I drove to Vermont this morning to see a shaman, a soul retriever. I went with the intention of understanding my fear, and hopefully, of finding and reconnecting with the parts of my soul broken, disconnected or lost during the traumas of my early childhood. I would like to be whole again.  I should say that I have decided not to share those traumas, as they are private, and I think, in some ways, irrelevant to my life now. I should also say that even a year or so ago, I would have found the notion of the soul retriever strange for me. I have had some exposure to this ancient and powerful shamanic practice. A soul retriever came to find the spirit of Orson after he died, and it was a remarkable experience for me.

So was today. I spent two hours talking to the shaman, an empathic middle-aged women with a spirit dog named Jill (above). Jill is very old, and is visibly fading, yet she was a part of the retrieval. I sat by her side on the shaman’s couch. She was a spirit in the room, a spirit dog. I told the Shaman about Red, another spirit dog, and she said Red is a dog you can pass fear and confusion along to, and he will absorb it.

I talked about my childhood, shattered early on, and my burying and running from the fear and trauma through most of my life. I talked about the transformation in my life when Maria and I met, and when I broke down, and began the opening that so often comes for men only when they are tortured or traumatized. Better that way than no way. I said I believed men are destroying the world and I was working to be a different kind of man. I talked about my family, my sister. The shaman was an empath, she understood me and my life immediately and completely. She said I was an empath, a man who embraced the values of women and sought new values for men. She said I was a teacher, a healer. I said I do not see myself that way.

She said I was beginning a powerful transformation in my life, which was really just beginning. We then went into a healing room where I lay down on a massage table and closed my eyes. She place crystals around me, and chanted, beat drums, chimes, rang bells, blew pieces of my disconnected soul back into my body. It felt to me as if something was pouring into my heart – this is where the fear resides – and I felt a widening calm and sense of peacefulness as the ritual progressed. She said a Black Panther had appeared at the end of the retrieval session, a power animal, a guide through the night.

I felt something powerful was happening inside of me, some strength emerging. I saw that my fear was not a natural part of me, it was acquired after the trauma, and now, many years later, I am returning to my true self. That is what I felt, and later, that is what she said. It is not that I will not experience fear, it is rather than the fear I carried for much of my life was not a part of my true self, it was acquired in defense and protection. For so many years, I had many ways to hide it or give it to others. Those ways are all gone, and now there is nothing to do but deal with it. A blessing, really, a gift.

Soul retrieval is part of the process for me. It began with frantic visits to a disinterested social worker, graduated to Freudian analysis, then medication, then conventional therapy, and more recently, a turn towards holistic and spiritual counseling. This has taken me farther than the others and I see why ancient practices still endure. Modern medicine prefers to mask trauma symptoms, older practices seek to heal. I think a part of me was shattered early on in my life, and I am working to get it back, to rebuild insofar as I can.

This is all I think I want to say about it now, I need to digest and absorb it. Healing comes in many different ways, and this was a healing experience, it affected me in several ways.  More later. You can learn more about soul retrieval here.