Instead of a vision quest, when I was 15, My parents hired a private investigator to track me down kidnapped me throw me in a car, and send me for 59 days to a place called sundown ranch, where I was shamed for using plant medicine known as marijuana.
I spent my 16th birthday alone and then had a breakdown and went to an NA meeting in Dallas where I was encircled by a group of loving addicts who claimed me as their own. I stopped using plant medicine and was put on prescription drugs for ADD. What followed was 15 years of intense anxiety, which I was put on more prescription drugs for like Xanax. I would have such intense dreams starting at age 27, at the time of my Saturn return, and knowing nothing of dreams or astology and having no connection with God after my grandfather passed.
(He died when I was age 14. He was a Southern Baptist minister, and taught me to start and end every day and conversation with "Thank You." And "Love They Neighbor." Up until that point I was taught that Jesus is Love. I left the church at age 14, after I was told I was not allowed to believe in heaven if I did not believe in hell, and a woman came up to my blind grandmother after service Wednesday and leaned over to her grieving ear, and whispered to her, that her granddaughter did not believe in God. My grandmother died when I was 25. I'm side noting this story because, it was not their teachings that drove me away from the church. They taught the love of Jesus. But my Anger was so strong, I did not open a Bible again or allow myself to feel the presence of God shining on me for two decades, although it was shining within me this whole while. And like Carl Jung, who in his dream, was being chased by unknown shadowy entities, I ran and ran, cradling in my hands, like a delicate egg or a baby bird fallen from its nest, the little ember still burning. That spark lived deep within me. Waiting to shine.)
I would use alcohol to keep the dreams at bay. Such vivid dreams, I would wake up and it would feel like I had been living a completely different life. And I could not tell the difference between waking life and the night.
At age 27, before the dreams started, I was visiting my friends in Northern California on a farm. While driving through Texas, to visit family on my way back to my home in Tennessee, I received a felony for plant medicine in the form of THC coconut oil. A topical salve I had home made. The purpose of it, to alleviate muscle pain. I had been prescribed an ongoing prescription to hydrocodone, as I am a horseback rider, and it was common for me to have pain associated with it. I received a felony, and would be put on probation for 7 years, trapping me in Shame and self isolation so intense, it would have been better to go to Prison.
One month before I finished my probation in January of 2021, I was sent to real Prison. In Texas. My son was only 18 months old. The world was locked down and I got locked down for real this time. I had "relapsed" and went to TDC for 6 months. The first week I went to prison, a woman told me that God Forgives Me, and for the first time, I forgave myself. Three words was all it took, and I began to cry. Later that day, as I was walking outside to Chow, head held down to keep my feet on the painted white line. (The women all dressed in their Whites, the TDC uniform, we always had to walk in single file line, 6 feet apart at all times.) Out of my peripheral vision, I could see a light illuminating. Like a carriage horse with blinders on, my view of the world had been kept small, darkness illuminated my periphery until that moment. This was the moment light entered again. The blinders were being removed.
This was 4 years ago. It has been a long journey back to myself. And I'm just now ready to tell my own story. This is the first time I've ever admitted publicly the fact I've been to prison, or have spoken about my felony charge for marijuana.
Thank you for being my guides. Audrey, you have introduced me to my Elders. Thank you for adding Michael Meade.