Journeys of Healing: Cheryl

In this episode of PIR® Integration Radio, Cheryl shares a deeply moving account of healing from childhood trauma, complex PTSD, and addiction through recovery, community, and psychedelic-assisted healing.

With remarkable honesty and courage, Cheryl reflects on the lifelong impact of early family dysfunction, the ways trauma shaped her relationships and sense of self, and the profound inner work required to reclaim self-worth and emotional freedom. She speaks openly about discovering that recovery was not only about abstinence, but about healing the wounds beneath the addiction.

Together, we explore the role of psychedelic medicines in trauma recovery, the importance of self-love and healthy boundaries, and the ongoing practice of integration. Cheryl describes healing not as a destination, but as a spiral—returning to familiar places with deeper awareness, compassion, and understanding each time.

This conversation offers hope to anyone navigating the complex path of recovery and reminds us that healing happens through connection, courage, and a willingness to embrace every part of ourselves.

  PIR® Integration Radio is a podcast produced by Psychedelics in Recovery.
In keeping with PIR® traditions, the podcast offers a space for reflection, shared experience, and integration, in support of recovery. It does not promote or endorse substance use. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I wonder what else is out there when I put the word psychedelics and recovery into my Google search bar. First thing it pulls up is psychedelics and recovery. And my exact words were like, that's a thing? I can do psychedelics in recovery. And when I went to my first meeting and I heard that we were both close to and respected each individual's right to define their own recovery, I was really hooked.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Welcome to Psychedelics in Recovery Integration Radio, a safe space where PIR, also known as Persons in Recovery, come and share their experience, strengths, and hope with us, with you. My name is Anne, and I'm a person in recovery and your host today. This radio is part of PIR's ongoing effort to carry the message of recovery to those still suffering. In alignment with the 12th tradition that guide our fellowship, this program will not be funded by outside contributions. PIR as an organization has no opinion on outside issues. While we discuss plant medicine and psychedelics in this episode, PIR does not promote or endorse their use. The spiritual intention of PIR and of this broadcast is to create diverse, safe and sacred spaces for all who wish to recover, always striving for humility, over hubris and principles before personality. Whether you're new to the idea of integrating psychedelics or plant medicine in your recovery process, new to recovery or a longtime member of the fellowship, our aim is to create a space of curiosity, connection, and hope. In this first series entitled Journeys of Healing, we explore the intersection of recovery and the transformative potential of psychedelic medicine through some of our members' experience. So settle in, open your mind, and let's walk this path together. This is Integration Radio. And today it gives me great pleasure to welcome Cheryl, who's agreed to come on this podcast and tell our story. Thank you, Cheryl. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

I'm doing well. I'm happy to be here. I welcome any chance to tell my story in the hopes that it will help other people who are seeking solutions.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Thank you. You mentioned your story is quite unconventional, and I'm looking forward to hearing all of it. And that's the beauty of a PIR podcast is we don't have outside issues. We can talk about uh everything and a cross addiction and behavioral addiction that might have crept up in our recovery. And that makes our recovery path quite unique. And so I um I can't wait to hear more about this. But can you please uh start with explaining how you qualified to be in recovery in the first place? What was your first fellowship of origin? What was your first call to recovery and when? And if you can take us through this.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

You know, perhaps I qualified for recovery but before I was born. I come from a multi-generational line of alcoholics and dysfunctional families on both my mother's and father's side. And one of the things I've learned is that parents pass on to their children what they have, not necessarily genetically, but in terms of behavior. Parents can't give you what they don't have. And it's been the same for me as a parent. And so I have so much compassion and understanding now that I had no context for before I entered in recovery. I started recovery in Al Anon, which is a fellowship for people who have families and loved ones who have active addiction problems because I had a family member with addiction. And it was helpful. The tools were helpful, and I gained some understanding. But when my my sponsor told me I was talking about things that happened in childhood, and she said, Oh, we don't have to address anything that happened before you were 18. It turns out in my case, I did because I have um childhood trauma. I I I now know that I have complex post-traumatic stress disorder. And the trauma that I have is some of it is even pre-verbal trauma. And that's a um, I want to call it like a special kind of trauma. It's hard to uncover. The healing process is possible, but it's not an easy, straightforward process. And so that has made my journey continuous. It seems like a spiral of sorts, that it just goes deeper and deeper. Um, you know, I you think we talk about denial a lot in recovery. And for me, protective mechanisms that I developed to function in my dysfunctional family, they were the air that I breathed, they were the water that I swam in if I was a fish. It was my life. I was unaware that it could be any different. Um and especially from the perspective of a child, this that was my reality. And I'd started developing a lot of those coping strategies, or in the I'll I'll use the phrase ACA. My primary program is adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

I like that notion of your reality, your normal. You know. And I think as a child, when you're born in a dysfunctional family, dysfunctional is normal. And I remember being surprised at seeing my friends having a cuddle with their fathers and thinking, this is weird. This is not normal. Because my normal, you didn't get a cuddle from your father, you got a slap and a beating, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

