An indescribably dark and viscous fog entered the space between my skull and my brain, as if someone was blowing a sick, heavy air into my ear. I begged for it to stop, but each day the fog got thicker and more confusing. I began to lose touch with reality, and my body couldn’t handle simple tasks anymore. I was no longer able to eat anything without crashing into a heap of dizziness and pain. Debilitating migraines became normal. My heart raced out of nowhere, I ran to the bathroom every few minutes, each bone in my body ached relentlessly, and I felt as though I had the world’s worst hangover combined with excruciating PMS and the kind of flu that most people are hospitalized for. An indescribable physical exhaustion descended onto my life and worked its way into every cell of my body. Even the undersides of my feet hurt, turning my morning walk to the bathroom into a crawl from one foxhole to another. There wasn’t one organ this mysterious enemy didn’t infect. I knew something very deep down had broken.
Over a period of two years, the doctors I visited (those who made eye contact) brushed me off with thyroid medicines and tales of how these mysterious illnesses often never get resolved. This was my first glimpse into how broken people become part of the medical establishment. Friends also vanished and family members pretended as though nothing was wrong. It wasn’t just the mystery illness that was destroying me, it was the sinking feeling that I had become invisible. One day it hit me like thick hail flying off a mountain top—I was literally buried alive. Would anyone find me? Would anyone look?
It wasn’t until March 2016, when a dear friend helped me onto a plane to Austin, Texas, where a functional medicine doctor discovered from a urine test that I had a severe case of mercury poisoning. In that one moment everything shifted. That was the day I felt the answer to my physical and mental suffering was delivered. I still had one nagging question though. How did I suddenly get mercury poisoning? Soon after my diagnosis, I found a mercury survivor turned health coach. Still very ill, I began working with her, and before I even had my first session, I had the answer to the question that had plagued my existence since January 2014. One of the questions on the intake form was, “Did you have any inoculations prior to the onset of symptoms?” I re-read the question several times. Is she asking me if I had a vaccine?
It took another few days for the realization to hit me. HOLY GOD. I did have a tetanus shot several weeks before this upside-down rollercoaster yanked my life away! Was I now one of THOSE people? How could this have happened to me? I had degrees from fancy universities, I oversaw large-budget TV productions and played in rock bands. Me?
Suddenly, I was plunged into the world of detox. I would devote the next several years of my life to infra-red saunas, chelation, gut healing, and hundreds of alternative modalities. How could I have not known about the hidden dangers plaguing our environment? (All those student loans, and I knew nothing.)
Sinking underneath the weight of my monthly bills and unable to fully address the deeper roots of my remaining symptoms, I made the difficult decision to rent out my home in Los Angeles. I felt a pull, deep down, to find an unknown healer somewhere in a cave or mountain top that had the key to my ongoing suffering. After spending several months at my childhood home in Staten Island, I got a call out of the blue from an old friend who had recently done an Ayahuasca ceremony with shamans. He told me he felt healed from his long history of addiction and trauma. Two months later, I was on a plane to Pucallpa, Peru, to do a 10 day Ayahuasca retreat with Shipibo shamans.
I didn’t know what I was going to find in Peru, but knew I had to go. After getting out of a wild rikshaw ride from the Pucallpa airport to the healing center, I was grateful to enter my tambo, which would be my home for the next 10 days. Without realizing it, I said hello to my new roommate, Lara, who would become a soul friend and my lifeline during the most dramatic journey of my life.
During our first Ayahuasca ceremony, we laughed so hard we cried for hours until we began laughing again. The following morning when the sun lifted itself up over the maloca (our sacred ceremonial space) and the sounds of the jungle intensified, I realized that was the first time I had laughed in years. A piece of me was back—like the rain after an endless drought. Each ceremony was more dramatic and shocking than the next, but nothing could have prepared me for what would happen during my third ceremony.
The third ceremony began like the first two. Lara and I walked slowly from our tambo into the maloca and picked our spots side by side. Had I known what was waiting for me on the other side of that dark brown liquid shot of plant medicine, I would have been on the next plane out of Pucallpa. The maloca was dark, lit only by candles and the occasional bright glow of mapacho (Amazonian tobacco) being smoked by the other guests who had taken their place before us. Approximately 45 minutes after drinking my first dose, I felt the presence of someone I knew. It was my father, who had died two years earlier of COPD. The thick smell of mapacho hung over my body and filled my lungs with smoke. I began to cough. It wasn’t a normal cough. It was the cough of someone who is dying from a lung disease. Did I have a lung disease?
I coughed, spit, purged, and cried out the thick phlegm that was choking me. He led me through what I instinctively knew was his childhood, revealing the sounds and smells of evil, mixed with the shocking revelation that I was trapped inside the walls of the Holocaust he had survived as a child.
