In 2016, I came face-to-face with my worst nightmare: losing custody of my 12-year-old son, after I’d failed to take my own life by swallowing a bottle of pills while he was asleep in his room.

At first, it felt like the most painful outcome.

Not only was I still alive, but I’d also just lost the only thing I felt even remotely called to keep living for, the only piece of light I still had in my life.

Even worse?

I knew in my raw, aching heart that the judge who made the ruling had made the right call.

Because the moment I found myself sinking into the realization and subsequent acceptance that I’d lost custody over my child, that was the moment I decided to do whatever it would take to get him back. 

That was the moment I surrendered in total willingness to heal myself and “get my shit together,” no matter what.

Yes, I wanted my child back.

But I was also all out of other options. 

Ending myself didn’t work, so I might as well do something different.

Part I: The Unravelling

Before I tell you the circumstances that took place in my life leading up to this pivotal moment and just how, exactly, I went about healing myself…

Let me explain why I’m sharing my story.

You often see me show up online and in person with wisdom, insights, and inspirations.

You know me as the loving, cheerful, full-of-inner-peace Ladybug I’ve become.

You listen to me speak on the healing and transformative power of community, self love, and plant medicines.

You hear me saying how we each already have everything we need to grow and heal within us. 

But what you don’t always see is the pain and turmoil I had to wade through and confront within myself so that I could get to where I am today and do the work I’ve been called to do. 

Like many of you, I grew up with trauma.

My father was physically and psychologically abusive to me, until my parents divorced when I was 9 years old.

However, I wasn’t consciously aware of this trauma until I was 25, as my mind’s response was to repress those memories.

In fact, I still have large chunks of those first 9 years of life missing from my memory, and while some of those memories have returned, the rest may or may not return, as I continue my healing journey.

Throughout my early life, the nature of my trauma had me seeking connection, belonging, and love — but in all the wrong places and all the wrong ways: 

• I stayed in unhealthy relationships while I sabotaged the healthy ones. 

• I morphed into different versions of myself in order to fit in with groups that, ultimately, were not aligned with my true self, which also meant I never actually felt like I fit in, nor was I giving space for my true self to come forward.

• My inner critic ran rampant, sometimes in destructive ways that kept me from feeling any sense of self-worth, and other times in ways that furthered my growth. (For instance, I maintain that my “daddy issues” are responsible for my drive to get my Master’s degree.)

Throughout all of this seeking and morphing and giving the inner critic center stage, I was majorly unhappy, and it was taking a toll on my relationships.

Around 2009, the traumatic memories fueling these patterns and constant, crippling emotions began to surface, when I found myself in couple’s counseling with a person I was dating at the time.

One of the first assignments our therapist gave me was to figure out what my relationship with my father was like growing up.

At first, I thought we’d had a great relationship, even though I didn’t really have any childhood memories. (And I also thought that was completely normal.) 

Despite being under the impression that we had a great relationship, I instinctively knew that I couldn’t just call my father up and start asking questions about it.

So, I called my mom instead, and she started telling me all of these really intense stories of which I had absolutely no recollection. 

She told me to call my grandparents next, so I did. They told me even more stories, then said to call my older sister.

My sister told me the same stories and explained that’s why she didn’t have a relationship with our father and never will.

But when I finally confronted my father, he denied it all.

Despite his denial, I knew the stories my family had told me were true.

And although I knew all the stories were true…

I still didn’t realize that I needed to heal from the trauma behind them. 

After all, I had no emotional attachment to these stories because I couldn’t remember them, and if there was no emotional attachment, then there was nothing to heal, right?

It was just typical “daddy issues.”

So instead of looking deeper into my so-called “daddy issues,” I focused on school and graduated with my master’s degree in Counseling in 2014. I also began my career in social work at that time.

By then, the depression and anxiety that had low-key existed my entire life had grown to become a very present part of my day-to-day experience, and I began taking pharmaceutical medication to try and alleviate the constant pain.

