A writing meditation on time, anniversaries & medicine

I am a big reflector, and I use writing as my tool, so away I go. Thanks for staying with me if you reach the end…

I often think about blocks of time and how we use them as tools to organize ourselves personally, and as a society. From birthday to birthday, from year to year in January, for me personally on April 2, which measures another year since my near death experience in 1994, and last but not least, September 14th, which is my marriage anniversary to Adam.  Tomorrow it will be 12 years since saying ‘I do’ on a rainy day in Park City, at the Lodge at the base of Park City Mountain Ski Resort.

And if you were among the sacred group of friends and family who attended our wedding, you know that it almost didn’t happen, because both Adam and I were SO sick with Dengue Fever. I remember being in the emergency room the morning of our wedding, and after getting my hair and makeup done, I had to go get an IV infusion to hopefully help calm my full body rash and just help me get through the day. Thank God we had a video of the day, because I was so foggy, here it is (I still love watching it). 

An additional funny story that we seldom share, is that the day after the wedding, Adam had to go to the emergency room to have his rear end stitched up because thanks to Dengue Fever, he'd had too many releases.

Then a few months later after the wedding, on our honeymoon trip to Blue Spirit Resort in Nosara, we attended a poorly organized yoga retreat, where I got food poisoning and Adam accidentally gave me a black eye by elbowing me in the face during a romantic outdoor showering experience. So we had a rough start, but we’ve done our best to find the humor in it.

Happy honeymoonn black eye

Usually we go to a special lunch on our Anniversary, mainly because we haven’t done a night date yet since having kids. But last year we both needed something different. We both needed me to go away and take some time for myself, to be with myself, and slay some inner dragons. 

So that meant last year on September 14th, 2024, the day of our 11th anniversary, Adam and the girls dropped me off for a week-long solo journey at Reunion Sugar Beach, a plant medicine retreat center, which though being just 10 min up the road, felt like a lifetime away. 

But I think it was me who felt lifetimes away, because I’d had a tough start to 2024. However, I’m always seeking to better myself, so I was doing my best to do the inner work during a very hard time. But something was missing from my healing recipe and I didn’t know what or where to find the missing piece. So in August 2024, just after an epic 47th birthday celebration with friends and family at our home, I saw a doctor, and I admitted to her that I wasn’t okay, and she helped me decide to temporarily get on anti-depressants for the first time in 11 years. I just wanted a little help on my healing journey, and this path seemed like the right next move.

I was so excited about this medicine and hopeful to feel relief from the pain I’d been causing myself in my head. While some people have great success with anti-depressants, I’m sad to say I wasn’t one of them.  On day 17 on that medicine, I felt a new voice in my head telling me that I’d be better off leaving my family and maybe ending my life, which was terrifying. On one particular morning in the chaos of preparing a 3 and 6 year old for school, I heard this new voice say to my eldest daughter, “what if mama left and didn’t come back? Would you be okay without me?” The words felt like another person was pushing them out of my mouth, and I couldn’t stop them. 

Who said that?  I didn’t like her or what she was expressing…

Thank God my eldest daughter took that comment to Adam, who immediately confronted me, and I knew immediately that it was the anti-depressant medicine in me saying that, and I read the bottle and sure enough I read, “suicidal thoughts” as a possible side effect. I stopped taking it immediately, and I slowly felt that voice leaving, but I knew I still needed help. 

So then what?

I needed to really take time and space to really face myself, because I’d been staying busy as a means to not sit with my own pain. From the outside, I seemed fine. But on the inside, I felt an unchecked rage and unraveling happening. But the good news is that I knew exactly what the origins were. It began on January 8th, 2024, the day I closed on the sale of Align Spa, my precious first born business baby and 20 year old company in Park City, Utah. Selling it was a hard but necessary decision that I initiated, but the actual event itself of closing on the sale, unknowingly catapulted me into a mental hell hole of my own making. 

Who was I now? What do I do without that identity? Am I still valuable without a clear answer to, “what do you do?” How do I replace that income to support my family? 

