I really couldn’t make this sh*t up if I wanted to.

Waves of emotion that rose out of nowhere took me on a tumultuous ride the afternoon before leaving for the Good Medicine off grid gathering in Williams, Oregon. 

Tears and blubbering poured forth without a specific reason.

I reached out for support and received much.

The act of sending texts or making a FB post on my own behalf is a big part, then opening to receive the outpouring of responses, even if virtual and brief, provides deep reassurance. 

I am never alone in my pain or my joy. I am seen, heard and valued. My life matters to me and many others. 

When I am in need someone or something in my community is resourced and will respond with lovingkindness. 

Sacred reciprocity is alive and well.

When I posted about my big feelings on FB I learned that many friends were also highly emotional that post Solstice Moonday June 21, 2021. 

Mercury was still in retrograde, Summer Solstice had given us our longest daystar illumination in the Northern Hemisphere while the moon was waxing to full for Thursday the 24th.

Shadows and contrast were particularly lucid through the long days through moonlit short nights on our Northern Hemisphere.

I could feel the bigness of the configuration even though at the moment I’m choosing not to read horoscopes to not be overly influenced by outside perspectives.

Turns out all forces reside within me.

For the most part my inner host of characters have learned to coexist in harmony, but that Moonday afternoon certain aspects felt as if they might drown me.

My beloved Shaloma is Shaloma through these hurricanes of mine. Steady sunshine almost all the time. 

Though I know he’d prefer I’d “drop the hot coal” that’s creating my suffering and return to joy alongside him, he remains in his center as I ride my tsunami of tears & snot.

We navigate my waves in our own ways. 

Gratefully they are far less dramatic than in previous times of this human experience as a woman named Karyn Leigh.

Though I might prefer to be held and comforted, I respect that Shaloma views this as feeding the swamp rat of emotion and prefers to “do something else” when I’m not up for sexy time.

I’ve learned from Human Design that I have an emotional wave and he does not.

That’s ok with me, I’m ok with that.

The afternoon hours pass with several stops & starts of sexy time because of the waves of emotion moving through me.

I finally have a few drops of Love Train cannabis tincture and even enjoy our delicious lovin’ by the evening hours.

We rise up and finish preparation for Good Medicine, soaking the garden as thoroughly as possible hoping the baby beans, basil, cilantro, parsley, flowers and less established fruit trees won’t die while we are away singing, dancing and praying off grid.

I’m in awe that everything fits so easily into Starlight Kaur—Kaur is the feminine part of all spiritual names given by the Kundalini Yoga community so I couldn’t resist referring to my cars as Kaurs. Starlight Kaur is my sweet 2013 ride that replaced my 2007 Subaru Forester Kaur in March. 

We are actually on the road at 10:30am, purrfectly on schedule to arrive around noon to set up camp and get to the kitchen for our dinner prep shift at 2pm.

We glide in and out of South Medford for gas, watermelons & lysine with ease.

The one-hour drive to Williams through the Applegate is a feast of farm & woodlands under a clear blue sky.

I’m overcome with gratitude upon arrival on the land where I am welcome because of Shaloma’s 35+-year-history with the owners of the pristine 40-acres.

Until 2020, they had opened their gates for 400 festival folk of all ages and stages of life every summer since they began in the late 80s. Covid and smoke from wildfires had them cancel. 

Now it is June 2021. As the world tentatively reopens, the founders selected just 100 folx to invite. I was one of only a hand full of newcomers to be vetted to come in three weeks between the invitation & start of the festival. 

They anticipated the festival by a month to enjoy the clear skies, keeping all activities outdoors for health & wellbeing of all who participated whether vaccinated or not.

After much deliberation, research & prayer, Shaloma and I had gone for our first Pfiizer shot a little less than two weeks before Good Medicine. Whether or not to be vaccinated for Covid-19 has been another topic we navigate from our unique perspectives.

Until the invitation to attend Good Medicine, Shaloma was happy to keep our indoor contact to just me & him. 

I for the most part was too. Yet, I’d been traveling my nomadic priestess way throughout the pandemic to visit friends & family almost all of whom are now vaccinated. 

Back in early April when I could have received my first shot, I chose to wait until we made a consensual decision as partners.

I used the vaccine decision as another opportunity to practice listening to my body and daily uh huh, uh uh from my solar plexus authority center. This too, I learned from Human Design.

I consistently got over time that my body was neutral, both to the vaccine and the virus. My life and soul destiny in this body would not be greatly affected either way. Neither the virus or the vaccine were of threat or great benefit in and of themselves; I know how to take care of myself to avoid contracting the virus, and I would not be adversely affected by side-effects of the vaccine if I one day chose to receive it. 