I needed help. I cried out, “Does anyone else know what’s happening to me? HELP!” I knocked on the floor, which was the way we let the facilitators know that we needed assistance immediately. I don’t ask for help generally, so I never planned on knocking on that floor. That was for other people. But I had never been to this place before. I was in a dead man’s body reliving the most gruesome of all possible human experiences. The smoke got so bad I couldn’t breathe. “Please help me!” I screamed. “Six million Jews died so I could live! Please help! Everyone is suffering. Can anyone hear me? Please help us we can’t breathe. We’re trapped!” I yelled.
The morning after the ceremony, intensely grateful to be back in my own body, I knew on the deepest level imaginable that nothing in my life had been an accident. I was meant to find my way to this medicine, these shamans, and my new soul friends who walked the darkest hour by my side. I wasn’t alone anymore. I became aware that there were invisible guides keeping me safe from the very beginning. With my new heart, I returned to the States, fell in love, and got married.
Since then my healing work has deepened, as I have spent several years working with more plant medicines, shamanic healers, and vibrational therapies to remove some of the ancestral trauma in my energy field. Although I continue to face the residual effects of what happened to my body, I know now there is a wisdom in this journey. Most importantly, I have found beauty and comfort in my new soul tribe, those that know my darkness and love me anyway. As I look back at what felt like death, I realize it was my opportunity to have a second life, a better one. May we all be blessed with the opportunity to wake up before we die.
The following exercise is something that has comforted me during the darkest days of the healing journey I have lived through.
Morning Ho‘oponopono Healing Practice
Find a space that feels safe where you can let yourself be and feel whatever it is that wants to emerge in that moment. I return to this exercise whenever my physical body and spirit need deep support, which is most days.
- Light some sage or palo santo in your sacred space.
- Call in your guides, angels, and whoever you feel could offer guidance during this time.
- You can lay down in a comfortable position or sit up in meditation with hands to heart, depending on your energy level. (Most days I needed to lie down.)
- Relax deeply into your quiet mind and begin to say these words aloud:
“I Love You, I am Sorry, Please Forgive Me, Thank You” - Repeat this prayer over and over again until you feel your heart soften, and your fears melt back into love.
Michelle O’Connell Katz is a retired documentary TV producer who lives in the mountains of Idyllwild, CA, with her wife Cate and their cat Nomad. She is the founder of The Truth Films, a small production company devoted to exploring environmental illnesses and transformational healing stories. Michelle also performs in the indie folk rock band Edson, is a prolific songwriter, an abstract artist, and mind, body, and spirit coach. Currently, she is working on her untitled memoir about the wild and epic healing odyssey that turned her mysterious near-death illness into a powerful spiritual awakening. To reach her for coaching sessions, email her at michelle@thetruthfilms.com.
LISTEN TO AUDIO VERSION ON NEW EARTH ALMANAC
An indescribably dark and viscous fog entered the space between my skull and my brain, as if someone was blowing a sick, heavy air into my ear. I begged for it to stop, but each day the fog got thicker and more confusing. I began to lose touch with reality, and my body couldn’t handle simple tasks anymore. I was no longer able to eat anything without crashing into a heap of dizziness and pain. Debilitating migraines became normal. My heart raced out of nowhere, I ran to the bathroom every few minutes, each bone in my body ached relentlessly, and I felt as though I had the world’s worst hangover combined with excruciating PMS and the kind of flu that most people are hospitalized for. An indescribable physical exhaustion descended onto my life and worked its way into every cell of my body. Even the undersides of my feet hurt, turning my morning walk to the bathroom into a crawl from one foxhole to another. There wasn’t one organ this mysterious enemy didn’t infect. I knew something very deep down had broken.
Over a period of two years, the doctors I visited (those who made eye contact) brushed me off with thyroid medicines and tales of how these mysterious illnesses often never get resolved. This was my first glimpse into how broken people become part of the medical establishment. Friends also vanished and family members pretended as though nothing was wrong. It wasn’t just the mystery illness that was destroying me, it was the sinking feeling that I had become invisible. One day it hit me like thick hail flying off a mountain top—I was literally buried alive. Would anyone find me? Would anyone look?
It wasn’t until March 2016, when a dear friend helped me onto a plane to Austin, Texas, where a functional medicine doctor discovered from a urine test that I had a severe case of mercury poisoning. In that one moment everything shifted. That was the day I felt the answer to my physical and mental suffering was delivered. I still had one nagging question though. How did I suddenly get mercury poisoning? Soon after my diagnosis, I found a mercury survivor turned health coach. Still very ill, I began working with her, and before I even had my first session, I had the answer to the question that had plagued my existence since January 2014. One of the questions on the intake form was, “Did you have any inoculations prior to the onset of symptoms?” I re-read the question several times. Is she asking me if I had a vaccine?
It took another few days for the realization to hit me. HOLY GOD. I did have a tetanus shot several weeks before this upside-down rollercoaster yanked my life away! Was I now one of THOSE people? How could this have happened to me? I had degrees from fancy universities, I oversaw large-budget TV productions and played in rock bands. Me?
Suddenly, I was plunged into the world of detox. I would devote the next several years of my life to infra-red saunas, chelation, gut healing, and hundreds of alternative modalities. How could I have not known about the hidden dangers plaguing our environment? (All those student loans, and I knew nothing.)