No, and it wasn't just my family. I was, I had, I had friends, I had some peers, but in their homes, things didn't seem to be any different. I don't think they were any more securely attached or attuned than I was. And we had, you know, children supporting children, and the children perhaps, you know, they were just trying to get by. But these these skills, I'm, you know, I sometimes wonder, I'm I'm an intelligent person. I have a PhD. I was a I was a professor before I retired. And I wonder if my intelligence, I really believed in my ability to figure things out and to fix them. But as I was trying to figure things out and fix them, what I was doing was getting better and better at the things that were dysfunctional. Um fixing myself, fixing people, rescuing people, trying to make myself indispensable. And what that resulted in over time, over the first 62 years before I entered this phase of my recovery, and I've been in now in this, what I'll call deeper recovery the last five years. Um it just resulted in repeated self-abandonment. And I spent a lot of time in my ACA program identifying, understanding this abandonment wound where I felt alone and I felt unsafe. And it turns out one thing I saw in my in my most recent deep medicine journey, which was several months ago, was really getting in touch with the pain of self-abandonment. And it's even worse. It's even more horrifying and heartbreaking than being abandoned and betrayed by other people. And I think that's because my higher self, my soul, is being abandoned over and over. And in a sense, it's calling to me, driving me, like, listen to me, I'm here, listen to me, I'm here. Don't stop abandoning me. And perhaps, you know, this is in a sense a quest, a deep quest to find myself, to discover myself, and to own my power and myself as a well and whole person without all the accoutrement, the baggage, the behaviors that I picked up as coping mechanisms as a child.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Yeah, to thy own self be true.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Thank you. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah, thank you very much. And so uh Al Anon led you to ACA. Is that how it worked?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

No, it didn't work that way.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

You took a detour?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

I took a detour. I was in Al-Anon, I'm gonna just say 20 years ago, and I worked a good Al-Anon program, and my sponsor was lovely, and we used an AA style four-step. So even though I hadn't been an AA, I got to do all the columns and all the inventories. And she, I'm gonna put in quotes, she tricked me by telling me to write down all my resentments, and that became the feeding part for my four-step inventory. And as a very thorough person, I spent an entire year going through very carefully and analyzing each detail and blaming myself for what I wasn't doing right and and what I hadn't fixed. And then I identified the patterns and I could understand what I was doing. And probably the biggest one was allowing people to do something to me that violated what should have been my boundaries, and I allowed them to do it. Because, and the bottom line here, what I discovered, and this has been, I came back to psychedelics. I had a period, about 18 months of solid sobriety. And and before we get deeper into my story, I just want to give a little bit of background. Um, I was living what would appear to be a normal life. I was married, I had children, I had a career, I had a family, and I was very dysfunctional in my relationships. I was very functional in in the rest of the world. And I have always had a strong belief in my capabilities and my competence, but that doesn't mean that I loved myself or that I liked myself. I didn't, I believed deeply, deeply on the core, on a cellular level, that there was something wrong with me and that it wasn't okay to let people see who I was, because if they saw who I was, they they wouldn't like me, they wouldn't want to be around me, and I needed to present to that to other people, even the people I was closest to. I I didn't know how to do that, it didn't feel safe. Um, what I know now is that it's through authentic, vulnerable, deep connections with people who can see me. In the adult children of alcoholics program, we call those people fellow travelers. And I have people now that we work on our trauma, healing our trauma together. Um, it seems that our higher power brings us together at appropriate times because it'll be we'll be talking and there's something coming up for them, and it'll be like, oh, that's the same thing I'm working on right now. And then we can share those feelings and share our thoughts and experiences, and we both heal in in that container through a simple Zoom or phone conversation. I and I do work with people in person too, but my deepest relationships are actually with people through this beautiful internet and that the technology has provided us a worldwide reach to find just the right people.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah, that's that's incredible. I am actually meeting my sponsor next month. We're traveling to Ireland uh where she is originally from. I've never met her. She's been my sponsor in PIR for four years, and that woman knows me better than my mother. And yet, you know, no physical contact. I've never had a cup of tea with her. It's it's magic. That's wonderful. So you you did your step in Al Anonon, and you had noticed that there were dysfunction in other parts of your life.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