Making the vaccination decision in partnership brought opportunities for deeper communication about each of our needs and boundaries. As challenging as it was at times, navigating big communication was also a gift of being a nomadic priestess throughout the pandemic with each of the hosts I’d stayed with once I’d closed the doors of my rented temple home in the San Francisco Bay Area in May 2020—another story included in full in my memoir.

I imagined we’d remain unvaccinated until something forced our hand that we really wanted to do, like travel, but even that wasn’t our final turning point.

Shaloma was more comfortable being around other people if vaccinated. Since we were going to be around more people at Good Medicine, we found out where we could get a same day Pfizer shot, got dressed and drove to a Walgreens in South Medford. 

I dressed up in a spunky colorful dress and funky fun coat to keep myself in a lighthearted spirit. 

I felt nervous when it came time to receive the jab, but it was so minimal that afterwards I wondered if it had been anything at all. My arm was a bit sore but that was about it.

A week before the festival we were informed that about half the participants were vaccinated and half were not. 

We were also informed that there had been an outbreak of Covid in the small town where the festival is held just the previous week but that no one coming was connected to those who were affected.

Our temperature was taken upon registration. 

A lovely woman with a British accent took our cash contribution and had us sign waivers before we drove in to unload our things.

Even before beholding the creek rolling through the center and giant meadow with a huge tipi to one side, I was overcome with tears of gratitude and awe that I could be included in this far more intimate gathering on such prayerfully tended land. 

I knew part of the emotion of our preparation day was from diving into an unknown alongside my beloved.

I have only been to a few large gatherings and never with a partner.

I know how to tend myself but how would it feel to be among a whole new group of humans who all knew each other and my sweetheart?

I had no visual or sense of what the land and gathering would be for me beyond hearing good things from my beloved and few friends of ours. 

I was deeply touched at how smooth our final morning and short journey to the land had been. 

We each had a tent because we have different sleep habits. 

Shaloma left a tarp at a creekside site right off the main foot bridge over the creek. 

He loves being smack in the center of all the activity, close to the meadow, tipi for music at night, kitchen and tea stations. 

I could not imagine choosing a site with the most foot traffic even if the creek flow might muffle the voices and feet along the paths. 

Five or so sites up along the creek we came to a three-tiered site on the eastern mountain side.

It seemed plenty close to me and yet private enough that I wouldn’t be awakened by constant movement.

Shaloma left another tarp on the flat clearing above the lower fully shaded site I chose for my tent.

After a bit more conversation, we set up camp on the three-tier spot together. My tent on bottom, Shaloma’s on middle, and our outdoor hang-out area on top. 

Another gift was being asked to do our work exchange shift for the first dinner prep. I so enjoyed chopping veggies for soup on the picnic tables outside the kitchen guided by Tasha our encouraging kitchen manager who was also a newcomer to the gathering.

I sang and danced alongside Shaloma before and after dinner in the meadow and met some stellar young men who joined right in.

“I’m only dancin’, twirling and dancing…”

Though I’d slept great the night before, when I went back to the tent to take out my contacts, I ended up going to bed instead of heading back out for music in the tipi around the fire.

I lay on my back relaxed but not asleep for several hours, talking to Shaloma when he came round and finally returned to sleep in his tent above mine. I woke up at 6am tempted to rise but fell back asleep into wacky morning dreams of city life and my Wasband (former husband) and one of his sisters. 

When I finally got out of my tent to find an outhouse I noticed my flannel pj bottoms felt moist and sticky in the crotch.

Had I peed my pjs?

I then discovered I’d bled into the pjs and through to my sheet under the sleeping bag. 

I hadn’t had a period in more than two years. 

I laughed at loud recognizing a major source of my tears on Moonday had been hormones. 

All that sobbing, my tiredness and low back ache suddenly made sense. 

Often the day before a cycle I’d burst into tears over something like choosing the slower grocery store line. Then seeing that pink on my tp or on my panties—when I wore them—would bring such huge smiles. Though I tracked my moon cycles for many years, the pre-bleed emotions could still surprise me.

Apparently the vaccine and the land conspired together to conjure this offering from my womb back to the mamma of us all in the stunning setting of Good Medicine. 

Ditto for the huge emotional clearing from Moonday.

I did notice and speak to my sister-in-law and mom about a wee bit of pink on my tp when I’d been up with family at Donner Lake the weekend after we received our first vaccine.

