Wild Souls
Welcome to the Wild Souls podcast. I’m your host, Cat Mansfield. Together, we will return to our wild instincts; reconnect to our body, to our connection to something greater, to the Truth of our divinity + infinite potential. We are here to have the raw conversations about all aspects of this human experience- the incredibly painful and the unbelievably pleasurable - the dark and the light, the death and the rebirth. This podcast is about holding space for the whole spectrum of human experience as we navigate each of our unique + divine healing journeys and step deeper into our soul’s calling. These conversations are meant to be a resource for deep self inquiry, a guidepost in cultivating a deep, unwavering self love, and ultimately, empower you to create a life so on purpose, so aligned with your authenticity, you can’t help but embody your wildest soul. Lets dive in.
Wild Souls
58. From Warrior to High Priestess: Transformation & Plant Medicine w/ Susannah Rose Stokes
Join me in this inspiring episode of Holistic Hotties as we welcome Susanna Stokes, a former Marine Corps officer who shares her incredible journey of transformation- from Warrior to High Priestess. From her roots on a blueberry farm in Georgia to her profound spiritual awakening after two combat tours in Afghanistan, Susanna's story is a testament to the power of resilience and personal growth.
In a captivating discussion, we explore how Susanna's childhood + sense of duty shaped her path, leading to significant career choices like joining the Marine Corps. Susanna takes us through the stages of her spiritual awakening, emphasizing key stages such as resistance, surrender, trust, and play.
We dive into the transformative power of plant medicine, the role it played in her spiritual journey, & the ultimate "remembering" of Truth. We discuss the importance of facing fears, embracing authenticity, creating internal safety & how plant medicine can be utilized with intention as another tool in our healing toolkit.
Susanna’s journey is both enlightening + empowering, offering valuable lessons on how to foster peace, connectedness, and profound personal growth in our own lives. Don’t miss this episode filled with wisdom and inspiration from a true spiritual trailblazer.
How to stay in touch with Susannah:
Her Website : The Metamorphasis Method
Retreats
Her Instagram
Embodied Metamorphasis Instagram
Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Send me a DM :)
Follow along on instagram <3
Welcome to the Holistic Hotties podcast. I'm your host, kat Mansfield. I'm a yoga and meditation teacher who's traveled around the world in search of all things healing and true. In searching for healing, in searching for truth, I uncovered the answers to all my ponderings. I grounded into peace. Amidst the chaos, I found myself. This podcast is about breathing life into who you already are. It's about remembering the truth of your power, the truth of your perfection. In each episode, we'll talk about the beliefs, the self-imposed limitations and the mindsets that are keeping us small, and how to cultivate safety in our bodies so that we can feel safe enough to be bigger, to take up more space and to truly and deeply love ourselves. On this journey together, day after day, we're choosing intention, we're choosing growth. We're choosing to dissolve our veils and breathe into our most authentic and thus most radiant selves. We're choosing to feel good naked. Let's dive in. To feel good naked, let's dive in. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Holistic Hotties. Today I have on Susanna Stokes.
Speaker 1:After serving in two combat tours in Afghanistan as a Marine Corps officer, Susanna experienced a spiritual awakening that changed her life forever. Since then, she's dedicated her life as an energy priestess and embodied consciousness guide. She served dozens of people in one-on-one and group ceremonies, guiding them in their own spiritual awakening process. She co-founded House of Embodied Metamorphosis, a 508c1a faith-based organization that utilizes the metamorphosis method and their own community cultivated strain of psilocybin, known as Trinity, to facilitate powerful personal transformations through retreats and coaching programs. She authored Entheogenerated, a comprehensive research study on existing research of psychedelics and the capacity to create individual and collective change. She's a graduate of the US Naval Academy and speaks Mandarin, chinese and Spanish, all in service to creating more peace and connectedness in the world.
Speaker 1:Susanna and I cover so much from the process of awakening, the stages that we go through to eventually arrive at a place of trust and acceptance with the universe. We talk about our journeys with psilocybin, with plant medicine. There's so much in this conversation and she is such a powerful, connected woman. I'm so excited for you to hear this conversation. All right, let's dive in. Hello, susanna, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:It is wonderful to be here, katherine. I am integrating the energies of the last eclipse and just allowing my energetic system to rest a little bit, so I find myself a little more like down regulated today, which feels good.
Speaker 1:Love that. Yeah, we briefly touched on that before we started recording. It's like feels like things are kind of settling down in the collective in terms of energy and I think everyone's pretty happy about that. Could use a little bit of that break. Well, let's just jump right in. I would love to start with a little bit about your upbringing and some of the core imprints from your upbringing that you see following through your journey see following through through your journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I grew up on a blueberry farm outside of Atlanta in Georgia and in a lot of ways it was idyllic. It was quite literally a little paradise, especially for the first five or so years of my life where I was kind of an only child, so I had all the attention and all the nourishment of earth, and I also grew up with lots of animals. We always had a pack of dogs that was somewhere between like four to eight dogs.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, that's a lot of acres, so plenty of space for them to roam and I found myself um sleeping with them and like living with them, and I learned a lot of my younger years. My my sort of core imprints were from animals dogs and horses primarily, and I always say that I was raised by dogs. My parents were both attorneys, and having a farm and being lawyers is I would just say I don't recommend it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it seems like it's almost opposing in a way, like that very of the mind. Then you know more of the earth. It's interesting, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a very interesting balance. My parents tend to be like that, my whole family tends to be like that, where we have these these big polarities of our experience, you know. And so growing up on the farm was, I would say, another core imprint, was connecting with Earth. I mean, she was my first representation of God, of the universe, of consciousness, of interconnectedness. And as we get deeper into my story, I'll share a little more about, you know, remembering some things that I knew intuitively growing up on the farm.