I did my steps in Al-Anon. I recognized I had um around the time I started in Al-Anon, I did divorce. Um, I recognized that the person I was married to, I lost respect. But it in in part, any any related, I've been married and divorced three times. I want to be honest about that. I've really struggled where I've really struggled with how this trauma has manifested in my life, has been in relationships, in loving relationships. And I was in Al Anon, and then I met a very nice man who I fell in love with who was sober in AA. And we we did eventually get married, and then he relapsed into a drug addiction that he wasn't willing to heal. And it but at that time, I want to just tell a key part of my story that I think will be of interest to some people because I hear it as a common thread among other other people. Um my trauma and how it manifested in my body, and I'll speak with knowledge I have now that I didn't have then. My I was in this marriage to an active addict. There was a lot of anger, piles of resentments, and dysfunction, but I had a such a great fear of abandonment, and nor did I think I was deserving or understand that I deserved anything different. And so I was in that and abandoning myself, and it just got worse and worse. And I really I descended into a very deep depression. My health was very compromised. Um, I there's a whole host of autoimmune conditions that people present with. In my case, my my diagnosis was atypical fibromyalgia. But I was, I would, I, and I was found later to have Lyme disease. And so that is clearly a factor. But I've had Lyme disease since I was 18, and it didn't manifest as active in my body until age 52, um, following this difficult divorce and this family member with alcoholism, which was very stressful. And I could feel my body starting to change, but I was getting older and I just ignored what I was feeling in my body. And then one day, literally, I woke up, I went back to work in a fall semester, and I couldn't teach. And I had just that year won the teaching award for the entire country for parks and recreation educators. I was I was an amazing teacher. I believe I still am. I am a teacher at my core. But I couldn't work and I had to go on temporary disability leave to try to find out what was wrong. And for anyone who's had, I call them so these weird health problems, these autoimmune conditions, medical, regular traditional medical doesn't have a lot to offer. Um, lots of testing. I just couldn't tell what was wrong. And it went from 12 weeks to a year. I thought surely we'll find out, still nothing. And after two years, it was clear I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna be well enough to return to work. And I had to fully retire from my career. I'd just gotten my full professor promotion. I was at the pinnacle of my career. So that was that was quite a blow and and quite a thing to absorb. And that wasn't my bottom. And so I did get remarried to this, to this lovely man, and then things, how can we say, went to hell with it? It was both of us. I can't just blame him and point a finger. His addiction, my extreme codependency, and also I was starting to take because of the symptoms from the Lyme disease. I kept having meltdowns, and they put me on Xanax, that lovely benzo that um numbs everything. And I had a lot of chronic pain and difficulty functioning. And so then there were opiates, and then there was ambien because I couldn't sleep. And I took those pills by prescription for almost 10 years in large in large quantities. I did not use them addictively, I used them as described, but my body and emotional self became very dependent on the medications, such that when I started, I did, I slipped as this relationship, my marriage was had spiraled down and was very difficult. I went into a very severe depression. I literally didn't leave my bed. I mean, I did to take care of essential functions, but it was like all almost for a year and a half. I just read novels, I just distracted myself. I had, I had, it was during COVID that didn't help, um, you know, as far as isolating goes, but I became extremely isolated and not surprisingly started having suicidal ideation, which is what led me to psychedelic medicines. In my community, I was living in Utah at the time, there's a fairly active um group of people who also had Lyme disease, and we were trying to help each other. And one of my friends was getting her master of social work with training and trauma therapy, and she recognized the role of untreated trauma in the exacerbation of Lyme disease. And I also, she was on ketamine clinics at the time. It was again, you know, maybe five or six years ago, so earlier in the ketamine clinic. But I called her in desperation one morning and I said, I need help. I need to do something. And I went um to the clinic where she was working for a package of six ketamine treatments. And I won't even say that they were particularly helpful. The um therapist wasn't very good. I encourage anybody seeking those services to really check out your providers and understand it's not the medicine. We we talk in PIR, we say there's no magic pill solution. And I'm here to say I wanted a magic pill solution. I wanted to get six ketamine treatments and be better. I was very upset when I had my first treatment and the suicidal ideation wasn't gone one iota. I thought, oh, this this medicine isn't working. Um that that being said, some things did did start to shift. I saw in one of the ketamine sessions, and I have a picture of her that I can't show you on the podcast, but myself as a little girl standing in the rain and under this tree with this the rain pouring down, and she was reaching up and she said, Help me, I'm dying. Help me, I'm dying. And this is how bad the therapist was. I told him this, and he didn't do anything with that. And I I now know, like she's still with me. I'm I'm still still working with her. There's a very deep soul rupture at a couple of my ages, I think at the ages of three and eight. And I I have found a wonderful trauma coach who can work with me in the space I like to work in. Um, I like to work in what I would call a liminal space. I call in spirit guide and ancestors, and I'm very open. I'm starting just starting to develop some of my abilities to sense what we would call higher power as I'm working and to really trust what's coming up. The first thing that comes up is the thing, is the thing. And then she can validate, I'm doing the work, but she's guiding me and she's validating me, and I'm saying, I'm feeling this. And she and she's an energy worker, so she can tell me even what she's seeing energetically. And a lot of times we see the same thing or similar things, and we can have gained a really good understanding of what's going on in my inner system because I believe it's unique to each person. I also firmly believe we each have the capacity, we have a higher self inside of us that has the capacity to heal us and learning to trust myself, to feel what's going on in my body. I was mentioned the chronic pain. It was awful and difficult, and I wanted nothing more than to escape from what I was feeling in my body. And what I had to learn to do gradually over months and years was to get quiet and feel and trust. And it's even um now sometimes I will just literally sit in my chair in the quiet, just with myself. And sometimes it's nothing in particular, but I what used to be so scary, you know. I I I just used to think it wasn't that interesting, but it wasn't that I wasn't interested. That it was very frightening. I had a lot of fear around that. And now, and one of the things the psychedelic medicines have have shown me is how to be with fear. I won't even say how to face fear. I had a journey where I was running, I was running from something I was afraid of, and I stopped and I looked at it, and it just dissipated into these beautiful colors and it danced off across the meadow.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yeah, beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