Previous to having my first shot, I’d seen reports of women having hormonal changes after the vaccine. 

Up at Donner I did some online research and learned that many women, even post-menopausal, bleed after their vaccinations. 

I knew the land wanted to receive some of my moon blood as an offering. 

During the last eight years of my cycle I had given my moon blood back to the earth.

So with gratitude and a smile, I rinsed out the pjs, squeezing the offering out onto the earth near a beautiful tree.  Then I cleaned my old, long abandoned diva cup and inserted it to catch the flow.

Hours later when I checked it there was just a small offering to make to the land. 

I am not concerned about the postmenopausal emotions and bleeding; I receive them as gifts.

Whatever is arising within, or in this case releasing from me is wild woman responding to the great All that Is of Highest Benefit. 

I offer my blood as a peace offering for all beings to live in harmony and dignity on our mamma Gaia. 

* * *

Wednesday night Shaloma and I planned to take psilocybin mushrooms. 

I intended to try “his way” of having a relatively high amount and still going out to enjoy the music and fire in the tipi.

As they often do, the mushrooms had other plans for me. 

Similar to the way we hold and tend emotions, Shaloma and I often approach and experience psychedelics somewhat differently. 

Though both of us have always used them as entheogens, substances that bring us to awareness of our eternal spirit beyond the physical body and interconnection with all life, our direct experience in “medicine space” can bring some mismatched expectations. 

He has most often had highly connected experiences with previous girlfriends in medicine space. 

I look at a medicine journey as a time to surrender and see what arises, especially with Psilocybin mushrooms. I trust the medicine to take me where I most need to go rather than assume it is going to be a certain way. 

I did feel the land and spirits of the land encouraging me to experience them through the mushroom’s perspective in a human body. I did not know what would arise within me as the full moon rose over the mountain to illuminate our camp.

As we often do, after eating our mushrooms, we headed out for a hike. 

I was most struck by the views of the clouds and the figures I saw in them.

As we passed back through the meadow on our way to our site for some sexy time, the children playing freely captured my heart. 

The 3.4g of mushrooms were coming on strong as we began to make love. 

I recognized the space and started to feel as if they were showing me past sexual abuse that I could release and offer back to the land.

Shaloma’s face became a carnivalesque man with bulging mismatched eyes and black hair I recognized from other journeys.

He registered the fear in my eyes and reprimanded me for going down a worm hole of entertaining horrors in my mind, away from our beautiful present moment of lovemaking.

At that point the mushrooms had taken over and I was not able to not see what I was seeing. 

We breathed together looking into each other eyes. His face did change into other beautiful men I also see often in medicine space, but I was still processing what I needed in a very slow way and did not feel authentic about resuming our lovemaking.

Shaloma became more and more frustrated demanding that I “be here now” with him, focus on the one beautiful thing, stop entertaining the swamp rat in my mind.

I had my saucer eyes fully open as he spoke those words with what I perceived as more anger than compassion and asked, “where is the kindness?”

I knew others could hear us. 

I have never felt afraid or unsafe navigating these mismatched expectations that have arisen many times when Shaloma and I go into psychedelic medicine space together.

I had very few words and had to move very slowly to tend my physical body. 

Ironically Shaloma and my most persistent challenge is around his higher sex drive than mine and desire for as much sexy time as I will give him. 

The humor of this is not lost on me as I was the one ever wanting more sexy time with my last partner with whom I was in an open relationship. 

This previous partner and I began the first weeks our relationship in my bed with nothing but days upon days of hours and hours of sexy time & pillow talk. 

Just four months in, still in the wild throws of New Relationship Energy, we’d leased a beautiful home together. 

I had ignored early red flags and grew through much heart break in our two-and-a-half-years as lovers. 

A year in, always dating many women, he found another lover he preferred to me and most of his others. 

Though I was supposedly free to have other lovers too, I didn’t have the ease he did in finding another good match. Not to mention we were living beyond our means accruing more and more debt all in my name.

I so so so wanted a King who could meet me in sovereign self love with my high sex drive and desire to take a relationship to the limits of authentic human connection. 

The details of the end of that partnership and how I met Shaloma are also in my memoir-in-progress.

22-months in, Shaloma and I continue to meet each other and expand each other with mostly ease & grace. 

We do not “go away” when we have a conflict. We may give each other space, but have never had a rift last more than a few hours before one or both apologize and course correct.

This is my first relationship with a man who recognizes and acknowledges his part in a rift.

I allowed myself to be gaslit to high heaven both in my marriage and again with my last partner. 