Speaker 2:But it took me many years to come back to those understandings and, and I think, also being alone, being comfortable with just being by myself, but also not ever feeling like I was by myself, because I was with the trees and the leaves and the grass and the bugs and the animals. When you live that far, or you live in rural areas and you even hear the sounds of life around you, you realize there's just no possible way that you're ever alone. It's just, it's not even, not even a thing that you can fathom, because you have thousands of bugs that are making noise at any given time, right, and although they're not human, um, the idea of loneliness is is really kind of an urban concept that I learned. I learned later in life what it was like to be lonely, and that was really because I wasn't in places where I was surrounded by nature. So that was my early childhood.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'll speak also to the human elements of it were primarily my parents at first of it were primarily my parents at first, and I grew up in a pretty academically, intellectually focused, philosophical family. We would read Shakespeare on Sundays and listen to me. At four years old I was reciting. So, um, yeah, I was. I was like a nerd from the start, and then my siblings came around and when and when they arrived in our family, I very quickly became second mom because of the busyness of my parents, and so I learned quickly how to caretake others, and that also, you know, created some parentified child tendencies and all of those things gave me a taste for responsibility from a very young age. That has both, you know, been a double-edged sword throughout my lifetime.
Speaker 1:Totally, yeah, yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing that Such a beautiful picture to envision the blueberry farm and animals and to get that insight into your family system even. It's so valuable to be able to visualize that and for people to be able to relate to that. I'm curious, as the oldest child, as you know, you're describing yourself early on being parentified, taking on that, that responsibility that, honestly, is so beyond what a young child knows how to do. But it's interesting that we're so able to adapt. As a young child, we're able to shapeshift into whatever needs to be done in order to maintain peace or order or just to feel safe in our family system. And I'm wondering how that role carried through into you know, growing up, into the rest of your journey, maybe when you start to become aware of, oh, I'm like I'm carrying this through even though it's not my job anymore.
Speaker 2:I think it's probably defined most of my life and my relationships. Most of my life and my relationships.
Speaker 2:It was very early on that I also decided to go into the military and and I think a lot of that came from the responsibility of like quote managing siblings, right of managing others, I think. Now I realize I am also an old soul so I naturally was drawn to sort of corralling and teaching and guiding and being responsible for other humans, because I just felt this natural spaciousness of like yep, I got space you come on over, get in line and um, and in its more, in its more shadow form.
Speaker 2:A lot of that led me to neglecting myself, because that was a lot of what I knew, and going into the military meant serving something much greater and literally focusing every single day of my life on training to be a leader of other people. And, yes, while that was, it was developing me personally. It wasn't, it wasn't ever about me.
Speaker 2:And so there wasn't so much of a focus on me, and it's taken many years until now, until my my mid, late thirties, to begin to reconnect with, with caring for myself and, um, and also realizing that I didn't have to raise my parents, which I thought I did. I was like who's in charge here, and my family often called me the general from like day one, because I was always telling people what to do and where to go, and that was both satisfying in some ways, but it was also a burden over time and I was taking on other people's energies. I was taking on other people's spiritual work, that and their own experiences that they needed to have for themselves and and it it left me feeling that sense of loneliness and disconnection because I was betraying my own self in a lot of ways. Um, for many, many years, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so much of that resonates with even my journey, and I think so many people can look back on their journey and see how the identity that was given to them, or the identity that they had to assume, either in their family system or with their parents, it controlled or, I guess, dictated so much of the decision-making as we move into early adulthood and we begin to, you know, believe that that's the person we are, whether it be more of that masculine militant being versus, you know, really listening to self and really listening to is this what I, what I need, what I need to do, what feels the best for my being? I'm curious, you know, as you moved into the military, was that, in hindsight, something you know? There's no mistakes in our journey, it's all perfect, but in hindsight, was that something that felt like almost an assigned move for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kind of wonder if there's anyone that joins the military that doesn't have that feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 2:There are lots of assignments that you get right. They're like sure. We will assign you to this and we will tell you how to do these things. My father was in the Marine Corps. My older brother was in the Marine Corps. All of the men in my family were in some military service at some point, and mostly not for full careers, which was a blessing, because if I had had someone close to me who had gone a full career, I might have pushed myself to do that and there was less pressure to stay in just to go in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're like, I did it. I checked it.