Around the same time, I found myself in a relationship with a narcissist and addict.

When the pharmaceutical medication I was taking could no longer give me the relief I wanted, I began self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.

This was the beginning of the lightning-speed unraveling of my life.

Part II: Rock Bottom

I’d already known about my past traumas for years when my life began to unravel, but even in the face of my descent to rock bottom, I still didn’t understand I needed to confront and heal them.

I only knew that I seemed completely unable to stop the landslide of my life. 

My romantic relationship was tumultuous, at best.

My friendships were falling apart.

I was on the verge of losing both my job and my house.

I was in DEEP addiction...

And I didn’t see a way out. 

Literally every part of my life was in shambles, and the challenge of pulling it all back together seemed insurmountable.

There was no fixing or repairing it, only escaping it. 

So, drunk and high one evening in September 2016, I attempted to take my life by swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills, while my 12-year-old son was asleep in his room. 

As soon as I tossed back the bottle, chewed all the pills, and swallowed them down, I had an “instant sober” moment.

Somewhere inside of me, a spark of light came forward and urged me to call 911.

The paramedics arrived and rushed me to the ER, where my heart stopped three times.

They put me on an involuntary hold, reached out to my emergency contact, and then filed a CPS report.

When I was released from the hospital, I found myself standing before a judge fighting for custody of my son.

Ultimately, custody was awarded to his dad for three months, at which point we would go back into court to reassess my stability.

Looking back on it, temporarily losing custody of my son was both the worst moment of my life…

And also my greatest blessing. 

Determined and totally willing to do anything and everything necessary to regain custody of my son, I spent the following weeks diving as deeply as I possibly could into my healing.

I found what I needed more than anything was a roadmap toward recovery and a group of humans to hold me accountable, accept me, support, and love me, while I learned to do those things for myself.

That’s exactly what I found when I immersed myself into AA and the 12-step program.

I started going to meetings at least once a day, sometimes twice or even three times on the weekends, and I leaned heavily on the community for support.

That’s also where I learned the tremendous healing power community can provide when we’re willing to allow ourselves to be seen and held in safety by others who’ve been exactly where we are. 

Within six weeks of the judge’s ruling, we were back to our regular custody agreement, and by December 2016, I was officially sober.

Today, I credit much of that initial success to the 12 Steps and community support provided by AA.

The combination of those two factors provided me with a strong foundation and got me to the point of functioning again.

But of course, that was only the beginning of my journey.

Part III: A Sea of Uncertainty

Once I regained custody of my son, it didn’t take long until I saw my life beginning to pull itself back together.

But as it was pulling together…

I was simultaneously becoming aware of how much healing I still had in front of me if I wanted to radically transform my life. 

Although addiction played a significant role in the rapid unravelling of my reality, I don’t want you to think I just stopped using drugs and alcohol, and magically everything improved.

In fact, I spent the next two years or so swimming—though it often felt like drowning—in a sea of resources and confusion, yet deeply committed to finding and exploring new ways to create lasting change.

I did not want to go back to where I was before life spiraled out of control; I wanted to reach my full potential and truly thrive. 

The AA community and the 12 Steps had been a great start, but I knew there was something more; I just didn’t know where to go from there.

Nonetheless, I had to dive in somewhere, so I began by reading self-help books.

They were definitely beneficial, but I struggled to consistently apply what they were saying. 

I listened to podcasts.

I strengthened my meditation practice.

I fasted from food, speaking, and vision at different times. 

I watched YouTube videos.

I did yoga. 

I did all the same things we all do when we find ourselves ready and willing to step outside of our comfort zone and explore new ways of furthering our healing and growth. 

And I still felt like I was drowning, just as I had been drowning when I hit rock bottom.

I was grasping for all the tools, and I could see how each of them was helpful.

But having them all together, swirling around me at all times, was completely overwhelming.