I chose to be co-dependent because it was a familiar, even if deeply painful role.

Note to self: the problem is never one person and one person only, it always takes two to tango. 

Now folx who do not apologize and find “reasons” that assume zero responsibility for their part in conflicts that arise will be shown the door and asked to leave. 

I hold all beings in my heart as capable of awakening to love, and I am deeply grateful to have finally grown boundaries with those who have yet to grow up.

Back to the mushroom journey at Good Medicine under the full moon.

Shaloma suggested a walk and music in the tipi might help adjust my focus.

I attempted to rally but just standing up, peeing and walking a short distance to wash my hands was very challenging.

He stood outside my tent singing while I sat in my tent navigating getting my contacts out.

I saw prisms within prisms within prisms of dancing geometry.

Life the epic infinite kaleidoscope.

Fractals within fractals within fractals of vibrating light.

It took a good amount of time to get the small rigid gas permeable discs out of my eyes, clean them and put them away in their case for the night.

Once I had I laid down on my bed, I listened to my beloved sing with another man who came and harmonized with him. What a luscious serenade. 

I wasn’t suffering in any way, I just knew my physical body could not manage dressing and walking down the forest path across the bridge over to the meadow & tipi for music. 

Shaloma finally went on his way, still disappointed, but reassuring me he’d be back to check on me. 

I was perfectly content to lay in silence, taking in the intermittent play of headlamps dancing across my tent walls in the darkness.

I considered that Shaloma might very well find another woman he preferred to me, and I assumed the risk to honor my physical body’s limitations. 

As is often the case, my form becomes more still and mushroom-like than human. I knew I could ask for help at any time, but I didn’t need any. Folx were around in-and-out of their own tents. I trusted myself and the synergy with the medicine. 

I am part of all Life and Life will tend to me. So long as this form is the one most suited for my soul’s eternal dance I will inhabit it. Once my soul has had all the experiences it has come to have in this body, it will transition. 

I honestly can say this with utter confidence and peace most of the time. Wink. Smile.

Not that I enjoy when my body is challenged, but I trust I am in flow with the great ALL THAT IS.

Out of the darkness I heard my beloved’s voice and guitar bursting out of the tipi in the distance and felt how he was being received and joined in his ecstatic anthem for FREEDOM. 

It felt and sounded like a full-on rock concert though all was unplugged & acoustic.

I was so happy for him, little mushroom I was laying in my tent. 

Once his two songs were over, the energy from the tipi shifted back to mellow and barely audible from my tent separated from it by the width of the meadow, creek and trees. 

Suddenly with no sounds or signs of humans in my vicinity the sweetness of sage smoke enveloped my senses. 

All of me received the delicious scent with utter joy. What a gift!  I lay whispering thank you thank you thank you to the source of sage smudging unknown as I drank it in for what felt to be a fair length of time.

I have come to the place where I smudge—burn aromatic dried plants, resins and wood—not to clear evil spirits but rather because it delights my senses and evokes the sacred in every breath. Perhaps because I take so much pleasure in it, both purposes are accomplished.

Could it be that pleasure is a way of saying no thank you to what does not fill us each with wild joy? 

I love to watch how smoke spirals as I pray.

This unexpected visit from a sage fairy brought so much gratitude and blessing.

Since the journey I have considered whether somehow the sage fairy might have been a friend I choose not to have a relationship with in our daily life who I shared many medicine spaces with. 

Was it her spirit coming to bless me as I continue to bless her and all we shared?  

Similarly to my former partner, and around the same time, it became clear that she, too, was a  human who was not in a place of sacred reciprocity with me and I needed to have complete boundaries. 

Whoever the sage fairy was I give thanks!

My how my heart soars when I receive unexpected gifts for the senses.

By the time my beloved returned from his time out playing music and having some very important healing encounters he would share with me the next day, I was ready to attempt to move from my tent to his.

It still took time to navigate my slow human form emerging from it’s mushroom repose.

I marvel how Shaloma navigates in his 63-year-young body with more energy than I have at 51, in a bigger mushroom space than I was. 

He was overjoyed to have been so well received. It was a Good Medicine first that everyone in the big tipi stood up to dance. 

“I was so dancing with you all in spirit, my love,” I shared sincerely.

“I know you were babe,” he concurred in his low delicious voice animated by the energy of his ecstatic night so far.

Our lovemaking was delicious and sincere. Even if the addition of a few drops of cannabis tincture brought forth my utterly bizzaro mind, my heart was receptive and happy.

