Jeanette McDermott
I was ready for my entire life to change when along came these Brazilian shamans, women who have the power to heal.
Pregnant at 14, Mira Dee birthed her first daughter when she was 15 years old. At 16 she began teetering on the edge of self-destruction. Relationship problems at age 21 inched her closer to annihilation, and by the time she was 24 she was drinking a fifth of vodka each day to ease the emotional pain that was gnawing at her soul. She kept spiraling downward with every drop of alcohol she took.
Mira masked her pain and substance abuse well. Only she knew the trouble she was in. From all outward appearances, she was a social drinker, no different from anyone else. She was successful at work. She was rearing her daughter and had a rich and engaging social life. No one knew Mira was partying alone at night, after she had left work or said good-night to friends at social events. Her healing journey from emotional pain was a long way off.
Mira bought fifths of vodka at three different stores to reduce the odds of friends, colleagues, and neighbors detecting her purchases. She tucked airline-sized bottles of alcohol into her purse so they were within easy reach at all times. She asked for doubles and triples when ordering cocktails at the bar. Despite her hefty drinking habits, she managed to maintain a job and raise a daughter.
Getting sober: A pathway to healing
Striking out on life and making it on her own, Mira started culinary arts school at age 16 and rented an apartment with her 3-year-old daughter and owned her own car by the time she was 18 years old. She was working at Harrah’s Casino and making good money. Outwardly, she appeared to be on top of the world at an impressively young age.
“But when you strike it big without a foundation to support you, it all crumbles and falls apart,” she said.
Her success continued to grow as the years progressed. One day, when she was just about to turn 30, she plummeted from on high like Icarus who flew too close to the sun with wax wings. The castle she had built in the sky had no foundation to stand on.
Mira was spinning out of control. After a 5-day bender on vodka, unable to hold it together any longer, she crashed. She hit rock bottom — beaten and battered, tattered to the core. And then something miraculous happened. She awoke from a 120-hour drunken stupor with a clear vision that it was time to get sober.
Maria Orlova, Pexels
We hear the soul speak first. It knows what it wants and will create the pathway to get us there. The mind will talk on top of the soul and try to override it, so we have to listen hard in order to work our way back.
A long healing journey to self-love
At the age of seven, Mira recognized intuitively the impact of dreams and archetypes. When she was 10 she understood Feng Shui and the importance of veganism. She saw the sacred beauty in the world and recognized the potential for such beauty within herself.
Then the magic vanished, and along with it her innocence. Natural gifts given to her as a birthright were ripped away. The people who should have loved her best – her parents – replaced Mira’s beauty and innocence with judgement, neglect, and repression.
Mira was emotionally scarred by her upbringing. The pain of being ignored and unloved left her unbalanced, no longer seeing the beauty of the world or believing in herself. Life had crushed the girl, and she retreated into a world dominated by alcohol to find comfort.
There was also a grace to her situation. Even in her darkest hour, Mira sensed that she could find her way back to her north star, back to wisdom, courage, and hope. Hope filled her mind that her emotional pain would end and she would be able to rediscover the beauty of the world and herself.
“We hear the soul speak first. It knows what it wants and will create the pathway to get us there. The mind will talk on top of the soul and try to override it, so we have to listen hard in order to work our way back. My soul was waking me up, telling me that I didn’t need outward things to complete me. It was time to stop running from myself and my past,” Mira said.
But how does someone addicted to alcohol have a social life outside of drinking? That was the challenge facing her now.
“When I tried to step out of that reality, new things kept triggering me. I kept cascading downward into endless spirals of defeat,” she said.
And so Mira began to set small goals for herself. One small step was to leave a party when people began repeating their stories. Another step was to set about opening her spirit to acceptance, self-love, and forgiveness. The long healing journey to Self was about to begin.
Ayahuasca retreat leads a broken soul back to Self
There was a day of reckoning when Mira realized that she no longer needed vodka to sustain and nurture her. She felt intuitively that in order to set her mind and spirit free, she needed to turn away from the path she was on and begin a long soulful journey down a new road.
“It was time to do the deep work of looking at my ugliest and nastiest parts, so I could shift my perception of who I am in a positive way. I was crawling deeper into shame and self-judgement. I had repressed my soul and needed to open a door to self-acceptance,” Mira said.