On top of all the tools I was swimming (drowning) in, I was working with Cannabis under the supervision of my psychiatrist to help wean myself off of pharmaceuticals, so that I could eventually sit with the sacred medicine Ayahuasca.

It took almost two, committed years of working with Cannabis for me to get myself off the pharmaceuticals, at which point, I travelled to Peru to sit with Ayahuasca in my first ceremony and found myself in a totally new world.

Entering onto the plant medicine path always felt like “the answer” for me when I first began my journey. 

While it certainly opened me up to even greater depths of healing, acceptance, forgiveness, and self love than I had previously imagined possible, it wasn’t the “magic pill” we so often want it to be.

Even after that first Ayahuasca ceremony, an experience I’d been diligently preparing nearly two years for, I was still swimming in a sea of uncertainty. 

I had all these amazing tools which had helped me, but no clear direction for when or how to use them.

Part IV: The Birth of Haux Gatherings

Eventually, I grew exhausted with floundering around in my pain and suffering. 

I realized that in order to keep moving forward, I had to take a step back and develop different relationships with these tools. 

I needed to approach my healing and growth moment by moment, instead of trying to frantically throw everything at it all at once. 

I also needed a clear framework, a roadmap I could follow, just like AA had given me with the 12 Steps. 

So, I created one for myself. 

In addition to that roadmap, I needed community. 

I’ve previously been featured in Elephant Journal on how I found new communities to join as I continued on my healing journey and outgrew the old, familiar social circles and places that were no longer aligned with the Ladybug I was becoming.

In time, the more I continued to show up in these new communities and share my journey with others, the more deeply I connected with those on the same path.

And the more deeply I connected with those on the same path, the more they began to seek my support and guidance. 

I found myself offering similar words of wisdom and encouragement that others had offered to me when I first ventured into the rooms of recovery where it all began. 

Around 2019, my career in social work was becoming tenuous (which had been a pattern for me since 2014), and none of the jobs or other gigs in helping folks that I was trying to land were really working out for me. 

It was incredibly frustrating because at the same time, I felt like the work I was involved in was what I was supposed to be doing.

But, inevitably, I found myself sitting with the truth that the work I was doing was not the work I meant to be doing with others, and that I didn’t actually know just what that was.

In the face of that truth, I surrendered and asked the Universe (and my inner wisdom) for guidance.

Then in August 2019, I traveled to Brazil to sit with the medicines Ayahuasca and Wachuma. 

During the ceremonies, the medicine first showed me gathering people together and really drove home the point that I needed to be working with people who were taking ownership of their healing and willing to do the work it entails.

Up to that point, I had been spending my time working with people who were still victims in their lives, and there was no way for me to show them that they did not have to be victims. 

That is a truth that each of us has to come to on our own, in our own time.

Instead, the medicine showed me working with people who were active participants in their healing, those who were ready to become their own healer. 

Once I understood who I was meant to be helping, I asked the medicine to show me how to go about it.

Next, it showed me Cacao, which was fascinating because I didn’t have a relationship with that particular medicine at the time.

When I got back to California, I started studying Cacao and sitting with it, allowing the medicine to teach me. 

After a couple of months, it showed me how to facilitate a ceremony.

In November 2019, I was able to test this ceremony on a few of my friends, and it went really well.

So in December, I started offering community ceremonies, which also went really well!

Not surprisingly, Ayahuasca and Wachuma were right.

I had found my passion, and from there, Haux Gatherings was born.

Since then, Haux Gatherings has existed for the sole purpose to gather together those who are active participants in their own healing and provide spaces to celebrate and deepen into that growth. 

Because even though we ALL have the innate ability to heal ourselves and become our own medicine, as I slowly realized throughout my own journey and as you will hear me repeat the more you get to know me...

We also need the love, support, and safety that is found in community if we want to rediscover who we are at the core of our being and truly step into our fullest, most thriving potential.

Perhaps we could do this work alone.

But I don’t think we’re meant to. 

So that, dear one, is why Haux Gatherings exists. 

I’m so glad you’ve found us.