Speaker 2:Right, check the box and then you can leave, and that was a blessing for sure. But I also now know that I have been a warrior in many lifetimes, in many lifetimes before this and or around this, whatever your idea of time is.
Speaker 2:And the process of going into the military in this time was, yes, to follow up on a sort of soul assignment and also a family legacy assignment. That was that I felt was going to achieve the thing that my specifically my father believed was success, and and also to complete it, ideally for all lifetimes for here on out Like this was the last time that I needed to go physically into war and um and to say, yep, I think I, I get it.
Speaker 2:Now. It doesn't work in the ways that we thought and I've completed my assignment, not only for this lifetime, but for all others, and it was the breaking and completion of some pretty deep karmic cycles for me that allowed me now to step into priestess work, which is based in peace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's beautiful to. I mean, like you said, our idea of time. They're all kind of you know the way I see it they're all existing at the same time. But it's beautiful that in this lifetime you get to be conscious in the transition lifetime, the transition from warrior to priestess, and what a you know potent juxtaposition that is and what a beautiful transition that is. So will you tell us a little bit about that journey, that transition from warrior to priestess and I mean there's so much that goes with that the identity shift, the transformation that has to take place, the letting go of the old version of self and the emerging into the new version of self. Will you tell us a little bit about that and the emerging?
Speaker 2:into the new version of self. Will you tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely yeah. The warrior in this lifetime was also a representation of the ego self that I built before my Saturn return right before.
Speaker 2:I was between the ages of 27 to 33-ish. I was between the ages of 27 to 33 ish. When we see that first Saturn return and I find that most of us base our first version of ego on what you see around you right, you get the reflection back. You're not necessarily as tuned into your own intuitive guidance and your own purpose. Not all of us are born completely awake. You have to go through the stages of the awakening journey and I was no different. Even being an older soul, I still went through that process and it took me getting to that Saturn return to realize that everything I had built and that ego personality and when I speak of the ego, I speak of it very um, with deep respect and reverence, because our ego is is necessary. It's an incredibly important part.
Speaker 2:We need it, and so we made it, and so I built this personality and ego and this external idea of me. Um, that was based on my mostly my father, but my, my family system and the community I'd grown up in in the south, being a methodist, you know, and having a lineage of of spiritual leaders in the Methodist faith. Um, and then it all came crashing down when I went to war and realized that the God that I had grown up with, um, how in the world could some, being like that, allow the atrocities of war to exist? That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the age old questions, totally, totally, and it deconstructed my reality, which then led me to getting out of the military and the military also gently being like bye, we're good, you can leave. Yeah, it's time for you to go. Yeah, we'll get you right out of here. You've got too much of that feminine activism going on.
Speaker 1:You will slowly derail us if you stay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're just very satisfied without your support, and I also had some really beautiful leaders in the military who advised me and who became father figures to me and advised me very wisely and objectively, saying this is not where you're going to reach your potential. You are an amazing woman, you have all these talents and this environment is going to crush your soul.
Speaker 1:Wow, get the chills.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was so good. I was like thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a gift to have somebody see you so clearly see you so clearly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that, um, the one of the men that told me that is, like I said, like a father to me and is now going through his own spiritual awakening he's always been a very spiritual being, since I knew him in the military, and he's going through a whole awakening, learning about astral projection and, like all these things warms my heart, I'm like yes, he's waking up.
Speaker 2:Yes, so he. We've been soul friends for many lifetimes and, and it you know, these beings come back into our lives for a reason, and so, when I got out, my reality had shattered. I was in a complete space of emptiness, to some extent what the Buddhists call emptiness of like I have no cause and no effect, I am nothing, and what the hell do I do now? And that's when I just followed the sort of yellow brick road that the universe laid out for me, which was I had these surreal encounters with top leaders from the tech industry. I had a phone call, a video call, with Sheryl Sandberg, who, at the time, was the COO of Facebook, now Meta, and she was, like, well, you should come work here. And so, like, where did this stuff come from? And the universe was just delivering, like, okay, do this, now do this. And what that led me on was a journey, um, and falling in love with the man who is, um, the father of the child that I am baking in my body, right now congratulations.
Speaker 1:I can't see that on our little screen.
Speaker 2:Congratulations yeah, oh, thank you, and um, falling in love with him in Afghanistan and going through a full reckoning of my religious understanding, my faith, and that led me into plant Bay Area, where, of course, recreational use of medicines and plant medicines and different psychedelics and hallucinogens is much more common than in the South, or in the East even, and that opened me to that whole world which essentially was the activation path toward priestess.
Speaker 1:Beautiful and I'm so excited to dive into plant medicine and its role in your journey, on your journey. But I am curious about that little segment where you're following the yellow brick road because, you know, I think all of us can relate to. You know, a rock bottom, that feeling of of really unraveling who you are and and being in a place where everything you believe no longer resonates. Everything that held up the skeletal system or structure of who you believe you are is crumbling to the ground. And you find yourself at this place. You know I've been there where I'm pretty much on my knees like what do I do, where do I go? Who am I? Kind of thing. And the universe does in hindsight. You know, we look back and the universe lays out this little crumb here, this little nudge here, this person that comes into your life as a guide or offers you a book or podcast that steers you over here In hindsight it is so crunchy and so disorienting and for me and my journey, my body spoke to me.