A series of circumstances led Mira from Boston to St. Louis to California and back again to St. Louis, where she now lives. It was while visiting a friend in California that Mira’s life took a permanent detour. She was heading to Peru for an Ayahuasca retreat when circumstances stopped her. She lost her job, and the friend who was going with her to Peru lost her passport. Peru was no longer in the cards.
As fate would have it, two women healers, shamans from Brazil, were passing through the mountain pass in northern California where Mira was staying with her friend.
“I was ready for my entire life to change when along came these Brazilian shamans, women who have the power to heal,” Mira said.
Fighting to be reborn
Mira ended up in an Ayahuasca retreat with the shamanic women. They used the psychoactive plant medicine called Ayahuasca to perform ceremonial rituals. The medicine is extracted from the Ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and leaves of the Chacruna plant (Psychotria Viridis). It is a potent liquid brew of two of the world’s most powerful mind-altering substances that can be the impetus for healing, transformation, and divine connection.
Mira didn’t feel the effects of the Ayahuasca at first. But a second cup of the plant medicine dealt her a powerful blow and sent her reeling into a time warp. She thought she was dead.
With a jolt, she was transported back into her mother’s womb, re-birthed, and placed in a cradle as an infant, where the torment and trauma that had bound her psyche had begun. While under the influence of Ayahuasca, she relived her childhood trauma and watched the pain unfold from infancy through the teenage years when she began to seek solace in the bottle. The Ayahuasca forced her to battle the darkest night of her soul.
“When I came out of the Ayahuasca trance, people told me that I had covered myself with a blanket and for eight hours cried, kicked, screamed, and lashed out. I purged a lifetime of toxic energy,” Mira said. She was fighting to be reborn.
Setting an intention for the Ayahuasca retreat to activate her highest purpose
Mira had heard about the benefits of Ayahuasca while living in Boston. She feels with certainty that she divined the plant medicine into her life the moment she awoke at age 29 from her 5-day bender with vodka.
Before beginning the Ayahuasca retreat, Mira set an intention to remove anything that was keeping her from living her highest purpose and truth. There was nothing in her old life that she wanted to hang onto. Setting the intention allowed her to enter into the pain so she could rise above it.
While in the Ayahuasca trance and reliving the emotional pain of her childhood trauma, Mira also experienced a powerful connection to the pain of Mother Earth. She literally felt the pain of the Earth.
“I felt her aliveness in my own bones and felt and heard her desperate plea for us to stop abusing her,” Mira said.
“Mother Earth is the best mother any of us could have. She doesn’t abandon her children, even though we abuse her. She keeps providing us with everything we need. She is unconditional love,” Mira said.
Earth wisdom keeps Mira grounded in gratitude. Symbols of Mother Earth are at the center of her altar — feathers, a statue of the goddess Gaia (the feminine Divine), rocks, and crystals. The items are surrounded by lit candles and other icons representing her ancestors.
Children come into the world spiritually buffed, as the people they are meant to be. Each of us is sent to this earth in perfection. But others program us and destroy our essence by putting their demands and expectations on us. We lose our way, including our connection to nature. We forget to protect the planet and ourselves.
Los Muertos Crew, Pexels
We are birthed in perfection
Mira believes that children enter into the world from other realms and that they are born in perfection, and not as blank slates that are devoid of experiences.
“Children come into the world spiritually buffed, as the people they are meant to be. Each of us is sent to this earth in perfection. But others program us and destroy our essence by putting their demands and expectations on us. We lose our way, including our connection to nature. We forget to protect the planet and ourselves,” Mira said.
The Ayahuasca experience made Mira acutely aware that drinking alcohol, eating meat and dairy, and smoking cigarettes had defiled her body and made her sick. She had a final drink, a beer, after her first Ayahuasca retreat; and then, no more. She was finished with alcohol, and she was finished with cigarettes, meat, and dairy.
“I had a lot of forgiveness conversations with my organs,” Mira said. Like Mother Earth not giving up on her children, my organs never gave up on me. All of my organs are pristine, despite what I put them through with alcohol,” she said.
Mira has been vegan and substance-free for more than two years. She has reconnected with her ancestors and the Tarot cards that she first picked up at age 13.
