the forest, but day one was really this small dose of the plant medicine, just so we can kind of get familiar with it and kind of get the anxiety out. And we sat and our intentions and really spent a lot of time on that. ⁓ This is what I wrote.
My intention is to clear out the stagnation, the stuck in the self. I really remember writing this. The stuck in the self hatred and self limiting to wash away the.
Debris, wash away the debris and feel the flow of vitality to feel solid myself again with grounded movement. I realize I'm so focused on stopping the wave of pain of the ripple effects of trauma. I want to feel like.
I want to feel the warm maternal energy that radiates out of healing, creates space to process pain instead of holding it back.
I also said, want to see myself as others already see me. Loving, safe, and accepting. my god.
I want to be centered in myself. I don't know why that part hits me so much. I think that's something that's part of my trauma responses, but throughout my entire life, I've had people say really nice, like the people who love me say really nice things about me, that I give a centered presence, that I'm kind, but my...
that people think I'm relaxed, but my internal experience is I'm always worrying, always worrying about hurting someone else, always worrying about am I a bad person? Like how to minimize the burden I put on other people. And so I brought this book from that my husband got me for my, made for me for my 40th birthday, which is a book of so many of my loved ones.
writing amazing, beautiful messages about what I mean to them, and like a happy birthday message. And it was a whole book of people that go from like my childhood friends to like my new friends and family, just saying wonderful things about me. And I just, I remember reading that book when I first read it and I was just like, why can't I see myself like that? And it's just interesting to read my intention because I have been feeling like almost like
stagnant energy? Like, I can't even describe it. Like, I went through all the chemo and the surgery, something, I'm like, I'm like better, but I feel like stuck. Like, there's something stuck, like stagnant water. And I used to feel so much like vitality and like, I was doing something, I always like forward movement. I'm always like a very active person, but like lately I've just...
I'm still doing the active, I'm still being myself, but inside feeling like, I can't, I can't, I'm so tired, I hate myself. You know, just like holding myself back, so.
Yeah, this is just interesting to look back on because I just kind of like wrote it really quickly and then the Plant medicine it was really interesting I'll kind of set the stage for what the whole ceremonies and the plant medicine looked like but we were in a Certified and licensed service center and it looked like a beautiful yoga studio ⁓
and there were little beds, little like mats on the floor with blankets and water and tea and so it was just like the most cozy place. And we were really, we were really told that this was our time to go inward and to take care of ourselves and focus on ourselves. That in itself was really challenging for me and I know that a lot of other participants too because
We're so used to women and the kind of women, the kind, loving women that were there with me, we're so used to taking care of other people. ⁓ We're a lot of helper professions and just identified as like people pleasers and all that. But we're so used to working with other people's pain. And so the idea of taking even just like a couple of days just to ourselves with other people.
was crazy for me. was like, how am I gonna do that? They were saying like, if someone is having an emotion, first of all, you don't know what they're really feeling. So if they're crying, you don't know if it's a sad cry or they're grieving or if they are happy and just weeping tears of joy. And I was like, ⁓ first of all, we should keep that in mind all the time that
My knee-jerk reaction is to go in and rescue someone, is to be like, I'm a therapist, I know I have to help you, make you feel better, blah, blah, But that's already imposing myself onto other people's emotional experiences. But what if they just want to be left alone? Or what if they need to have a good cry and it feels good? And I would interrupt that process if I just jumped in. But so we're like...
instructed to just focus on ourselves and what we need and our intention and what we needed. And then we had facilitators. So there's a law ⁓ about where we were about how many facilitators per person. actually there was more than what it was legally sanctioned. So there was about like, I think there was like two, one facilitator for every two of us. And when I say facilitator, they were trained in basically managing
our experiences keeping us safe. And they just modeled a really beautiful example of what it's like to.
facilitate someone's healing without healing them.
I'm trying to piece together the explanation right now, ⁓ I, know,
working with people in our KulaMind community and program, there's a lot of people there who are givers, caretakers, right? They care for people with mental illness who are struggling in some way.
Naturally, this group is really like, I have to fix someone I love. I have to, if they are depressed, I have to make them better. So we feel a real big responsibility over other people's pain and fixing. And as a therapist, I'm like, I actually do that for a living. I'm actually like, my job is to help people feel better in the long term, in a way.