Speaker 1:I started to get sick in different ways. Up until that point I'd been a healthy, you know, healthy young woman. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, basically overnight, I start to see all these other symptoms in my body. My body is trying to speak to me, but I'm still resisting. So that period is maybe a little bit of like the cocoon, when everything's turning to mush and you don't know what's going to happen on the other side. But you just have to trust that like, okay, all my bones are turning to mush and something's going to happen. What was that time like for you and how did you really like move through that? What tools did you have? How did you trust that on the other side of my bones turning to mush, I'm going to turn into a butterfly?
Speaker 2:I always love that this metaphor comes up, because Metamorphosis, the company I work with, founded with two other amazing women. The logo is a butterfly, like a geometric butterfly, and one of our retreats is called Cracking the Chrysalis, because it's all about turning to mush Then Cracking the Chrysalis opens and it can be done, yeah, huge.
Speaker 1:So this is cracking the chrysalis open. That's an important part of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, huge. So this is exactly the metaphor I would use. And let's see the first rebirth period, because I'm actually in a chrysalis moment in my life, right? Now in my life right now, and so what's interesting is I can now see the difference in my levels of trust and the tool kits that I have, and now that I can actually see that it's happening, I can like, in real time, see the yellow brick road appearing before me.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't have to wait so long for hindsight. But that first time when it happened oh man, that was oh, I muscled through it. That's really kind of what I did right.
Speaker 2:I numbed myself. In some ways. I muscled through it. I was trained as a Marine officer. I literally like just hunkered down, yeah, and I was like, ah, this is really painful and I hate everything about this, but I'm just gonna like wake up every day and on some level that first rebirth process was less painful than the one I'm going through now because it because I was not fully sensitized.
Speaker 2:So I talked a lot about sensitization, the sensitizing process that all of us are highly sensitive beings. Everyone on the planet is. Most of us have armored ourselves in different ways and built up armor especially around our heart space, around different areas of our body that allow us to go into states of numbness and dissociation, that allow us to go into states of numbness and dissociation. So I would say that at first and that's one of the reasons why it takes hindsight to see it because we've numbed ourselves. So you're not actually getting the subtle signs. But sometimes those signs on the yellow brick road are so obvious that they smack you in the face and you're like, okay, this is too perfect. There's like too much coincidence here. So my meeting with Sheryl Sandberg, that was one where I was like how does one Marine in California, get a meeting with this woman, who's quite literally one of the most powerful women in the entire world and is my idol, like how does that?
Speaker 1:straight up?
Speaker 2:I don't know that doesn't? That's just like ridiculous. So there were certain surreal moments and then getting the offer from from that and and and at the same time I was going through a process of um applying for a prestigious sort of fellowship program, um that I became a finalist for, and it would have taken me to China because I had studied in China in high school and speak Chinese and things like that. So I was going to go back and I was number 111. Oh, wow, right. So it was that universal door and I remember feeling that feeling and this is one of the moments on your yellow brick road path sometimes is a closed door right A pretty obvious. You're not going this way. And it took me a minute to be like I'm actually not really disappointed about this, because it's so obvious that I'm supposed to go this other direction and go to the Bay Area and work for this company, even though I had no plan, no intention to work in the corporate world at all.
Speaker 2:All of these things, it just like was clearly funneling me in a particular direction. So I could at least see that and what you mentioned about the body. So I talk about the awakening process in four stages and the first stage is resistance. So if you're looking at your yellow brick road journey, usually the first phase that you notice is resistance, and it is often physical resistance. It can be emotional, but a lot of us aren't tuned into our emotions enough yet but your body starts to resist. So, for example, 2019 to 2020, I began to go through an entire year of urinary tract infections, yeast infections. My pelvic system was a disaster. I'd come back from war, I'd had two kidney stones, my whole pelvic region was on fire and obviously something was wrong there. And that's my center of creativity, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're in your center of safety and groundedness.
Speaker 2:Yes, Exactly, exactly, and that place on my body was like hello, excuse me, we're not safe, right? Yeah, not safe. And I then went into a little bit of the process of surrender. That's the second. The second phase is is just surrendering to. Oh, my goodness, I pain, what do I do? And I have and I'm losing my sense of reality, I'm losing my sense of self. That's usually when you start to go through a period of deep dissociation, where a disillusionment with what is around you, where you look around you and you go I don't like anything that I've built, I don't like myself, I don't like these surroundings, what the fuck is going on? I'm over it. And I remember having these moments where I would be like on the bus, coming back up from Facebook back to the city, and I'd be looking out at the scenery and I would be so. It wasn't quite disgust, but it was just like this sense of like what have we done to?
Speaker 1:this earth. Yeah, that resonates so deeply for me.