And so fear is just another energy. It's just information. And and I now know I I've been there so many times. I trust my capacity and my strength and my abilities to be with. Whatever's coming up is what needs to be there and where I need to be. And so not to try to change the channel.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yeah, I think it's wonderful that you found someone that has that can accompany you on that therapeutic yet esoteric route. Um, because that's a difficulty right now in the psychedelic sphere, is to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

It is absolutely, absolutely so difficult. I've worked with several therapists, people who are labeled as therapists or licensed in that way, and I've not had any luck. I'm so much one of my coping strategies, my way to escape, is to get in my head. And I have this intellect, and I can talk about it, and I can analyze it and I can read about it, which is in some ways useful, but it's not the kind of therapy I need. I need to be tuned in to what's going on in my body and sensing with my, we'll call it my sixth sense. What's going on? I've I've been so privileged to work with the woman I'm working with now. She's actually her training, she's a trauma-informed Reiki provider. She does, she trains the trainers and she's really up there. And I spoke, she she started offering this coaching service, and I'd already worked with her. She knows me, she knows my inner system. When I told her during one of our sessions, I said, it feels like this feels like an explosion. And she said, Well, I've seen the bombs going off in your body. Like she's literally been in there and she has seen what's happening. And so it really couldn't be a better fit. But it's a non-traditional place to look for therapy. And so I think that's important if if you know that what the the traditional way wasn't working for me. But then to acknowledge that I need some help, I'm feeling a little stuck. I can't do this all myself. I I have had it shown to me over and over. I got sick in a community, initially in a family community, and I'm going to heal in community. The healing takes place with other people. Yeah, definitely. Whether it's my coach, yes, whether it's my coach, whether it's my fellow travelers, I have to engage. I'll have people say, Yes, I have the loving parent guidebook. I've read it. And then I just laugh like I just did.

unknown 25:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

And I think it's been my story for years and years. I spent thousands of pounds trying to get better by going to see hypnotist, uh, addictologists, all sorts of doctors. And uh I couldn't, I I couldn't stop. It's the moment I I went into an AA meeting and I sat down and something inside of me was crushed, and I was finally able to stop. The only thing that's worked for me is the group, it's the community, accompanied by one-to-one for my needs and my trauma, which is not something you can deal with in an AA meeting for sure, but more in a PIR meeting, although this is not what it's about. But it's uh it's definitely the community.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Um some PIR meetings are about that. That's one of the things I love about PIR. We have a PIR ACA meeting, we call it family of origin. We have another meeting that is for um codependency. We have other meetings, we have meetings with all different themes. We welcome all 12-step fellowships, and we're often all of us together in the same meeting. And I've learned so much, like Overreaders Anonymous has had, I don't qualify for that, but apparently it has a lot to teach me because I've learned a lot from what others in that program have shared.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah, likewise. And um the we've got a loving parents guidebook study as well on on a Tuesday. Yes, I'm aware. And uh, and it's it's it's we were talking about this earlier in a meeting. It's uh we it's nice to be able to be with your fellows of PIR to talk about uh another aspect of your recovery, which is not purely to do with uh substance or but very specific to trauma, for example, in the ACA case. Um tell me how did you find PIR? What came first, PIR or the psychedelic experience with ketamine?

SPEAKER_00 27:13

The psychedelic experience came first. I mentioned I was in Utah, I had the suicidal ideation. I did actually have a suicide attempt that I mention just because I want other people to know that it gets that dark. And I feel like I'm stubborn. I need it almost, I I my system, my higher power knew what I needed. It got my attention. It was obviously extremely difficult. But after being in a mental hospital and seeing how bad that can be, and I could see where my life was going, and it wasn't any place I wanted to live, and something had to be different. And that's when I joined. I was familiar with ACA, I'd been to some meetings, but I joined in earnest. I identified that as the work I needed to do, and I got started. I had actually just moved to Austin, Texas, where I live now. And there's a beautiful active um community with very nice face-to-face meetings here in Austin. So that's that's really beautiful. It's like a recovery mecca sort of. Um I found I stayed sober. I w I after the suicide attempt, I got off all those medications, and it was extremely difficult. I didn't have good support services because my insurance didn't cover it, but I made it through. And I was I was clean, completely clean and sober uh for 18 months. I joined AA initially. That was my first found family. I've had a lovely AA community in a free thinkers agnostic group that was very suited to my philosophical tendencies, and it's almost it's it's a little different than a than a traditional AA meeting, but it was very well suited to me. And I was in heroin anonymous also because of the opiates. And after about, I was seeing a therapist at the time who spoke to my therapist I had in Utah, and she asked me about the psychedelic medicines. And I said, Well, I'm sober now, I'm an alcoholic. I can't. And she said, Well, let's just back up a minute. Your therapist said they really helped you. I had continued with the psychedelics beyond the ketamine treatments. My other friends with Lyme disease. We developed a healing community and we grew mushrooms and we got together for a ceremony and we worked occasionally with the shaman. And it helped. It pulled that work and working with this therapist was apparently good enough for the time. It pulled me out of the deep depression. I was so stuck there, and I was able to file for a divorce to see clearly that I needed to leave, file for divorce, and get ready, get ready to move. But things went south and I slipped back in into the depression. But the psychedelic medicines did greatly help me. So it was after that slip back into deep depression and the suicide attempt that I came to Austin. I got sober in AA and I started ACA at the exact same time, and I was clean and sober without psychedelics, without any medicines for about 18 months. And at my therapist's suggestion, I actually started using some psilocybin mushrooms again. And one day I was with a with another friend who was in recovery, and I said, I wonder, I wonder what else is out there. And I put the word psychedelics and recovery into my Google search bar. And anybody who's ever done a similar thing, the the search engine optimization, the first thing it pulls up is psychedelics and recovery. And my exact words were like, that's a thing? I can do psychedelics in recovery. This is amazing. And when I went to my first meeting and I heard that we were both 12-step and respected each individual's right to define their own recovery, I was, I was really hooked. That choice, that that freedom is really important to me because I'm learning, I and I've needed to learn to know, trust my intuition, trust my inner self, trust my inner guidance. And that's not just a quick and dirty, oh, it's not self-care doesn't mean doing anything I want. Self-care means doing things that are good for me. And in that with that freedom comes responsibility to use any substance with responsibility and with an eye towards what's healthy. Am I perfect? No. We won't go into any great length about my imperfections, but I just don't want anybody to think I've got it all figured out.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