⁓ so the sense of responsibility over other people's pain was something that I'm really, I was really grappling with. Like in Kula Mind, I talk a lot about, you know, how to validate and empathize with someone with their struggles, but also not take responsibility, give them the agency to help themselves. Right? Like have empathy, but also boundaries. And I'm like,
on a spiritual, energetic level, I don't really know how that works. I still feel really responsible if my mom is mad at me or upset or struggling. I'm like, oh, what did I do wrong? I had to do something different. So even just watching the facilitators, I was like, oh, their role is specifically to...
help get what we need, but not to introduce that, right? So if you imagine we're in this circle of little beds and we have these facilitators, these lovely people, these lovely women who some were nurses, some were, you know, have just like professional facilitators in these different settings. ⁓ Some are Qigong like teachers. So they all were there and they were just like there for whatever you need.
You need to go to the bathroom. They will guide you. You can put your hands on them and they will help you steady yourself to the bathroom. Or if you just need a hug or if you need a hand. ⁓ And it was just beautiful the way they talked about it. They were like, you tell us what you need and practice asking for help. Because in this country, in America, we're not very good at asking for help.
We're so used to seeing healing and growth and as a singular individual process, right? Like we do it. But asking for help is a really important skill. And if you just need something, ask for help. We're not going to come do something to you and make you do something. But we will invite you. And it's your job to tell us what you need. So even talking about touch, they were like, you could come and ask for.
just for us to hold your hand. But in the moment, if you feel like you don't want to hold my hand anymore, that's fine. You always have agency. And I was like, wow, that's such a cool way of phrasing it. Just like they were like, we're here to help you heal. We're here to create the space so you can do your own healing. So we're in this circle. We have these lovely people behind us.
Lillian is our facilitator and he is in the middle of the room and he has this altar, which is just a cloth ⁓ with all these different sacred objects on it. And he said that this altar is the connection between the spirit and the earthly realm. And we're invited to put special things on it. So I put my book of my 40th birthday book with all the wonderful messages. ⁓
because I was like, this is what I want. This is what I value. I want to be this kind of person. I want to be a person that...
I think I already am, I guess. I'm this person who ⁓ so many people wrote such nice things about me. And that's what I value in life. That's all I want to build is to build like a safe space for people and to make people feel loved and cared for. So it was like, this book was like probably my most proud accomplishment, right? To like have testimonials of people saying like that they felt that way. So I put that on them.
and other people put really cute things like pictures or ⁓ like a little statue or something, know, like a little, you know, little tokens that meant something to them. And Julian, again, especially, we did the same thing. we did two days. One day was a smaller dose and one day was a bigger dose. The smaller dose, we're just writing our intentions and preparing and just getting a sense of what this was like. And...
He explained that we will, all of it, he was like, I'm really proud of you that you're all here to go in deep. the mind, he explained that the mind sometimes needs to disorganize in order to reorganize. So he said, this is a time where different things are gonna happen to your brain and...
It's going to make new connections and think differently than it usually does. And the brain, like most things in nature, don't like things that are not normal. So it does a lot of things to stay normal, right? It kind of recreates the familiar over and over again, right? And this is a time where you're going to go out of that comfort zone. You're to think differently. It's going to operate differently. And that's going to be scary.
And he said, we call that the bridge. There's going to be a point where your conscious mind is going to fight for normalcy, fight for, I want to stay in control. But if you work with that and let that happen, you could go to the other side. So I was like, me to the other side. That sounds great. What else did we talk about? ⁓ he also said that he will use other tools he's learned from his elders to really help the medicine.
Co-create with it. So he said I have different instruments a different he had different like rattles ⁓ made from like branches of certain trees or like an actual rattle or like bells and He's and he said I'm also gonna sing songs I'm gonna sing songs that are from my culture and what I've learned from these traditions He was like, I'm not gonna put them on Spotify or some platform monetized because that's not what they're here for They're not just to sound good
They are part of the medicine. They're spiritual, sacred songs. And so I was like, wow, how cool is it that this is treated like, I'm not a very religious person. I was considering myself spiritual, but like, how special is it to really focus a time to contemplate and have this as a special experience?
just for contemplation. People do it all the time going to church, right? Prayer and stuff like that. But like, we are creating a moment where you're in the moment and you're just, it's not there for replication or public consumption. It's just there for you in that moment. And that's like really sacred, right? And I was really like, ooh, honored. And we also talked about how...
you know, it's really important to respect your lineage and respect generational trauma and how this kind of plant medicine is ⁓ timeless, right? This medicine, these songs, and this ceremony, this tradition comes from like generations and generations. And you said that often people do feel like time is flat. And so you might encounter like a generational trauma.
and work with that. So it really was like, whoa, I don't know. It was just like, whoa.