Speaker 2:And that's, I think, the second phase is when you surrender to the feelings of disgust, of shame, of deep sadness, of depression, of anxiety, and you allow yourself to really start to feel. And that's the beginning of the sensitizing process and the two final pieces, which we can talk about as I go on, but are trust and play. Those are the two next stages, because once you've surrendered and you just lean back and you say, okay, I'm just going to be in pain and teach me and show me the way. That's when you start to really trust that there is something else, something bigger holding you. And while I wasn't great at it, then I was okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, so beautiful. Thank you for sharing all of that. And it's, it's funny, it res, so much of it resonates with me. But I'm also in a rebirth at the moment and, looking back and reflecting on my previous, you know there've been like micro rebirths, but the previous like big awakening, the previous like rock bottom on my knees. That really pivoted a lot of my understanding of self, my understanding, construction of the ego, all of it Same thing. My first bout of rebirth was so much more difficult and so much more occupied by that stage of resistance. I feel like I lived in that resistance stage for a really long time until you, just I reached a point where I was, I couldn't strong arm it anymore and it's almost like surrender is, is the only option, because it's not sustainable to keep strong arming and you know enforcing what isn't, you know forcing a square peg into a circle hole. It's like you can't do it for your whole life. And so you get to a point where, like this isn't sustainable, I have to let go and in that, surrender.
Speaker 2:I call it playing uncle with the universe. Yeah, totally got your arm behind your back and it's like when are you gonna say uncle, yeah and for?
Speaker 1:and you're just like yeah and for a long time you're like never. And then you're finally like okay now. And in that surrender process as well, it's so beautiful to to also think about the compassion and the alliance that I started to build with my body. It sounds like you know you.
Speaker 1:You also shared your physical journey and the way that your body was physically telling you like this isn't where we're meant to be, this isn't what's aligned, this isn't it, and I think so many of us experience that. But we're also so desensitized to, while listening to our body and we're in the Western world where it's like, well, this will help that symptom, and then you can just keep going, as opposed to really listening to what your body's trying to communicate, and tuning into that conversation between body and soul and heart and mind and and you know, giving everybody a seat at the table and allowing for that compassion to to really flood through the body and be a healing agent in a way of like I hear you, I know you're trying to communicate something and I'm doing my best to make change, to realign to. You know, work with you, I'm doing my best and and up until then it was so much more of like a me versus my body relationship.
Speaker 2:My body is doing this to me versus my body is working in alliance with me. Amen to that. I think the resistance phase does like if you break this up into four pieces, right, Resistance, surrender, trust and then play For the first time you go through a rebirth process. Resistance is like three quarters of the whole experience, Totally. Yeah, You're just like, nope, I'm not budging Because you don't understand what is on the other side. You don't understand how great it is on the other side. And what's fascinating is this process is also what I see in a micro level in ceremonies. Right, we call the resistance the gate. You get to the gate and a lot of times people sit there at the gate and specifically in plant medicine ceremonies, you kind of look at the gate, you assess whether you want to walk around it or rock it over it yeah.
Speaker 2:And you're like stop looking at the gate and just go in Totally. But you have to let go, you have to surrender in order to do that. And most of us are trained right now in the masculine and in an immature, uninitiated masculine energy, which is to do, do, do and cling and grasp and pull and hold tightly and not to let go, which is and receive and allow, which is much more of the divine feminine frequency which is rising as we speak Totally, and I end in this second rebirth it's so much it's still crunchy in times, definitely still crunchy in times, but it's so much more peaceful.
Speaker 1:In knowing that and even seeing the parallels to the previous rebirths of like, oh yeah, I was extremely disoriented and fearful and felt that urge to try and manipulate reality then too, and I trusted then and this is what happened and I'm going to trust again. And it's this collection of data that you start to remember like, oh yeah, I'm held. Okay, it's hard, but I'm held. I'm curious in your journey. So at this point, you're in corporate, you're working for Facebook. Your body's starting to tell you like, well, after, after the marine, after the marine corps, your body's starting to tell you like, okay, stuff's not right, stuff's not aligned. You're working in corporate. Where are you on your spiritual journey at this point? Have you started to you know, I don't want to say awaken have you started to really bring consciousness to this process and and take us through your awakening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I I pretty quickly began to explore with different types of plant medicine after hitting the Bay Area, because it's a it, it's a whole culture in and of itself, right, and there's there's a whole energy of the of San Francisco and the creativity there that encourages it. But I definitely went in with all of the ideas about what it was going to do to me and all of the fears that had been programmed into me by society. So I sat with LSD in my first sort of psychedelic recreational experience at a small festival and I was looking out over the trees and was probably it was within the first year of arriving and starting to work in corporate and I saw all the trees breathe and I was like, oh my gosh, I remember this. I remember this. This is what I used to experience on the farm. No psychedelics needed.
Speaker 1:Just as a child, I remember everything.
Speaker 2:Because we know these things, we're born with these things, and then we put layers over us to forget. So from that first LSD journey I explored a bit with MDMA, you know kind of heart opening, which I don't consider psychedelic but I do consider it to be a great synthetic teacher.