Those were the anxiety inducing thoughts that flooded my brain every single day, causing me to be noticeably distant and irritable to my husband and short-tempered and less able to hold calm space with my girls when they’d have normal big emotions to unexpected changes in plans or big needs that didn’t make sense to me. Little comments from them like “my sister is not allowed to look out my window in the car” or one of them catapulting their breakfast across the room saying, “I hate strawberries and will never eat them again,” when yesterday they were a favorite, sent me into a rage response that I didn’t feel I could express, so I’d shut down to everyone to suppress it. 

Some of that behavior in kids is just part of the rollercoaster of parenthood, but at that time in my life, I didn’t feel I had the bandwidth for it. So I’d have high highs and low lows, and it felt like there were two me’s living inside me, and that was both fascinating and scary.  And it wasn’t something that 90 minutes of “free time”, vigorous exercise, or a beach walk could tame.  

I’m grateful for the support I received from my small but mighty group of friends in Costa Rica, and especially to my sister, who flew in from Utah, to help share her wisdom, expertise and support.

Fortunately, there was good news in my difficulty as well. I noticed that amid my sometimes turbulent mental health waters, the healing work I was doing with clients in Costa Rica was deepening, and I found a special calm refuge in being a safe healing space for others. I could easily help clients and friends navigate their own confusion and turbulence, and I could easily identify and address trauma in their fascia and nervous system, and bring fast relief. Helping others heal was also helping to heal me, and I felt a new soul’s purpose slowly brewing, though at the time, that growth was so slow it was hard to recognize until later. 

It was clear I needed a reset in order to help me access the calm I had for others during healing sessions. I needed those skills with my own family. So that is what led to the HUGE and difficult decision to go face to face with myself and my pain, and drink Ayahuasca, a sacred plant medicine, for a third time. 

The first time I drank this particular medicine was in the spring of 2015 down in the Osa peninsula.  It was a beautiful physical space where the intentions were good, but to my highly sensitive spider senses, the space felt energetically unorganized and confusing, so it was hard for me to relax and lean into the experience. While in the healing ceremony, which took place under a tarp outside in the rain, I stayed next to Adam, and I felt myself clinging to him energetically for safety and comfort in the unknown and discomfort. And I later realized that didn’t help or respect his experience, to have to take care of me during his ceremony. Whoops. On the last day of that retreat in the Osa, one of the female volunteers took me aside, and said I seemed like a safe space to share that the owner of the retreat space had an unspoken arrangement with the young female volunteers, that they could drink the medicine and stay for free, in exchange for sexual favors. Ewww, and I understood why I felt so unsafe there, and why I had a hard time letting go.

The second experience was in September 2016 in Columbia, where Adam and I accepted an invitation and joined another couple who we’d met in Potrero. We stayed in a small room with two other couples at Finca Ambiwasi, and the group was large, over 40 people.  In that ceremony, the instructions were for men to be on one side and females on the other, so I sat next to my girlfriend from Potrero, and I felt more at ease. 

I’d gone to this ceremony in Colombia with a particular need. I wanted to find peace around the unexpected death of my 4 legged soul mate Zona dog, who had left me too soon, on April 22, 2016, after having a tumor burst in her belly after treatment from tick fever. I was devastated by her untimely departure, especially because I didn’t get to say goodbye to her, because she passed away in the middle of the night while staying the night at the vet. 

I’d woken up that night at 4am, and went outside and saw a rainbow around the full moon, and I said out loud, “Zona, I love you and hope you’re okay”, and that was estimated to be about the time when she was leaving her body.  I later learned that the Full moon was called the “Dog Moon,” so she left very intentionally; touché Zona. I cried every day after her departure, and even spent hours sitting in silent meditation, begging her to come and send me a sign, but I got nothing.