I know what that means. now that I experience, I was like, I don't know what that means, but like I feel that in my body now. I'm like, oh wow, you just like, you're so connected to all these different parts of you that even time, like the old parts of you, the old parts of you, they inherited from your parents. The sacred healing that you're inherit from this ritual, generations in South America are all going to be in this moment.
Wow, so powerful. And we also got eye masks and headphones if we wanted to and blankies. So it was just like, okay, I'm gonna lie in my bed and I'm gonna listen to this really nice, kind man play beautiful music and sing be good or flee while these ladies help me to the bathroom. was like, is just, it's like the most luxurious spa ever. But the first day, I was actually surprised because...
was lying there and it was just a very small.
little sip of wine, you know, not that big of a deal. And then I had a flash of seeing my dad who had died of cancer when I was like 20. And I just started crying. And I had, I think two hours where I was just uncontrollably crying, not sobbing, but just like tearing. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I needed to grieve. Like I...
tell clients all the time that they need to grieve, especially if they're angry or frustrated or they feel stuck. Like sometimes it's a grief process and accepting of something that you lost and feeling the sadness, right? And feeling that loss, which most people don't want to feel, right? They want to feel like I could do something about it. I'm anxious, which makes me worry so I can do something or I'm angry. That makes me want to blame someone like very active. But this...
Grease sometimes grieving is the answer. Sometimes you just need to be sad that something important to you was taken away So I just pictured my dad and I hadn't thought of him for a long time, but I just started crying
and spent a couple hours, you know, just kind of lying there like weeping. And, you know, he was like, okay, like, we're done, you know, have a good evening. Like, let's, you know, let's go around and share something that, you know, your experience. And I was like, I'm still like deep in, right? Like, I'm not ready to, so, you know, we're sharing, we're like.
folding up the blankets and putting on my shoes. And I was like, oh my God, was like, But I felt like an opening. And I was like, okay, okay, I'm ready. I'm really, like I see that there's stuff and I'm ready to go in deeper. And then going home, I gossiped with Ann about my husband. said we both were with him, which was a lovely touch point. Cause I was just like, my husband is such an important person to me. And I've seen him through so many like.
I mean, I think about it like, you know, these lifetimes in one moment, but it was just like a coming together of times, timelines in one. So it was just funny to be like, my God, like somewhere from his past, but it's now like my friend and I don't know. we, and also like they had all these amazing snacks. I got them from Trader Joe's. I was just like eating chocolate all day. was really awesome. But I abstained from alcohol and you know, everything else and try to keep clean diet. So I was...
You know, it was just like so luxurious. Anyway, the next day was the big dose and they, Julian had asked us, you know, had a talk with us before. It'd be like, like checking with your experience. How was it? ⁓ Let's adjust the dose and go with whatever you're comfortable with. And there was opportunity to have a booster, meaning like a little bit more like later in the journey.
And so that was nice. It was just kind of like, OK, like everyone kind of felt how they responded and then made an informed decision. And ⁓ it's funny, I had been really, really tired lately and I was really worried about feeling like tired and heavy and having head rushes. And I just realized I had just found out that I'm low on iron. So, you know, I actually had the past couple of weeks I've been having actual like panic attacks.
because I felt bad in my body and I was like, oh my God, is this a sign that the cancer has come back? Which is a common fear when you have cancer, like, is it gonna come back? But I just got test results while I was on the retreat and I was like low on iron. So was like, okay, great. I taking iron supplements and I felt better. So that was my biggest worry, but going into it, I was okay.
