Ahhhh a cathartic release this morning with the assistance of an amazing healer named Meredith Shippam.
Quick background about this wise and witchy woman... when I moved to Sacred Valley last year, from the moment I met this magical creature, I felt an instant connection. She is my type of person that I can cackle with over anything especially the twisted, the morbid, and the taboo (sometimes dark humor is needed to survive crazy times). I have always been inspired by her fierceness, her independence, her zero-fucks-given kind of ferocity, all of these awesome qualities that I saw either mirrored or hidden in myself. And like myself, she is someone who walks off the beaten path with an open heart to learn about darkness so it can be alchemized into light.
During the last year, I’ve been on my own rollercoaster ride of shadow work and trauma release. In many of the emotional dips, I was silently pulling strength from an archetype that Meredith naturally embodies. I always admired her work and respected her craft from afar, but today something really landed whilst I talking to/with her. Something HUGE. Remembrance to rejected aspects of myself, aspects whose voices I chose to mute and ignore out of a place of deeply rooted fear, aspects of myself that most women are told are too loud, bitchy, nasty, and shameful because [remember] we are culturally taught to be soft, tame, easy going, quiet, serving, poised, pleasing, etc. To my own detriment, I wasn’t listening to the wisdom of my own shadows. It felt like there wasn’t a space for my inner Kali to unleash, somewhere that I could spit my venom and have it be welcomed, purge out what had been building and building and building... until this space with Meredith was created for me to release my fury and resentment and rage and all those things that society generally doesn’t give me permission to feel or express as a dainty woman. Today I set it all on fire.
Meredith blends rituals, practices, and space holding that is very different to a lot of energy healers. Unlike my personal path with shadow work and shamanism, Meredith doesn’t use plant medicine to open those gates. She has developed her own unique method to take you as deep as you are ready for. She holds a safe and nonjudgmental container for anything and everything that needs expression, release, and purging. A skillful guide into the dark becomes a skillful guide because they have walked/crawled/slithered the journey too, thousands of times, and have learned how to navigate their personal hell.
For anyone who might be seeking an alternative doorway into shadow work without traditional therapy or the use of plant medicine like ayahuasca, please reach out to her. It’s such an honor to call this soul sorcerer my sister, a fellow witch bitch and lover of dragons, intuitive healer and kombucha making queen. Thank you for the magic and light you bring into this challenging world, Meredith. I feel so much spaciousness right now that I’m singing again on this sunny Saturday afternoon.
Lacey Ann Luna. Peru