Speaker 2:And then I had an experience with Bufo about a year later and Bufo is 5-MeO-DMT, which is a you know, the toad medicine as they say, licking the toad and that was what really sent me into. That was I I always forget the years on these things because time is hard but that sent me into a state of fractured disillusionment, disillusionment and dissociation, of fractured disillusionment and dissociation Because, also, I feel that we don't often have enough integration for that particular medicine in the medicine world and as one reason why Metamorphosis was founded was because all three of us founders had fracturing experiences with that medicine in particular that we wanted no one to ever experience again. We wanted people to feel really held in their process. But that lasted about a year and it prompted me to leave my corporate job and go work in a startup for a period of time where I experienced a very toxic work culture and I got to see the kind of underbelly of the corporate world and the shadow side of things in a super icky way, and that was the representation of my sort of underworld initiation into okay, what actually am I here to do? And I started to get the downloads right before 2020.
Speaker 2:That, susanna, this medicine that you're working with is medicine. First of all, it is a sacred plant medicine. Yes, it's recreational, yes, it's beautiful mushrooms, LSD you know even San Pedro when I when I engaged with that but they are designed for much more than just recreation and connection with your friends. They are to be worked with and they can quite literally help you and others heal in a very powerful way.
Speaker 2:And simultaneously, around this time, my sister was going through essentially a psychotic break and had been diagnosed with borderline personality.
Speaker 2:I was starting to feel all my feelings, I was starting to sensitize and I wanted to find something that would literally save her life, because she was attempting suicide pretty regularly and very seriously. So when the medicine said Susanna, you've been doing this for many lifetimes, this is your work, and I decided to become more intentional with my medicine journeys and I went to some actual practitioners who held ceremonies for me, and then I went to group ceremonies and worked with mushrooms, and then I sat with San Pedro, and then I ultimately sat with ayahuasca in the jungles of Peru and little by little, by little, I remembered the attunements of being a priestess, through learning from the plants and learning this opening of my consciousness that then ultimately allowed me to serve others, as well as my sister, and one of the funny things about the yellow brick road was and I think this is true for everybody when you start to step into your purpose and remember it, people come out of the woodwork to receive your purpose without you even telling them that you're doing it.
Speaker 2:You're like how did you know? Right, like how did you know? I had somebody call me, I think, the moment I decided. I decided that I was going to start sort of training to become a ceremonial facilitator. Two weeks later I had somebody call me and say I know that you're really into psychedelics and I feel like you could take me on an intentional, like ceremonial journey. How does that sound to you?
Speaker 1:They called me out of the blue and I was like yeah, I'm on the right, the universe just giving you a little wink of like yep, you found it, you're doing it.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, so that was the journey.
Speaker 1:That's there. Yeah, that's so beautiful, and thank you for sharing all of that about your sister. It sounds, you know, extremely painful to have been trying to support someone at that time in their life. But you know, it sounded like you just briefly mentioned it, but it sounded like you were able to help her a lot, so that's beautiful well, yeah, we had um one.
Speaker 2:we had two ceremonies together um, one in 2020 and the next one was a clearing would, because we do work um in the clearing kind of elements at metamorphosis, which the catholic church likes to call exorcisms, and that journey resulted in her completely stopping all suicidal attempts. And she is quite literally 180 degrees of a human from who she was. Oh it's so beautiful, and from who she was, oh, it's so beautiful because she's like, yeah, like, living her best life right now um other than some toxic, you know, work she's gotta have her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she still has her stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, her journey still got some things, but but in terms of yeah, of of wanting to be alive, um, that ceremony and I would say the integration of it with with our whole family system both my parents were present for that, um and the family rallying around her in that way and that it was that, along with seeing many other clients, that radically shifted that I was like, oh yeah, this is the answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this was the trust and I love that wink or that support from the universe that flooded through as soon as you declared and took that aligned action towards what felt like something you already knew, what felt like a code that was already there. I'm curious on that journey, was there? I mean, I'm sure there was a lot of fear in taking that step. How did you decide to do it anyway? How'd you take the leap into that realm of the unknown that you know so?
Speaker 2:different from everything you've done prior. Well, it's interesting because these days I realize how similar a lot of the qualities are of a priestess and a warrior.
Speaker 2:And there's a very natural transition that happens and I have also met a lot of veterans who have had a similar journey because there's devotion to something bigger. There is this like giving back energy, right. There is this deep trust in something bigger than yourself and that we're attuned for in the warrior world. But I would say that the hardest part for me because I was so in my masculine, in that in those times when I had to, when I was in the resistance, in the resistance was actually like making my parents proud and achieving the idea of success was getting out of the egoic structure and construct that I had built that said this is what you are supposed to do.
Speaker 2:So growing up, I was told from, quite literally, birth, that I would be the president of the United States and I would go into the military and I would be I would then, then I would run, I would probably work for a state agency, then I would run for Congress, then I would run for Senate, then I I mean it was like the whole path was set. So that was the idea for me. And, um, and it was very obvious and, having gone to the Naval Academy and having been a Marine officer, I was like. Perfectly set up for that. And here I am now with a tattoo on my head and my head shape Awesome.