We got there, did the same talk, setting up the stage, saying again, ask us for anything you need, ask us for help, we'll come around, we won't touch you unless you want. So then we did it. We went around and shared our intention with the group and then took the medicine and then he started playing this music.
started shaking the rattle, started singing the songs. I put on my eye mask and I was just like in outer space and I was like, I was seeing fractals and rainbows, right? And I was like, oh my God, this is like, it's a little bit too much. I was on that bridge. But then I thought to myself, you know what, Kibbe, you wanted to let go, you wanted to go in deep, just let go. So I did, I just kept telling myself, bye.
goodbye and I let myself be in this in the situation and help to take off my eye mask and actually look at outside and look at the beautiful trees and just like marvel for a second. I deep breaths and then I just fell into it and in the most intense time
I'm just trying to articulate it's impossible to, but.
I saw that everything is, all these living beings are like part of this one web of energy, spirit, maternal love, whatever you want to call it. But I did see this oneness, this connection. And I was like, wow, I have been searching. I've been thinking about how you've just been into search and get things from external, from outside of me. I've been looking for...
help with my energy levels. I've been getting healing from cancer treatment. I've been looking to ⁓ learn about business. I felt so deficient in myself that I've been trying to look for solutions outside of myself. But then in that moment, was like, everything I've been looking for is just already here. It's already here in me. I've forgotten it, but I've forgotten that
Everything that I'm looking for, it's happening at its own pace. I have this, yeah, I guess this is like this illusion of control that we have, this idea that we have to heal people, or we have to do things, or we have to make things happen. But I was just like, wow, life is already happening. Healing is already happening. My body is already healing itself. I just need to give it space and let it do its own thing. Trust that this healing process is already happening.
So what that looked like specifically was like, you know, I thought about this in metaphysical ways of just like my own healing of this trauma. I was just like, I've just been so stuck because I've been trying to, I guess not giving it space to breathe and being like, I'm sad, I need to rest. It's, I'm healing my own pace and I might be slower or.
more painful or unexpected in ways that I'm not controlling, but I'm just healing. My body is healing itself. My soul is healing itself. And I saw in other ways too, like, I think it was marveling about how women's bodies go through so much change. Like, talking about disorganizing to reorganize, giving birth, I mean, like really, like we come apart in pieces. And cancer, we literally come apart in pieces. And then we're...
just reassembling our organs and our bodies into a new form. And it was just like, wow, it's just, you know, in that moment I breathe and feel this places in my body where it's like tight or painful and just brought my attention there. And then with just bringing the intention there, just allowed it to relax, right? So, and allowed it to feel like it moved or opened up.
I was like, oh, I feel like I keep having to like do healing, but now I'm allowing and giving space for the healing that's already happening. I'm just letting it do its thing, really. So it's just marveling at that, just like, whoa, like things die and grow and morph and change and everything is evolving all the time and we're just part of it. We just play a role in it. We don't control much, if you think about it.
This stuff is already happening, right? And I remember looking around the room and all these amazing women who have gone through so much. They were all doing their own healing journey. Some were like going inward, you know, wrapping the blanket around and doing something inside. And some were expressing and, you know, going outward and releasing.
I was looking around the room and some were giggling. I was one of the giggling ones. was like, wow, look at this cool nest of women. And I was also meditating on womanhood versus manhood, like yin and yang, like the male and female energies. something that's been hard for me is that all up until having a baby, I felt very masculine.
I was good at school, I was athletic, I was strong, I was independent, I was doing stuff. And then I had a baby and then I had breast cancer. Like womanhood just like really hit me like a Mack truck. And I've struggled with it. I haven't felt like a...
sense of power in the womanhood, in the motherhood, I felt like almost like I was forced to change into something that I'm not familiar with. Breastfeeding was hard, like it was just hard. So I was like, how do, like I wanted to appreciate the strength of womanhood. And I did, I looked around and I was like, my God, all these women, like some of them gave birth to several.
big kids and some are going inward and dealing with their childhood trauma and some are giving birth metaphysically and some are grappling with their sexuality. mean, there was just so many different, and I was just like, wow, women are just amazing. I mean, this sounds so silly, but women are really just amazing. And we should appreciate when men...
facilitate that and do what they need to do to facilitate this healing, create space for it, right? Like Julian was there creating a safe space for us, know, creating the music and creating the container while we're all doing the healing, right? I was thinking about that with my husband, how I like gave birth and stuff, but all the things that he did to make me feel safe, me feel protected, whether it's...