“Ayahuasca does the dirty work of helping me to face what needs to be healed within myself and she teaches me what I need to do to continue that healing after I return from a journey. The cards expose the darkness within me that seeks to be loved. The cards also reveal the journey of the human soul. It is a journey we take over and over, always showing up differently in a different way so that we never stop learning our lessons,” Mira said.
Ayahuasca retreats give Miranda a new outlook on life
Mira has been through nine retreats with the plant-based medicine since her first California experience with Ayahuasca. She has had experiences with shamans from Brazil, Hawaii, and Colombia. She said each retreat ceremony gets her closer to the deepest recesses of her psyche.
The Ayahuasca retreats have given Mira a new outlook on life. She no longer sees herself as a victim or wounded child. She no longer needs the crutch of alcohol to survive day-to-day. Her soul is no longer bent and broken. She has learned a valuable lesson: that life itself is our biggest classroom and we are here to gain knowledge and wisdom and learn how to love.
Through a deeply personal spiritual practice that blends Ayahuasca, Tarot, and prayers to her ancestors, Mira has come to trust herself again. She is attaining wisdom and serenity through her practice.
Plants have spirits. We use a plant ceremoniously, not frivolously, depending on the energetic life force that we want to clear out of our life or pull into it.
Provided
Mira’s altar aids in her healing
The candles that she keeps continually lit at the altar shoot light beams into Mira’s heart. They remind her of the time when that same heart was heavy and dark, shut solid and shrouded in shadow, before she agreed to let light shine into it.
A statue of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, represents the rhythm of nature, the dance of creation and death. Shiva is responsible for change in the form of death and destruction and in the positive sense of shedding old habits. He represents the most essential goodness.
The snake at her altar represents rebirth and healing. The singing bowls are a source of sound healing that she uses in meditation. The mantras she chants at the altar each morning allow her to breathe in and breathe out as an experience of life and death. “The in-breaths (life) and out-breaths (death) keep me humble,” said Mira.
Her altar includes symbols of Mother Earth and items that her ancestors liked, including a bottle of whiskey, tobacco, and other offerings that honor them. She is not tempted by the bottle, saying that, “Grandmother Ayahuasca removed that temptation from me.”
A fragrant wooden box carved with the Tree of Life is filled with sacred tobacco from the Amazon, an herb that is used in ceremonial retreats to awaken the Divine Feminine.
Rapè medicine has many different purposes depending on what kind you use. I have some for the Divine Feminine, but the main purpose of rapè is clearing the energetic field and grounding the spirit. There are masculine rapès too and ones for all kinds of other ailments—physical, mental, emotional as well.
“Plants have spirits,” Mira said. “We use a plant ceremoniously, not frivolously, depending on the energetic life force that we want to clear out of our life or pull into it,” she said.
“I am really grateful for the plant medicines Mother Earth has given us to heal our physical and emotional wounds and to keep us centered and clear-minded,” Mira said.
Once I realized that it’s nobody’s job but my own to find divine purpose, I knew I had to do inner child work so I could forgive and move on. I couldn’t heal without feeling the natural rhythm of my heart, and I couldn’t feel my heart without forgiving.
Jeanette McDermott
Living her highest truth
Today Miranda sees herself as a woman living her highest truth, much freer from the guilt, pain, and suffering of her past. Her spiritual practice is allowing her to evolve. The altar candles she keeps lit illuminate her spirit. The music she plays, and the drums, chants and prayers she evokes elevate her consciousness.
Her practice relaxes her and reduces her heart beat, brain waves, and respiration so that she can go deeper into personal transformation and self-growth.
“Once I realized that it’s nobody’s job but my own to find divine purpose, I knew I had to do inner child work so I could forgive and move on. I couldn’t heal without feeling the natural rhythm of my heart, and I couldn’t feel my heart without forgiving,” Mira said.
As I reviewed the notes I had taken during my interview with Mira, my own soul stirred. I sought out the lyrics of a Rascal Flatts’ song I’m moving on, which have special meaning for me.