Speaker 2:But, letting go of that, um, that construct, that, that identity. That was not me, that was not truly me, but was placed upon me not by any, not for any malintent, but simply because my parents knew they wanted me to be something very special and very unique and they just had no idea what kind of container that would be in. So, letting go of that and embracing disappointment, embracing that I was going naturally to disappoint a lot of people around me and because of that I might even lose people in my life. People might fall away and they would, and that was. And that caused me to face rejection and abandonment, my wounds of abandonment, my wounds of neglect. And and that's why I's why I say and why I love the Rumi quote that says the wound is where the light comes from, because when you go straight into the wound, you go straight into the darkness and you directly face that fear of disappointing others or you directly face that fear of rejection.
Speaker 1:You find you, or you directly face that fear of rejection, you find you. Yeah, it's beautiful. And what's coming up for me is that you know, hearing you talk about this leap and really having the courage to face disappointment, to face the unknown is that throughout this journey, you know one of the byproducts, if not the purpose, of our spiritual journey is to really create that safety within ourselves that, no matter what you know, no matter what I encounter, whether it be disappointment, whether it be rejection, whether it be disorientation, whatever it is that we encounter, I am safe in this breath, I am safe in this body and I will never abandon you. You know, speaking to the little girl inside you or the little person inside of you, I will never abandon you, no matter what we encounter out there. And no matter what we encounter out there, nothing is wrong with you to the little girl.
Speaker 1:And so something like that feels like a common thread in our Plant medicine journeys that I've called upon and that's been strengthened within every plant medicine journey and ceremony that I've been a part of is this noticing the trepidation before I walked into the chala, noticing that that was there and then choosing to come back to the truth of safety that exists inside of me. So, no matter where this medicine needs to take me, no matter what downloads, no matter what physical agony or distress I might experience, I am safe to go there because you've cultivated that strength through all these little leaps, all these little experiences with self throughout your spiritual journey of okay, I've walked through this discomfort and I made it. I did it again and I made it to the point where that safety is just the base level and anything you come up to that feels big. In that moment you know you're going to be safe, and so I'm wondering if you could speak to a little bit of that. When it comes to plant medicine and some of these ceremonies, journeys, Internal safety is a big one.
Speaker 2:And I would say that is actually the one that I am working on in this rebirth is like the fullest version of safety and my experience of finding safety within self, which also kind of equals self-trust right and the feeling of being held.
Speaker 2:Safety is full embodiment when the spirit is not dissociating and it has a healthy, non-anxious, avoidant relationship with the body and the human self and the ego and all things are integrated in a happy, balanced way.
Speaker 2:We are safe Because you have connection to source. You have connection to your physical vessel, that is, this beautiful temple that you live in in this lifetime. You have connection to earth. You have connection to others through your heart and your heart, intelligence, and you know that you can always access those things at any given time because the spirit is not leaving. And that's why I call myself an embodied consciousness guide, because it is my whole work in, down to its essence, is to help you embody your soul or your spirit in this lifetime and to fully what I call it like putting the Iron man suit on. A lot of people have one leg in the Iron man and the spirits kind of like hopping out every now and then, and you know what that's like because you both probably experienced it yourself, as we dissociate from our regular daily lives. But then you meet somebody and you're like hello where?
Speaker 1:are you totally? Where are you at?
Speaker 2:yeah, and we're a little bit of that's. I think that's why we're obsessed with zombie, the whole zombie concept, because, because that's what it's like. It's like walking around, um, in a state of sort of not being here. Yeah, autopilot and autopilot, and so your body's here, your body's doing the things, but the body without the protection and the connection of the spirit and soul, body is absolutely terrified. It goes back into primal, animalistic. Let's keep ourselves safe, oh God, like we have to protect ourselves. But once you have that full embodiment of the spirit and the spirit's like, yep, this is a great place, I want to be here, I want to stay here, I'm going to be present as often as I can. That feeling is knowing that you don't have to hold yourself and you don't have to hold your own safety. You have a much bigger, much more gigantic divine level of protection that will literally not allow anything that is not in your highest service to happen to you period not in your highest service to happen to you period.
Speaker 2:So that was yeah, that's been my own journey and, of course, just like any healer or any person in the healing world, we start doing the work that we need most for others. Right, and that's why this rebirth process for me is about the final layers of really embodying my soul, and I would say that a good place to start for that is just practicing presence and in the plant medicine world, the energies and the openings that plant medicine can facilitate helps you to first of all recognize that you have a soul that you have a spirit which a lot of people don't want to acknowledge, and I understand.
Speaker 2:You know there's a lot of contracts we make with ourselves to forget things, but a lot of people don't know that they have a soul and that the soul is living five feet or 10 feet away from them and every now and then they'll get like a little mindful and experience mindfulness very gently. Your soul will want to be right inside of you all the time, but it takes real concerted effort to do that it does.