propping up my pillows, getting me a snack or telling me he loves me. We all play a role in this healing, right? And I was just marbling. There was a lot of hours where I think I was like, wow, wow, and watching someone grieve and then the emotions will flow through me and then appreciating that I have naturally more empathy, like a higher level of empathy.
than normal, like whenever someone cries, I feel sad immediately. I was just like watching someone grieve and then feeling it and then just being like in awe of it. mean, in awe of that process of like, this is just the human, is beautiful. I'm starting to sound like woo woo, really woo woo right now, but.
Yeah, there were times where I closed my eyes and saw images of my grandmother who just passed away, my father who passed away, and all my family and friends and just, just realizing that we all are living in each other through how we affect each other. You know, like our parents or generations before have given us legacies, whether painful or not, but just like have affected us through
time and space. don't even know. don't even know what I'm saying. But just appreciating like the connection with this greater family, sense of family.
and for the first time in a while I just let it, I just like watched it. I think that's, that was, I think the play in medicine taught me that.
Letting things move and heal is not about doing the right thing. I'm so focused on doing the right thing and ⁓ figuring out the right way, the right strategy, right? And like doing good, getting the A plus, but actually this was just about like letting go and marveling at a healing process, which means stepping back, allowing
it to happen, trusting that traumas and wounds heal on their own. They have an inner wisdom that they know how to heal. And I just got to get out of the way, man. I got to stop trying to like work on it. And I just have to let go and let go not in the sense of like by, know, like that that you're checking out or that you're resigning or like, you know, like, fine, I'm letting go. You take care of it. I'm going to walk away.
but instead being like, I trust you.
So letting
in that moment felt like trusting in all of our ability to heal, creating the safe space to let someone do that, bringing attention to it and marveling and being in awe of it and just letting it do its own thing. And I was like, wow, that's the way I want to parent. That's the way I want to treat my clients. That's the way I hope my clients treat their loved ones.
that they go, what do you need? I'm here to help you heal. I trust you. You are in, you have your own inner wisdom and your own agency to heal, but I'm here just to support and let it happen. Facilitate it. Let the movement.
So that was just amazing. was just like marvelling down the while and sometimes I would get hungry so they would ask the facilitators for like little sips of honey. Apparently the honey does, you I went through this whole meditation about like honey and bees and that there's a queen bee and there's like they work in groups. I really have this like appreciation that womanhood has this like wheat.
do hard shit together. And we might do it individually, like we all give our own birth or whatever, but we do it together. We do it in a hive, in a nest, and we support each other in community. It was just, think that was it. I was just in awe of community throughout my journey. And then I would, and then, within an hour, we had to come around and asking like,
How are you doing? How are you feeling? Would you like a booster? And I remember just looking at him and bursting out laughing. I was like, what's up, man? I'm all good. yeah, I was really touched. I think I was really moved by the experience and getting a chance to marvel at the magic.
of healing.
And as a healer, that was really something cool, right? I've been feeling so bogged down with the responsibility of having to heal and create a space for healing and do all the things. But I was just like, you know what? Listen, just listen. I remember one of my Thai massage teachers would always say, listen to body, listening. You have to learn to listen. To be a healer, you got to learn to listen. And I think I've forgotten that. I think I felt so anxious about
how I need to do things right, but I forgot to just listen.
Listen to what my clients say they need to heal, right? What they need what what is calling inside them? To heal and how can I support?
So, I mean, there were some people in the group who had, who were struggling, especially struggling with like the emotions that were in the room and watching them just figuring out ways to cope with that, figuring out ways to ask for help. ⁓ It was just really amazing, like this collective approach to healing, healing all of our individual and collective traumas. ⁓ But...
It was such a beautiful experience and we came out of it. We ate amazing food at home. I was just like coming down. It was actually nice too because we finished by sharing. We did a couple rounds of just sharing what was in us, our experience. And it was so weird because we hadn't talked. It was hard to be like, okay, now I'm going to do public speaking now and tell you what is still happening inside me. But he was like, like...
Really don't think about here and what you think you should say, but really just see if there's something inside you that wants to be expressed through words. And most of us express gratitude.
