When I first heard Michael Pollan’s interview on Fresh Air, then read his book, I knew I was onto something. I would read articles on Medium about microdosing LSD and wonder if I had the balls to ask friends to ask friends until I found someone I knew that knew how to get some. But we live in Trump’s America, and my husband is a legal resident, not a U.S. citizen. Doing something illegal and putting my family at risk wouldn’t be worth it.
During this time, the Chaplain and I were deep in talks about if, how, and when I should pursue trying psychedelics for personal development, spiritual breakthrough, and relief from depression and anxiety. We started with a fuzzy goal of wanting to make it happen by around my 40th birthday.
I wiki’d where it was legal to use psilocybin, a substance that has shown real promise for treating depression and anxiety. I came up with two places that seemed like they might work. I started with Jamaica. I was specifically looking for a guided retreat. I wanted it to be a safe, purposeful experience, and I wanted to get as much bang for my buck as I could. The retreats offered in Jamaica sounded amazing – a week long, with three different psilocybin experiences during the week with a day in between each one. The cost was about two grand, not including airfare. But cost aside, I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to leave my family for that long. Or if I even needed to do it three times.
Given the specs of the Jamaica retreat, I knew it would require waiting and saving, which I was OK with. But I was feeling very stuck. So now that I had an idea about the legality of it, I just searched, “guided psilocybin retreats” and up popped the Netherlands. Instead of saying, “Yes! It’s legal!,” the Netherlands chooses a more subtle approach of allowing it without condoning it. The retreats in the Netherlands were significantly shorter (a weekend) and significantly cheaper (even with airfare). Also, an important factor for me – they offered women’s-only retreats.
It’s December 6. While I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, I found out that’s the day the Dutch celebrate Christmas. The day I arrived was the day they turned on the Christmas lights. It felt meant to be.
Today, I got updated Ancestry DNA results – that put the Netherlands smack in the center of two overlapping circles, my own Venn Diagram of genealogy. So, I’m celebrating some Dutch heritage, and feeling festive.
This week, I’ve been watching cheesy Christmas movies, eating chocolate-covered raisins, and meditating for 40-50 minutes a day. Last year, I was doing two of those things. I’ll let you guess which ones.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be putting up a series of posts about my trip. I’m feeling an apprehension that I haven’t felt before about posting. Sure, I felt a twinge about the sex books, but this trip feels bigger than that.
I could whitewash it. But as they say, if you’re going to lie, you’d better hope you have a good memory. I don’t, which is why I write everything down. So I’d rather tell the truth than try to keep my story straight.
I went to the Netherlands because what I wanted to do is illegal in the U.S. That makes some people uncomfortable.
I don’t want to put a disclaimer up about my content, but I do want to invite you, if you choose to keep scrolling when those posts start coming, to keep an open heart and to stay curious. It’s been a phrase that has been coming up in my life for 3/4 of a year now – that invitation to stay curious.
It’s a lot easier said than done. I often get judgemental, indignant, and hurt before I remember the part about curiosity. So go ahead and feel those other things, too. But remember the curiosity.
When I’m packing for a trip, I always spend some time working out which books to bring and how many. I typically think I’ll read more than I actually get to. I also usually travel with my family. But this most recent trip, I’d be traveling alone. So the books I was bringing were going to get my full attention. Also, I was going on retreat, so it was important that I was putting the right stuff in. I needed to bring books that were physically lightweight and easy to carry since I was traveling alone and not checking any bags.
In addition, I was super, skin-crawling anxious ahead of this trip, and knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything too heady or deep, at least on the way there.
Crazy Rich Asians met the criteria on all counts.
I am so excited to share this book today, because it represents a wonderful first. It was recommended to me by my 11-year-old, Two. She read it, told me about it, then she left it on my book pile and told me I should read it, because it was that good.
She tells me about books all the time, and she is a voracious reader, but this is the first time she was so direct with a recommendation. And true to her word, it was a great book.
The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7b NLT
I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about a woman’s midlife re-evaluation lately. It happens in your late 20’s to late 30’s, and it’s when you really start to question the futility of your repetitive everyday tasks and ask yourself if what you have is what you wanted from your life. It can be a little threatening to the people who love you because it can catalyze some serious change.
I’ve always been a late bloomer, so I’ve only been experiencing this the past couple of years. I was coming to the end of my childbearing years and trying to figure out how much Laura was left outside of making babies, giving birth to them, and feeding them until my already small chest was downright pathetic.
This midlife business (ironic we women hit it early, since we live longer. It’s really more of a First Third of Life Re-evaluation, but that just means we have more time to get it right after our first meltdown) has really made me question as a Christian and as a woman, which standards I’m holding myself to and why.