Speaker 1:And these plant medicine journeys and experiences are, as you describe it, like a door opening, a welcoming for the soul to come back into the body and for us, who have maybe existed without the soul in our body or on autopilot for so long, to really experience what it feels like to see the trees breathe, to see the child laugh from across the park and feel that laughter ripple across time, and to really have access to that oneness and that joy and see that it is safe in here. That's not saying that plant medicine doesn't also offer more difficult experiences, either physically or mentally, and in that there's also the opportunity to solidify that sense of safety, to choose the breath, to realize that you are so deeply supported and to access that support you really just have to breathe to remember that you are supported in your highest good and to the highest service.
Speaker 2:And, honestly, the only way to things like joy and lightness is straight through the grief and the sorrow and the sadness and the darkness, and you, you must go there, and in fact, neither is more important or better than the other.
Speaker 2:And that's what a lot of plant medicine teaches us is that the soul wants to be in a body that sees and feels and allows the full range of the human experience, without judging or shaming any of it, and just accepting that I came to this planet at this time, in this body, to have all these wild experiences and to feel things, and some of those things are going to feel like, oh, I really want a whole lot more of that. And then there are going to be some things that I'm like, oh, I don't really like that. That doesn't feel so good. And ultimately, every single one of those experiences is the same, is equally important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of the most beautiful journeys I've had on LSD and also with psilocybin. I've experienced the whole range of human emotion. Within you know, a five to 10 hour period. I'll be at one point just wailing, allowing for grief to move through me, and then another point just laughing hysterically. Another point so introspective and youive and with self in that moment, and then other points so connected to other people.
Speaker 1:It's so beautiful to allow the full spectrum to exist within you and, like you said, when you abandon, all judgment of these emotions are bad, these ones don't belong here, and these ones are good. These ones don't belong here and these ones are good. These ones do belong here. As opposed to, it's all, it's all a part of it, and the one can exist without the existence of the other. So the grief has to be there for the euphoria to also be there. There's so much more to talk about, but I really want you to be able to tell us more about metamorphosis and some of the offerings you have, some of the retreats that you offer, and what a container with you on these retreats really looks like for somebody who maybe hasn't had any experience with plant medicine. Or is plant medicine curious? What can they expect when they're working with you?
Speaker 2:plant medicine. Curious. What can they expect when they're working with you At Metamorphosis? We work with the Metamorphosis Method, which is this magnificent method of integrating peak experiences that has been birthed through us is most definitely not something we even came up with. It's just sort of arrived over the course of the building of this organization and, as I mentioned before, we're very committed to integration, which looks like that embodiment right, it's fully embodied.
Speaker 2:So we offer retreats, which are an eight-week process because you have preparation and then experience and then integration, and the experience is an on-site retreat with plant medicine, a family of heart ally, medicines that are based in sassafras, saffron, um, that help us to really create what we call co-creative trust. So we have retreats. We also have online virtual coaching programs that allow you to um pair it with microdosing, so you can do a three month microdosing protocol with us that's also guided by coaches and in a container of community, and we also have an online community and a membership program. So we have masterclasses. We have a whole network of affiliate facilitators that teach our community things like breathwork, sound healing you know all sorts of different beautiful methods of alternative healing and expansion and and we have also, of course, recorded courses and things like that that you can take, but we become. We can do this legally because we also have taken the time and the effort to set up a 508 c1a, which is a church, and it's an entheogenic church that allows us to work with the psilocybin and and several other different types of medicines as sacrament. And then you become a member and you essentially can, can order, you know, microdosing tablets through us that you can use in a sacred and ceremonial way as well, and we believe in the power of this. We believe in the power of altered states of consciousness.
Speaker 2:My whole master's work was on that. Yeah, because it's not just plant medicine that facilitates altered states of consciousness. Breathwork does it, meditation does it, all sorts of other techniques and new ones are being birthed every day. So at Metamorphosis, we want you to transform your human experience. We want you to go from this version of you to the more authentic, the most authentic. What we call your true, abundant essence and that's what we do is we help you get there, to that place that feels like your home.
Speaker 1:So beautiful and it sounds like such a holistic toolkit for somebody to approach healing. We have meditation, we have yoga, we have sound healing. We have all of these tools, but we're really working to establish our own toolkit so that, when our unique wounds come to the surface or our unique you know triggers appear, we have exactly what we need in our toolkit. And microdosing and psilocybin is just another one of those tools that we can integrate into our practices. And, yeah, I just think it's so wonderful what you are doing, what you are creating, and I'm so grateful for the work you're doing in the world. So, thank you so much and I will link all of the website and all the courses, the ways that people can find you, retreats in the show notes for people.
Speaker 2:Thank you, catherine. Thanks so much for using your voice for this work and for believing in what we are all building in this journey of this life and, yeah, for being a beacon for others. I appreciate it, thank you.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I was legitimately buzzing after connecting with Susanna and I hope that her story, parts of our journey that we were able to share, resonate with you and serve as a reminder that we are all on this journey together, as a reminder that we are all on this journey together. If you love this podcast or you think somebody in your circle might benefit from listening to this episode, please send it to them. Leave a review. It will help this podcast grow, it will help more people find this message, and I will be back next week with another episode.