And just we all were like, thank you so much for just giving each like us creating space for each other, being kind to each other and letting me feel safe enough to go to places that I normally wouldn't. And we were crying. There's one facilitator who's saying amazing songs that I was just like, I just, we were just, she was singing over and over. You don't have to carry this alone. You don't have to carry this alone.
like seeing that over and over and all of us started weeping towards the end. That was a really beautiful moment. We all were holding the shared trauma of breast cancer, but also completely individual experiences. And we all felt really alone in it. We all felt like we went into a hole. And some of us, like me, felt like I can come back out.
So to think about that we don't have to carry that alone was, you know, it was just beautiful. So we just expressed so much gratitude towards each other and to that experience. And we went home and none of us could go to sleep early. But the next day was an integration day. And I really appreciated that because it was like.
so profound, I mean, I'm having trouble even just like saying all the things here without sounding like cheesy, like we're all one, you know, but.
Usually, you know, I kind of expect that we just like go back to our lives and just have to sit with like this amazing memory of this experience, but we had an integration day where Julian came and did a couple of exercises with us where he just said like, you know, that we're just trying to the medicine plant seeds in us insights or messages or teachings or whatever that, you know, are going to be powerful in the moment.
but that they plant seeds that will grow over time. So we talked about how in the first few weeks after plant medicine, your brain is very plastic. It's very open to new experiences. Right now, my brain is different than what it usually is. And I could see that. I could see that I'm paying attention to things in different ways. So it's like, just be very careful and just bring in what you've learned and let those seeds grow.
So the way we did it was different of meditation exercises where he was like, look around the room and see what catches your eye and just ⁓ connect with something in your journey that connects with this object that you're looking at. So we're just looking at each other or like fruit. And then he was just like, just have a conversation with this, listen, what is it trying to tell you? Like in that.
moment in your journey, like what do you want to keep? And then we have these other experiences where these other meditations where he was like, pick a part of your journey that you want to remember this is a very insightful moment or you know, something that you want to hold on to and then picture a character or animal or person that embodies it and
really picture that thing. I pictured ⁓ Maya, my old Shiva Inu. She was like a white chubby Shiva Inu that's just like, she was like the coolest. She was like my sidekick. She went with me to Berlin. She was like my ⁓ dog, my adulthood, and I miss her. But she really embodied this like, trust me, I got this. Like, stop doing things. She would always lie on the couch.
So like with their legs out and just to be chubby and just like look at you and be happy that you were there, but just like she was doing her own thing. So I pictured like this Kibby, trust, like just get out of the way and trust in, trust in the healing, just trust. Let go as Maya. And we did this exercise of like having a conversation in our minds. Like what?
what would our character, what would that moment say to us? What messages does it want us to know? what, say something back, like ask questions. So we had these moments of like just, it's very like acceptance and commitment therapy, like this is, or different kinds of like IFS and different kinds of therapies where you like talk to different parts of you, but we're basically talking to the different parts of us. And I think in general, just we sat and we discussed and we talked a lot and it-
drop, like sometimes hearing other people's memories, like brought back memories of, you know, different parts of the experience. So, and we journaled a lot, I just, you know, fill pages of everything that I could remember. And it was just like, okay, like, let's, you know, that moment where your mind is just doing its own thing, let's see how we can bring that and integrate that into our daily life now.
Let the seeds grow and let it be a part of us. Not just like I was there, I did this cool thing and now back to my old patterns, my old habits. So I really do, I want to bring this appreciation for womanhood and also in the appreciation for womanhood this yin and yang, yin yang, I don't know to say. But I was always saying like, ⁓ the male part is good, that's ambition, that's productivity and work and female is slower and stiller.
quieter. And I think I, my mind was like, I think I learned to appreciate both. And that it's not two different things. It's just the same thing from two different vantage points. And I even thought about myself about being half Asian and like thinking like, I white or am I Asian? But seeing this constantly as like two different things, but I'm like, no, this is the meeting place of
This is like the same thing, but just two different sides. I don't know. I appreciated the beauty of women. I appreciated the process of healing. I marveled at like, I'm just gonna learn to trust and I'm gonna let go of my anxiety and need for control in doing and working and being productive. And what that looks like is not a resignation, but it's gonna look like a trust in the process.
and having fun with it and marveling at it. Not feeling responsible, but feeling responsible for responding to what someone else needs to facilitate their healing, to make their healing happen. So yeah, I'm gonna embody Maya, spirit of just like, I'm just sitting on my couch and I'm gonna trust that everything's gonna go well. Yeah, and then we...