That that would be a shame, you know, if we were healed and there was nothing left to do, what would we leave for? Um, so yeah. And um, so what do you remember what was your first PIR meeting?

SPEAKER_00 32:24

I think it was the Entheon. I think it was the Entheon meeting. And at the time, there was a person in Austin who was at that meeting who I'd never met. And I I came on and I had invited another friend to come on, and there were several of us. And this other person said, I'm in Austin, we have a PIR meeting here. And that got me pretty quickly into some face-to-face connection. So and I've since then become very instrumental in keeping getting the Austin PIR healthy and and keeping it alive. Starting a face-to-face meeting and getting it to a place where it's healthy and self-sustaining can be quite challenging.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

It is indeed. We've had the same experience in London. Uh, and and we we started monthly, then went weekly. That that transition was difficult as well, uh, but it's it's worth it. It is. It's it's the fellowship afterwards, and we do something for Christmas, and it's um yeah, it's lovely. And it's lovely that you got that opportunity straight away because for most folks in PIR, sadly, their uh their meetings are all mostly online. Um and so did you um you you kept the three fellowship going, the four fellowship going for a while?

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Well, I did, I continued. I mean, my a my AA family, the people that supported me, and that I mean, I was very involved in service and in a lot of things. And what I found as I started to embrace my own recovery and started to get a much deeper understanding, this belief that there's something wrong with me, I I call it toxic shame. It's the bad kind. And it was literally in every cell of my body. And it's not uncommon for people with addiction and alcoholism to be carrying that wound. And I started hearing people's shares in meetings in trauma context rather than stop drinking context. And I wanted to talk about the trauma and not the drinking, but it wasn't appropriate because the the primary purpose of that group was not where my interest lay. And then I I felt that I couldn't really share authentically, I didn't want to harm anyone. I also found I really, while I was certainly a problem drinker for in many parts of my life, I don't believe I was ever an alcoholic. I have returned to occasional drinking. It's just a complete non-issue for me. Now that I'm not trying to numb this deep pain and feeling of emptiness that was so deep inside of me, like I knew there was something wrong, but I didn't want to face it. I just wanted to cover it up with something else, work, love, yeah, alcohol. Um, anything, anything really, to not have to go there. And I think that dark depression, that deep depression was it's just, you know, just like I need to come out. You need to see me. And it was just gonna keep getting worse and worse and until I took a look. I often wonder, I'm a I I believe in reincarnation, and I believe that I collaborated with my higher. I believe I've gotten the life I asked for. I believe I'm healing wounds in this lifetime that I've maybe carried for many lifetimes. And it takes something, it takes something really big to get my took something really big to get my attention, to take this seriously. And I've now, in it in a lot of sense, made made this the work of my life, at least it is the work I'm doing now. And I am really aware of how much privilege I have. I am retired, I'm not wealthy, but I have enough money to live on, and I have the freedom to use my time to focus on healing. And it's not just the healing of myself, it's also contributing to the healing of others, primarily other people who are working with healing, these deep abandonment wounds and toxic, a toxic shame burden.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Yeah, it's I think a a life of service. I've got a posted note here on my desk. It says, only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. Albert Albert Einstein, I think that's where the real part of the healing comes from that. You keep what you have by giving it away. And that sense of that self-esteem grows from doing estimable things and not and sharing it. And I think as a teacher, you're pro you're you're probably very gifted for uh for not only teaching, but g giving that uh passing on that wisdom uh to you.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

