The ancient mystics, shamans and healers believed that when people were broken or damaged, they lost pieces of their soul, left them behind. Contemporary sciences does not believe that is possible. Shamanic soul retrievers seek to find these parts of us and bring them back.  Sunday, a healer undertook such a quest for me, and I am still absorbing  the experience. Most of us, at least in our culture, have moved towards very different ideas about repairing damage to the soul. In my life, I have been on a quest to understand who I am and to repair these damaged parts of myself, and and I have tried lots of different approaches and therapies, from medicines to massage to soul retrieval. All of them have shown me something, done something for me, brought me closer. Conventional therapy and analysis seeks to do the same thing the shamans seek to do – put broken people back to together.

I have to be honest, and say that the ancient, spiritual, holistic approaches have moved me farther and faster, and that has surprised me. I find them difficult to accept in many ways because they are so contrary to what I have been taught and told.

The more I open up, the more progress I make, the deeper I go. Other people might want or need a different approach, and I am not arguing for one thing or another, just sharing my own experience.  And I am getting closer. In recent days and weeks I have come to see that I have come full circle in my life. The fear and disturbances I have felt as an adult were born when I was a child, and I have been talking to that boy for some time now, and we are getting to know one another. I know about his traumas, but I have also come to see that the truth about me is more complicated. It doesn’t come from the traumatized child, but the self that lived before, the one that was not damaged, lost, frightened. I don’t know this one, yet I am coming to believe that this is the real me, my true self. This is the piece I want back, and looking for.

I was not born in fear and confusion and as I learn more about the fear and shed more and more of it – it is not dramatic or revelatory, it is scut work, day in and day out, chipping and pecking away – a calmer and clearer self is emerging. More open, less frantic, stronger I think. I believe that much fear comes from the belief that we cannot take care of ourselves, and this is a feeling we acquire early, most often when we are frightened or made to feel unsafe within our families. The traumatized child is vulnerable. It is very difficult to change the way our thinking evolved and formed. It is also possible.

There are many ways to recover these broken parts – therapy, spiritual work, shamanic work, medications – but I believe that this is the path to self-awareness. To being honest and authentic. To see the damage, acknowledge it, and become our own mechanics of the soul. There is no price too great to pay for a meaningful life.