It was hard because we had to say goodbye. We all like only knew each other for four days in person, but we had these really deep bonds with each other in the group and an appreciation. And so we did some Qigong. We did this cool exercise where we took like this pink yarn and threw it at each other and like appreciated, like said some kind of words of appreciation for the group and then like made this these bracelets that we could wear.
And we just closed out and went to the airport and left. And ⁓ in some ways I'm like, ⁓ now I'm back and back to normal life. But I do feel a change. I feel like I'm no longer empty. I feel this feeling of groundedness that I used to always feel. Like a trust in myself.
It'll be okay. know, I still worry like I'm not like, you know, going, you know, in the clouds now. I'm still like, whoa, I had to do this. I just write these emails back. before there'd be this existential crisis of like, I'm not good enough. I'm not enough. And now I'm like, okay, Kibby, you know you can do this. You know everything will be fine. Reply to that email. But just stay in me and...
and just appreciate what's already here and not just thinking that you have to get something from the outside world. So I am just so grateful for that experience. I want to get Anna Hamilton, my husband's ex who organized all of this onto this podcast and she could talk more about her experience and how she came to Crete, such an amazing community. But I think it was one of the most beautiful experiences I've had in my life.
And I probably for weeks will still be processing what the F happened. But I really advocate for it. People are feeling stuck. Are they feeling like therapy is not getting them to the deeper places, like there's more to work through. Therapy, obviously I'm a really big proponent of, but therapy is a tool and one part of treatment, right? And it can help in certain ways, but...
there were other things that this plant medicine did. For example, like you might go into therapy and just say the same things over and over again, right? Say the same stories, say the same worries. And this is one of these moments where your brain is like, ooh, opens up and you could experiment and play with other ways of thinking, other feelings that you haven't been allowing yourself to feel because...
of your normal habits and coping mechanisms. So this just allowed everything to soften and open up. And I highly, I mean, if you're curious about what the plant medicine is, you can look at survivorship collective and see what they do. But it's so cool how so many different kinds of alternative mental health treatments are coming out now, whether it's like plant medicine, ketamine, all these.
TMS, we're all experimenting with even AI, you know, and digital health. We're all experimenting with new ways of healing mental health. And it's a Wild West. So there's a lot of things that we don't know, like who it's good for and who it's not good for. But I really recommend if you were to ever experiment and look for something with these alternative new progressive healing methods, really go to a place that's reputable.
that has very clear regulations, like regulations around what doses did you get? What can the facilitators do for you? What is the doctor's role? What happens in a case of emergency? How should we approach this? ⁓ Is it legal, right? Like just checking all those things and doing your research and your homework. ⁓ Because I know that...
A lot of these different alternative medicines have kind of crashed and burned because of the 70s where we all were like, whoo, everyone should try everything, LSD, MDMA, XSD, all this crazy stuff. And then quickly that spirals into danger. ⁓ yeah, just be careful and just be intentional about it. And I highly recommend, I don't know, just taking some time to go inward and...
giving some time just for you because you might push and push and push and push and push through those burnouts. But there might be something inside you that's saying, hey, hey, we need to slow down. We need a moment to ourselves. We need to look inward. We need to create space so that whatever's happening inside can express itself and move through it. So I don't know if this episode made any sense or.
you know, it was interesting or helpful, but I don't know, maybe it was more for me. But I just wanted to share this with all of you, because all of you are very special to me, and I wanted to share that, you know, if the things out there that you tried haven't helped, there are new ways of healing, and there's ways of healing that you might not expect. And to be open to that, so. As always, if you liked this episode,
Leave a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And then whatever platform you're listening to this, ⁓ Spotify and YouTube, you could write comments on it and I can respond to you. So I love talking to all of you. Some of you have written some really nice things and some you have written some critical things, but all are welcome. ⁓ I learn from every conversation I have with you. So ⁓ I appreciate you.
and I will see you next week. Thank you.