I'd like to talk, I'd like to talk about self-esteem for a minute. Um self-esteem to me loosely translates as self-love, esteeming myself, liking myself, loving myself. And I separate that from my confidence because people will mistake it, would mistakenly have looked at me and said, Well, how could you possibly have low self-esteem? Look at everything you've accomplished, look at how capable you are. Those two things are not necessarily connected. In fact, my very strong abilities were covering up my lack of self-love, a deep feeling that I wasn't enough and that there was something wrong with me. I did not love myself. I didn't know what that meant. I certainly had heard the phrase, and it wasn't that I didn't believe it. You you have to love yourself before you can love someone else. It might sound a bit cliche, but it's absolutely true. But this journey to self-love for someone like me who believes there's something wrong with them and that they don't deserve something better, that I really didn't deserve love because the people who I thought had seen me had rejected the me, me, or that's that was how it felt. That doesn't mean it's actually how it happened, but a child sees things in certain ways. Uh, I was um publicly humiliated by a teacher when I was in third grade. I was literally like just eight years old, and it was very harsh. And even though my parents knew about it, it was kind of what we call a don't talk, don't feel household. So it wasn't brought up, it wasn't discussed. I was just left alone in my shame and humiliation. And that's a point where I've identified with the help of my coach, I can see my eight-year-old self, that little girl, she's frozen in in time. In fact, I see her in my bedroom where I lived in the house that I lived with its pink, hot pink shag carpet. And she's just alone, and and there's fear. There's like three primary things in that room that are frozen there. She's speaking to me, and we're working, or we're gonna work through this. But there's this terror, this fear, and it doesn't want to go see any people ever again because the potential for shame and it just hurts so much to be humiliated and shamed. And then there is the shame part itself, the that just wants to crawl into the floor. And then there's a third part. There's what I call, I call her the good girl, the one who learned to achieve, the one who learned to please people, the one who felt that she could be loved if she was indispensable. And so she started rescuing people and trying to figure out what other people wanted and needed, and watching other people. How do I need to act so that other people will like me? I'm very neurodivergent, and I suspect some of the ways I came across as a child might have been unfamiliar to people. And I could, you can tell even as a child, when people aren't responding well to you. And I got got very quiet, but said the good girl, I was very talented. She's she's very good, and she's very good at it. And then now, today, as I came down this journey and connected with myself and began to love myself, healing began to fall into place. For example, in Al Anon, I learned that it I mentioned I was an allower, that I allowed people to do things to me that weren't acceptable and I didn't stand up for myself. And I was told I needed to set boundaries. And I did learn to set boundaries, but it wasn't natural. It was always really hard for me because I had such a big fear of rejection that I hadn't acknowledged or didn't understand. But now that I love myself and like myself, when somebody does something that infringes on me, it's automatic to set a boundary. And I can do that within the bounds of kindness and compassion. I don't, I might feel anger when my boundary is violated, and that's to me now that's just a sign. Something's going on. Pause, let's look within. And I can use, I love nonviolent communication because when I focus on what I need and how I'm feeling, and I bring that to another person rather than blame or resentment, it makes it pretty possible to work that through. And the things I say no to, the boundaries I set, that's what keeps my relationships healthy. That's what's a that's what allows in the old way of being codependent and rescuing and doing things for other people that they should have and could have been doing for themselves. I developed resentments and they would just stack up like forkwood, one on top of the other. And it's just an acid that eats away at a relationship and at that point.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

And resentment is is a number one. It takes you back to using in a way, shape, or form, or bad behavior, or it's it's very important. And my experience of boundaries, it's they're difficult to establish, but the most difficult bit is to keep them up there because people don't like boundaries, especially the people who are not used to that of us having boundaries. And I've I've seen those boundaries shaken and and it's holding on firmly and going, nope, I said no, and it's no, it's that's the bit I found.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

It is it is very difficult. I'm very fortunate that I'm no longer working, so I have great choice over who I'm around and who I spend time with. And if I find a person that I've led into my life as somebody that wants to push or continually push at my boundaries, they're probably not going to be in my life very long.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, and so how would you describe your integration process? I mean, going back to your psychedelic experience, uh you talked about your guide and your therapist. Is it something that you're continuously working on to carry on alleviating your depression, or is that is that for another purpose today?

