09/16/2026
When Something Shifts
Stories from the Healing Path
Every once in a while, someone walks into my practice whose journey stays with me.
A couple years ago, a woman came to me carrying a life story that had already taken her through more than most of us could imagine. Her past included incarceration, addiction, s*x work, separation from her children, and years spent simply trying to survive. She came to me ready for something different.
We began working together through ceremony and energy medicine, but what impressed me most wasn't simply what happened when she was on my table or sitting across from me in sacred space.
It was what she did when she went home. I would give her practices, suggestions, and ways of approaching her life differently, and she did them. Diligently. She began participating in her own healing with extraordinary commitment.
That distinction matters to me.
I don't believe a practitioner heals another person. I believe we can hold space, work with Spirit, offer medicine, help shift energy, and sometimes illuminate a doorway. But ultimately, the person has to choose whether they are willing to walk through it.
She walked through it, and over time, I watched her life begin to change.
Recently, she invited me to lunch. By then, she was preparing to move across the country and begin another chapter of her life. Sitting across the table from the woman I had first met years before was incredibly moving.
She was in a loving relationship. She was rebuilding connections with her children. Her circumstances had changed enough that she now had the freedom and support to continue exploring her own healing and spiritual growth.
I found myself sitting there thinking about the distance between the woman who first walked through my door and the woman sitting across from me now.
Her story reminds me why I continue doing this work.
Healing doesn't erase where we've been. It doesn't make our history disappear. Healing means that our history no longer gets to decide who we are becoming.
Medicine