Sinking underneath the weight of my monthly bills and unable to fully address the deeper roots of my remaining symptoms, I made the difficult decision to rent out my home in Los Angeles. I felt a pull, deep down, to find an unknown healer somewhere in a cave or mountain top that had the key to my ongoing suffering. After spending several months at my childhood home in Staten Island, I got a call out of the blue from an old friend who had recently done an Ayahuasca ceremony with shamans. He told me he felt healed from his long history of addiction and trauma. Two months later, I was on a plane to Pucallpa, Peru, to do a 10 day Ayahuasca retreat with Shipibo shamans.
I didn’t know what I was going to find in Peru, but knew I had to go. After getting out of a wild rikshaw ride from the Pucallpa airport to the healing center, I was grateful to enter my tambo, which would be my home for the next 10 days. Without realizing it, I said hello to my new roommate, Lara, who would become a soul friend and my lifeline during the most dramatic journey of my life.
During our first Ayahuasca ceremony, we laughed so hard we cried for hours until we began laughing again. The following morning when the sun lifted itself up over the maloca (our sacred ceremonial space) and the sounds of the jungle intensified, I realized that was the first time I had laughed in years. A piece of me was back—like the rain after an endless drought. Each ceremony was more dramatic and shocking than the next, but nothing could have prepared me for what would happen during my third ceremony.
The third ceremony began like the first two. Lara and I walked slowly from our tambo into the maloca and picked our spots side by side. Had I known what was waiting for me on the other side of that dark brown liquid shot of plant medicine, I would have been on the next plane out of Pucallpa. The maloca was dark, lit only by candles and the occasional bright glow of mapacho (Amazonian tobacco) being smoked by the other guests who had taken their place before us. Approximately 45 minutes after drinking my first dose, I felt the presence of someone I knew. It was my father, who had died two years earlier of COPD. The thick smell of mapacho hung over my body and filled my lungs with smoke. I began to cough. It wasn’t a normal cough. It was the cough of someone who is dying from a lung disease. Did I have a lung disease?
I coughed, spit, purged, and cried out the thick phlegm that was choking me. He led me through what I instinctively knew was his childhood, revealing the sounds and smells of evil, mixed with the shocking revelation that I was trapped inside the walls of the Holocaust he had survived as a child.
I needed help. I cried out, “Does anyone else know what’s happening to me? HELP!” I knocked on the floor, which was the way we let the facilitators know that we needed assistance immediately. I don’t ask for help generally, so I never planned on knocking on that floor. That was for other people. But I had never been to this place before. I was in a dead man’s body reliving the most gruesome of all possible human experiences. The smoke got so bad I couldn’t breathe. “Please help me!” I screamed. “Six million Jews died so I could live! Please help! Everyone is suffering. Can anyone hear me? Please help us we can’t breathe. We’re trapped!” I yelled.
The morning after the ceremony, intensely grateful to be back in my own body, I knew on the deepest level imaginable that nothing in my life had been an accident. I was meant to find my way to this medicine, these shamans, and my new soul friends who walked the darkest hour by my side. I wasn’t alone anymore. I became aware that there were invisible guides keeping me safe from the very beginning. With my new heart, I returned to the States, fell in love, and got married.
Since then my healing work has deepened, as I have spent several years working with more plant medicines, shamanic healers, and vibrational therapies to remove some of the ancestral trauma in my energy field. Although I continue to face the residual effects of what happened to my body, I know now there is a wisdom in this journey. Most importantly, I have found beauty and comfort in my new soul tribe, those that know my darkness and love me anyway. As I look back at what felt like death, I realize it was my opportunity to have a second life, a better one. May we all be blessed with the opportunity to wake up before we die.
The following exercise is something that has comforted me during the darkest days of the healing journey I have lived through.
Morning Ho‘oponopono Healing Practice
Find a space that feels safe where you can let yourself be and feel whatever it is that wants to emerge in that moment. I return to this exercise whenever my physical body and spirit need deep support, which is most days.
- Light some sage or palo santo in your sacred space.
- Call in your guides, angels, and whoever you feel could offer guidance during this time.
- You can lay down in a comfortable position or sit up in meditation with hands to heart, depending on your energy level. (Most days I needed to lie down.)
- Relax deeply into your quiet mind and begin to say these words aloud:
“I Love You, I am Sorry, Please Forgive Me, Thank You” - Repeat this prayer over and over again until you feel your heart soften, and your fears melt back into love.
Michelle O’Connell Katz is a retired documentary TV producer who lives in the mountains of Idyllwild, CA, with her wife Cate and their cat Nomad. She is the founder of The Truth Films, a small production company devoted to exploring environmental illnesses and transformational healing stories. Michelle also performs in the indie folk rock band Edson, is a prolific songwriter, an abstract artist, and mind, body, and spirit coach. Currently, she is working on her untitled memoir about the wild and epic healing odyssey that turned her mysterious near-death illness into a powerful spiritual awakening. To reach her for coaching sessions, email her at michelle@thetruthfilms.com.