SPEAKER_00 43:27

And what do your integration What I'd like to say first, um, I do still have depression comes, but I'm not afraid of it anymore. It's a space, and it's usually a space where there's some grieving that's happening, and I can be with it without the fear. And without the fear, it's not even really depression. I I accept it and I and I work with it. But I do want to talk about integration, and this is where I did it. In ACA, we have a book, we call it the Yellow Workbook. That's the steps. And those I did those probably about six months into my ACA program. I started doing the steps with just one other fellow traveler, and we went through the whole book. And the biggest, the biggest benefit for me there was really starting to peel back the layers of denial. Because like I said, I couldn't see. I couldn't see what was wrong. I couldn't see what was going on. I couldn't see the patterns. You do a family tree where you show all the people and you start seeing how this has been generation after generation. And it asks questions in such a way that you get some insight into what's really happening. And the the real as far as integration goes, so I use it through my psychedelic experiences. Sometimes when I'm in my psychedelic experiences, I'm using the tools I've learned in ACA. But primarily, we've mentioned the Loving Parent Guidebook. It's a relatively new publication, I think 2022. I've it is truly an excellent, excellent piece of literature. I am privileged to have found a group. We're now just three of us. We started with five. But there's three, three, myself and two other women, and we've been working for over three years going through the book. I actually think we're going to finish the last chapter tonight. And then we're going to start over because this container has become such a healing place for all of us. And those tools, you hear if you come to an ACA meeting and one of our standard readings is called The Solution. And the first sentence says, The solution is to become your own loving parent. And I don't know, it's like I didn't even hear that. Maybe for the first year, I was so busy getting through the denial and trying to understand. I have a part, I call her the fixer. You know, that's part of the good girls. She wants to figure out what's wrong and fix it because I've been very good at fixing things and controlling things, but that wasn't going to be the solution here. I had to soften and I finally started hearing the solution is to become your own loving parent. And I got into this group, and we go ever so slowly and experientially, and we hold space for each other throughout the work. And I am privileged to see how other people are doing the work. There's no one formula. I I it's I got hung up. I'm not doing it right. I don't know how to do it. I I can't do this. There's so many voices going going on at the same time. I'm not doing I'm not doing it like they're doing it. How come they're ahead of me? And and these lovely people just hold space for me through all of that. And with my um newfound vulnerability, I can tell them what I'm feeling and thinking when I'm feeling insecure about the work that I'm doing. And that's that's been lovely. But those tools in in the step work, in the meetings, in that loving parent guidebook that I'm just can't say enough enough good things about, I use all of those in my integration practices. And I do it in different ways. I work with a couple fellow travelers one-on-one each week. I work with my loving parent group each week. So all of that is integration. I can't work with my trauma coach more often than every two weeks because I need that two-week time period to integrate, and things will shift. As I integrate, things start shifting and new information starts coming in. And I can't pressure it, I can't push it. I just let life go on, and then at some point something comes up and it gets my attention, and then I stop and sit. That that doesn't mean I don't plan ceremonies, but I can give, for example, um three weeks ago it came up that I needed to really focus on grief and specifically grief for my father. This was like an ancestor speaking to me, like this is something you need to do. And I've had great difficulty connecting to my feelings, and certainly the tears don't come easily for me. I think I've told you that before. And I was watching something on Netflix where somebody's father had to be disconnected from life support, and that was how my father died. And it was just so, and I can feel it now in my body, even as I speak. I was able to connect for the first time ever. My father's been dead 18 years, and I haven't cried, and I cried um for him, and I was really, I I feel a young child in that moment because I just the the overwhelming feeling was just I don't have a dad anymore. And with that fluidity that I could feel in that morning connecting with that grief and those tears, I did take time that afternoon. I took a gram of mushrooms, which isn't a high dose. In fact, I work with lower and lower doses of medicine, and I work with medicine less frequently. And I just sat with myself for with what I was wide awake, very alert. I didn't use an eye mask, I didn't use music, I did have my eyes closed, but I just sat and was just and not trying to guide it, not trying to direct it. And uh hopefully the people that are listening to this get an idea. I mean, I was very, I'm a very driven person. I like to get in and figure things out and fix them. And so to just sit with what is that's huge for me. And I've needed to develop that softness and to let go. And I love the set aside prayer, where we just said, let me put aside everything I think I know about myself and my recovery and be open to what's coming to me. And I I believe I have a spirit guide who is guiding me to the degree I take time to tune in and listen. And I so I notice, you know, in something like that, this grieving is happening and I have the day free, I have an opportunity to work with something as it's coming up. And I always know when I plan a ceremony or even I have a trauma coach, when I have a trauma coaching session scheduled, it'll be a day or two before things start coming, things start shifting. I start noticing um before my most recent session, I could feel a lot of fear coming up and this heavy weight on my chest. So that's where I start the session. It didn't seem like the right place to start, but that doesn't matter. That's what's here. And so let's just go with that. Let's not plan too much, let's just go.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

Yeah, yeah. That and that goes with the steps. It's surrendering your will in your life over to the care of a higher.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

I appreciate you making those connections. Yeah, I think, oh, my program's so weird, but in fact, maybe it's not.

SPEAKER_01 51:30

It it's it's yeah, no. Well, I think it is a beautiful example of step three when I hear this. It reminds me of a book by Michael Singer, the surrender experiment, um, where very young in his life he decided to do that. And I've just when I was reading the book, I wish I would have done that when much, much younger, because I I too believe I'm guided and that all I have to do, most of my job is to uh get out of my head and not interfere with the voice, but um, and finding that voice, that guiding voice, amongst the noise of all the other voices. And my job is to keep the other voices down. I can hear it now.

SPEAKER_00 52:11

So I've slowly been developing, I call them the clair senses, the clairsentience, the felt sense, clair audience. It's not like hearing voices, but I can when I hear something, it can sometimes sound like it was spoken in my head. It comes, a thought comes with a different tone, or it's more emphatic. And if I don't hear it the first time, it'll come up again. And about the third time the thought comes up, then I'm like, okay, I hear you. And and I notice, and I'm over time developing my skills to to know what is what is six sixth sense or what is just a random thought. And it they're not the same.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

Yeah, it's a fine-tuning. It's uh it's it's sometimes difficult to differentiate. But I I think in the two-way prayer, uh Father Bill W said, if it's pure, if it's loving and compassionate, then it's probably it. Um and so I go with that. I like that. I'm uh mindful of the time, and we're coming sadly to the end of the recording, but there's a question that I ask everybody before we leave is what are you still struggling with? What's the one challenge in your life that you're currently working to overcome? With or without psychedelics?