Moving on …
In 2005, I left a long-term relationship that had grown toxic. This song saw me through that period. In that same year, I produced a music video for a 16-year-old girl who was struggling with her own demons. I videotaped her as she baptized herself in the Atlantic Ocean and washed the pain from her soul at Folly Island, South Carolina. I matched the video I took with this beautiful song as a way to help her heal. And now, these many years later, the song comes to mind again while writing this story about the rebirth of Mira Dee.
I’ve dealt with my ghosts and I’ve faced all my demons,
Finally content with a past I regret.
I’ve found you find strength in your moments of weakness,
For once I’m at peace with myself.
I’ve been burdened with blame, trapped in the past for too long,
I’m movin’ on.
I’ve lived in this place and I know all the faces
Each one is different but they’re always the same.
They mean me no harm but it’s time that I face it,
They’ll never allow me to change.
But I never dreamed home would end up where I don’t belong,
I’m movin’ on.
I’m movin’ on …
At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me.
And I know there’s no guarantees, but I’m not alone.
There comes a time in everyone’s life,
When all you can see are the years passing by.
And I have made up my mind that those days are gone.
I sold what I could and packed what I couldn’t,
Stopped to fill up on my way out of town.
I’ve loved like I should but lived like I shouldn’t,
I had to lose everything to find out.
Maybe forgiveness will find me somewhere down this road,
I’m movin’ on.
Jeanette McDermott
Forgiveness, the pathway to healing
Mira’s path to healing meant forgiving her parents for their emotional neglect and abandonment, especially her mother, the person she most expected to care for, love, and nurture her.
To move on, she also had to forgive herself for the harm she has done to her own body and soul and the harm she has inflicted upon other people and the earth. Having a more intimate connection to nature has helped Mira find peace. She has a sense of calm and is able to see how finding peace within herself is all she needs to make the earth a better place.
Mira became vegan through the forgiveness process and has since found intricate and amazing connections between all living things. The ancestral altar she prays before is a part of making those connections.
Through the hard work of facing her darkness, she has come to realize that the neglect and abandonment she experienced as an infant, child, and teenager weren’t directed toward her personally, but resulted from her parents’ own unresolved traumas. She knows with certainty that she cannot fix anybody’s pain but her own.
Today, Mira is studying massage therapy and energy healing. She will graduate in March 2022 with her certification.
“I don’t feel like I chose this work. It was gifted to me so that I could be of service to others. I believe we’re all here to serve other people and Mother Earth. We are put here to make a difference,” Mira said.
Read next Mira’s vegan curry lentil soup recipe
Jeanette McDermott
Conscious of food trauma, Mira becomes vegan
In her early career, Mira was a chef but became disillusioned by food waste. She is now an ethical vegan and has a heightened awareness of food trauma.
“When we eat animals, we hold in our cellular structure all of the pain and suffering those abused and slaughtered animals have experienced. We ingest their traumatized energy and take that into our bodies. Once I understood this destructive cycle, I no longer had any desire to contribute to it,” Mira said.
Mira believes our minds control cravings and that eating clean, whole foods prevents them. She has no desire to eat meat or dairy or to consume any of the other harmful substances she once put into her body. She believes that if you support the body, the body will support the mind.
You don’t want to stop once you start on a spiritual path. You can’t stop. Life won’t let you.
Lost and found: purpose and a rediscovered Self
After more than 20 years of losing herself and then searching for a path to healing, Mira is learning how to live a happy and holistic life that at the age of 10 she knew intuitively belonged to her. She lost her way as a result of emotional pain and alcoholism, but is finding her way back to self-discovery and renewal. She still suffers from the pain of her past, but she is learning to deal with it better, feel it, and transmute it into useful tools. She is working toward finding peace.
“I have forgiven a lot, but I am still working on forgiveness, especially with my mother,” Mira said.
“The human experience is a beautiful experience. I am grateful we have tools to reconnect ourselves with our past traumas and heal our relationships with others, ourselves, and Mother Earth,” Mira said.
“You don’t want to stop once you start on a spiritual path. You can’t stop. Life won’t let you,” she said.
Jeanette McDermott
I thought I had been eating cruelty-free for 30 Years. And then I learned that my vegetarian diet still caused pain and suffering to some animals. In that moment of complete understanding, I became vegan.
Jeanette McDermott
Read next Jeanette’s journey of veganism after first going from meat to vegetarian