The next morning Shaloma shared about an encounter and repair with a dear friend that had happened shortly after leaving me in my tent. 15 years previous they had a rupture in their friendship at the festival. Each man had held to his own version of the story all these years. When Shaloma apologized, his friend’s hurt dissolved and they are now excited to look at playing music together again.

The friend thanked me profusely for my influence in the repair. 

I received his thanks though I know it was not my influence that had Shaloma apologize. It was more the mushroom helpers than anything who knocked me out so that Shaloma would be alone and able to have that important encounter.

We both slept in and enjoyed a midday brunch from our cooler of almond butter, thawed but still cold peach pure’ whipped-up from the summer 2020 harvest, and bitter cacao chunks. 

After a refreshing dip in the swimming hole, leaving Shaloma happily jamming nearby it, I set out to find a spot higher up along the creek to exchange my new moon Motherpeace tarot spread for a fresh full moon spread. 

* * *

For many years now, I have tracked and done card readings on new and full moons. 

This practice arose shortly after my spiritual awakening in my mid-thirties. 

My sweet conservative Christian, Mennonite daddy even confronted me about his concern about my “occult” practices not being “of the Lord.” 

I’ve persisted in deepening my connection to these rituals despite the disapproval of my blood kin because it feeds my soul and resonates in my heart as true Christ consciousness. Again topics I delve much more deeply into in my full memoir.

It was my beloved Shaloma who gifted me the Motherpeace round tarot deck I now use exclusively for my personal card readings. 

I have other beloved decks I use for myself and with the groups and individuals I have the honor to guide and with-ness as they develop their own practices for tuning into their unique inner guidance systems.

Every aspect of life while camping at Good Medicine is simplified and slowed beyond the already quite slow and simple way I have come to flow in my life wherever I am.

Just returning to my tent to fetch my journal, cards and a few sacred objects takes time. 

I fully enjoy walking in the creek upstream playfully looking for the right spot to keep my feet in the water, sit on a towel and keep my cards and sacred objects dry. 

I’ve already seen two small snakes since arriving on the land. I receive them as the medicine of my capacity to transmute anything, even poison, into something of benefit for myself and the whole cosmos of which I am part. Thankfully both slithered away quickly upon hearing me approach. 

The first snake was sunning near the creek close to where I explored again for my card reading so I speak aloud as I splash in the shallows seeking my spot.

Once I’m settled on a dry patch of pebbles, I retrieve my cards and lay out a miniature altar with two apophyllite pyramid shaped clear crystals and one piece of obsidian I stealthily slipped into my pocket while visiting the Big Obsidian Flow in the Newberry Volcanic National Park near Bend, Oregon. Shh, it’s not allowed but I heard a few select stones asking to be with me.

I take some deep breaths after placing the past cycle’s cards back in the deck, still asking which type of reading to do and what my primary question is to focus on from the full moon back to new, known to be the time for releasing rather than calling in.

The question that formed before I drew my primary card and three supporting cards was What do I leave behind here on this land, in these flowing waters, give away to these winds and the tipi fire? 

The card that came as my primary focus for full to new moon was none other than the zero of the major arcana, FOOL. 

Yep, I couldn’t make this up if I tried. 0 Fool Moon. 

I understood I was to leave behind all my seriousness and self doubt, to release all that might have me withhold my quirky unique Karyn Leigh creative expression and trust in my power to die and be reborn endlessly dancing with the void of infinite possibilities. 

The supporting cards were the Victorious Six of Wands depicting a woman seated in her power and emergent leadership, the grounded Two of Discs depicting a mother of twin infants who has not only fed & soothed her babies but also stands in the center of an anaconda eating its tail, a card which has always said, “I got this.” Lastly was the beautiful rainbow flowing from an Egyptian Oync of the XX Judgement card, the penultimate card in the major arcana speaking of healing the earth and relationships among all beings who share her.

With the large tip of a sea green caligraphy pen, I wrote in my journal: 

I leave here both the personal and collective pain & fear of whatever abusive imbalances that induce suffering. I drop the scary unattractive demonic faces that appeared on my beloveds face during my mushroom journey into the fire with fragrant cedar to transmute it into love.

I love you, I forgive you abuser and abused for we are one.

I love you, I forgive you fear, the feared and fearfulness for we are one. 

Thank you holy entheogens for showing me creator and creation are one. I am creator, creation and creative. Only forms pass away. Life is everliving!

When I forget, awaken my heart that I may dance as the Holy Fool with wild abandon once again!

PS I had a full moon cycle after I returned from Good Medicine, as in full more than a week long bleed. No foolin’!