SPEAKER_00 53:36

With and I am, I let's say the main challenge right now, I'm deep, deep in this healing process that started with my or my awareness of it, started with my journey in December. I had a visual, there's like this um space that sits in my right shoulder, and there's a hole there, and there's this light. Anyway, there's this darkness around it, and there's a soul wound in there. And I'm going deep into this. There, there's an infant, there's a three-year-old, there's an eight-year-old, and that's kind of like a combined wound. Um, I so I'm working with that, and how that manifests in my life, I'm really trying to reignite my life force. I had severe chronic fatigue, I could barely do anything, and I'm re-engaging in my life, and I'm trying to find my mojo and my spark. And I mentioned earlier that little girl, that eight-year-old in that bedroom, I mentioned the fear and the shame and the good girl. And when I think about going into a space that I don't know and being around people I don't know, I'll let that fear shut me down. And instead of recognizing the confident, capable self that what I have now that I didn't have five years ago, I have discernment. I can be around people, I can feel how my how I'm responding in my body around them. And I can tell whether they're good for me or not. Before I couldn't tell. It would almost like magnetically attract to the most unhealthy people and people that would harm me. But there's parts of me that aren't up to speed with what's happening in the current system. And so actually, yesterday, and I can take this fear and I can hold it with me as I go out in into the world and do something different and engage, and we're practicing my parts in me as I re-engage and reignite. In my in my in my last trauma session, I was actually channeling my ancestors, and they're like, remember how much you enjoy uh writing. You know, I'm a writer and a researcher, and it's when I get to talk about things like I'm talking about today, it really lights me up. I love understanding healing and helping other people heal and trying to understand even just the beautiful things that are happening in this PIR container. And then I sometimes just I spend a lot of time still disengaged from things that I love. Sometimes I need to rest. But today I hold space, I hold space for the choice I've made without judging myself. That was a huge hurdle for me to say, you know what, you can watch Netflix all day, and that doesn't make you bad. It doesn't that productivity, you must be productive and you're not good if you're not productive, that I'm okay. This is a choice I can make. But now I can hold space for that, that I'm okay, I'm loved, and there's other possibilities for how I'm gonna spend that time. And I still may choose to sit and watch the show, but maybe tomorrow I'm gonna do something else because I'm considering the possibilities. And I'm considering the possibility I might be bored with what I'm doing and want to move on to something more engaging.

SPEAKER_01 57:03

Yeah. And whatever you're doing, you're gonna be doing without shame or guilt. Eventually.

SPEAKER_00 57:09

Right now, what I've learned, I can hold, I can, I can hold in the same container now, I can hold rage and love simultaneously. I have ang, I can have anger at a person and love them deeply at the same time. And it's not an either-or, it's not black and white. It's all there together. I can take the fear, I can take the fear of rejection, and I can hold those parts. And I, as a loving parent, can be there with them, and they know I'm there to keep them safe as we go and do these things. And I am blessed. I have a PTSD service dog to help me still with um with these transitions, and that's been a lovely gift, also.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

Yes. What's his name on this?

SPEAKER_00 57:59

His name is Jester.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 58:03

Companion, a fellow child. He's a lovely, lovely dog. He was a gift to me. He's been with me through all of this. He's really saved my life. So it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

Oh, fabulous. Fabulous. Well, a lovely note to end on. Thank you very much for coming to share very vulnerably your amazing story, Cheryl. And I am sure it will help a lot of people who come from um who come in recovery from a trauma background, uh, more so necessarily than substance abuse, and understand that this fellowship and those wonderful substances can be helpful, and you're the proof of that. Thank you very much. Uh, do you want to close with a last word of wisdom? I do.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

I'm just realizing I didn't get to talk about the health problem. I had to retire on disability due to this Lyme disease and all this difficult, all these difficult things that were going on, and I couldn't get better. But the key was healing my trauma. My body was stuck in fight or flight, and I it literally I could not turn off the switch. And through doing the trauma recovery, I've been able to calm my system. I'm over time retraining my nervous system. It didn't develop properly. It developed in a in a trauma situation. And now my health, I the Lyme disease is in remission. I'm back in the gym lifting weights, improving all of my functional strength. I'm hiking again. I can do many things in a day. Even as recently as a year and a half ago, I could only do one thing a day. I could go to the store or I could go for a hike. Now I go hiking, I go to the store, and then I come home and go to the gym, and then I work on some writing. So it's um it's it's I am engaging. I'm always too hard on myself. I that I should say that at present I still tend to think I'm not doing enough. So that it's just an awareness that these parts are still active, the healing isn't complete. I think it's gonna be a lifelong journey.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:15

So be it. As long as the journey is nice and you're enjoying every step of it, it's a beautiful path to be on.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:23

I agree. It is absolutely beautiful today, my journey. There's when people ask me how I am, even if I'm dealing with depression, I'm fine. And I mean it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:37

Yeah, no, same for me. Same for me. My one bad day today is a whole lot better than what a good day was seven years ago. That's a good perspective. Um and on this, we will uh close the show. Thank you very much for listening in, and thank you, Shaol, for joining us.