I told Taita in Columbia what had happened, and that I wanted to connect with my dog, and he understood. Then, that night in the ceremony, there Zona was; sitting with me, by my side, and I got to pet her and give her kisses and say goodbye. The next morning at breakfast, Taita came to me and confirmed what I already knew, that he too had seen Zona dog with us the night before, and I felt the deep wound in my heart finally begin to heal. And I thanked the medicine for helping me with that process.,

Fast forward to September 2024, where I was choosing to go alone and drink  Ayahuasca, which was both terrifying and exciting to me; especially to be with a room full of complete strangers. Am I safe in this experience without Adam? I felt a yes. 

What also helped me was that the ceremony was at the old Hotel Sugar Beach, where I’d met Adam almost 12 years before at a yoga retreat. And for the experience I requested to again stay in cabina 13, my favorite number, where I stayed in 2012 with Lisa, who is still a dear friend. 

It was no longer called Hotel Sugar Beach, as the space went under new ownership and got renovated in 2020. So it had a new name, Reunion, a lot of new decor and a special new intention,  as a dedicated plant medicine center. But I loved that I recognized some of the staff from when it was Hotel Sugar Beach, so the familiarity felt healing. 

In the ceremony at Reunion, the onboarding process was clear and professional, and for the first time, I had to interview and answer several questions just to join the September 14th group. When I got my yes that I could join, they gave me clear guidance for preparing for the ceremony, including food and activities to avoid, up to 1 month prior.  I also received clear guidelines and support for 6 months after the ceremony, which the other two ceremonies didn’t do, so that was appreciated. 

But regardless of the preparations and comfort of the physical space, the work was difficult and I knew it needed to be done. But finally, I was ready. I felt and saw pieces of my own story in each and every one of the 24 other participants, almost like missing puzzle pieces of me coming together to create a new picture, and I realized how alike we ALL were, despite the stories we like to tell ourselves of our differences. 

Another comforting difference at Reunion, was that the shamans in our ceremony were two women from the United States, and there were also more support staff than my previous two experiences, and clear and easy guidelines on how to ask for help during the ceremony.  Their professionalism and protocols were so helpful for me to feel safe, comfortable and more willing to go deep, which I did. 

After 7 days together I felt a new and empowered Harriet emerging, and I returned home with so much lightness, gratitude and patience for my children, my husband and the unexpected challenges that living in Costa Rica can bring. Yay!

So it’s been a year since that happened. 

Has that inner reservoir of patience and gratitude I cultivated at Reunion stayed with me? Mostly I’d say yes; at least my tendency to enroll myself in others emotional experiences has lessened, which is helpful. But I acknowledge I am an imperfect human who’s learning every day how to better herself.  I’m also deep in my journey of perimenopause, which brings me gifts such as physical discomfort, weight fluctuation, hormone imbalance and increased unpredictable irritability. But I notice that my tank to manage it all is bigger, thanks to the inner work I got to do.

I also feel a restored self confidence that has helped me manifest more opportunities and paths forward to purposeful work. One of which is the naming, claiming and teaching of “Somatic Emotional Release” (SER), the healing technique I’ve been passionately developing with clients for over 2 decades. So if you’ve been one of my clients in the last year as I really leaned into establishing this protocol, thank you for helping me fine tune my practice.

So as I prepare for tomorrow’s 12 year anniversary of marriage with Adam, I’m spending it with a family trip, maybe to church and the cat cafe. But I’m also filling the day with gratitude that the dark and unhealed voice in my head has left my inner space, and has been replaced with an inner cheer leader.

This human journey we’re all on together sure is wild and unpredictable. 

But there’s what I know: We’re all medicine for each other in one way or another. Sometimes it tastes sweet, sometimes it tastes sour and sometimes it’s bitter. But do your best to lean in to discomfort and trust that it IS the medicine you didn’t know you needed.

I have a lot of gratitude for my family for being patient with me as I continue to learn, grow and heal. And thank you to Reunion Sugar Beach, for being a safe & sacred place for me to go and reflect, reframe and heal when I needed it. Now I feel more empowered to trust what’s coming my way, invited or not, as purposeful.  And it’s my job to find the medicine in it all. 

Happy almost 12 year anniversary to us, and our journey of unconditional love. 

Cheers,