Dear Family & Community,

I want to share an update with you on my amazing healing journey and invite you to join me in supporting Maestra Rogelia’s vision to have a healing centre of her own, which will empower her and her family. I am dedicating time and energy to support this vision, in reciprocity for the tremendous healing and love that I have received. I write this to you from the wondrous Amazon, where I am healing more than I ever imagined, cultivating a great connection with a powerful curandera, and connecting with ancient plants of the earth, all of whom share with me such sacred intelligence.

Gratitude

I am also writing to share with you my gratitude. To those who supported my GoFundMe, thank you from the depths of my heart. Your generosity has extended my healing treatment, and I am deeply grateful. I thank all of you for holding me in your hearts and keeping me in your prayers. All of your love and support has been, and IS, in itself very strong medicine!

Healing Progress

The healing has been incredible! It's been 6 months now for me here in the wildly hot and humid Peruvian jungle, nearing completion of this plant healing treatment with Maestra Rogelia, who I've learned is an Onanya, a Shipibo term translated as ‘one who knows'; ‘one who knows how to cure with the plants.' She is from an ancient lineage of ancestral indigenous Shipibo healers steeped in the wisdom of healing with the vast medicinal plants of the Amazon.

Neck Healing

These photos of my neck say it all.

Before I left Canada for Peru (forgive the graininess):

Just before beginning the treatment here:

A recent photo:

Cured of SIBO

I have been cured of SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth). My gut is healed! 12 years of suffering with SIBO is over. No more gut inflammation, no more pain, bloating, distention, no more extremely limited food intake or getting sick for days. Now, I can eat anything I want! Bread, garlic, rice: hallelujah! Popcorn, birthday cake, pasta in tomato sauce, downright delicious! I've been able to enjoy food now for over 2 months, and it is a god-send.

Healing Trauma

The amount of healing in the realm of trauma has been profound. Emotional, spiritual and psychic trauma imprints have been transformed at SUCH a high level. Transmutation takes on a whole new meaning. Resolution of nightmares, deep grief, developmental and psychotic trauma, and deep dissociated fears are a few examples. I feel the most consistent, deep ease I think I've ever felt in my life.

Shipibo Family Love

Being welcomed in, and living with Onanya Rogelia and her family for the past 4 months, full of laughter, love and playfulness with children and adults alike, has also been part of the healing. When I have run out of money they insist that I not worry. They tell me they will share with me what they have. And, indeed they have. This is especially touching because they are far from affluent, and I have been determined since to find ways to offer reciprocity.

Specific Ask:

I am raising $5000 CDN to support Onanya Rogelia’s vision to build a healing centre of her own, that will empower her, her family, and her community. This funding is not for me or my healing treatment; all funds raised will go towards construction of the healing centre. Onanya Rogelia has worked at healing centres, including the most renowned in Peru, for years and consistently leaves workplaces due to varying exploitative conditions. She seeks to practise independently, and wants to stay close to home to help raise her grandchildren who absolutely adore her.

Your donation will be used to fund building materials like wooden beams, wooden flooring, and giant jungle leaves for the roofing of cabins, a kitchen, and a maloka (ceremony house). The centre will be 100% indigenous owned and operated. Its creation has already begun. With your support they will be able to finish construction and open their doors to extraordinary healing.

Your Support

Your support will help create a safe, empowering space for deep healing, free from the harms of exploitation all too common in the ayahuasca tourism industry. Your donation will provide the trust and reassurance needed for those seeking healing, that they indeed find authentic healing with true healers, in a safe and healthy environment. Your contribution will help uplift and protect the indigenous Shipibo healers and their extraordinary healing wisdom, which is at real risk of being lost.

This healing centre will also provide a space where this traditional ancestral medicine will be practised regularly by Onanyas; taught to Shipibo; and shared with foreigners through informative retreat workshops. Personalized plant healing treatments for individuals and 10-day retreats for small groups, will also occur at this healing centre. Your donation will strengthen the practise and vitality of this ancient medicine while supporting good pay, fair working conditions, respectful treatment and long-term jobs for the Onanya healers and their local community.

To understand the immense benefits, it’s helpful to be aware, if you aren't already, of the extensiive harms of ayahuasca tourism, coupled with financial impoverishment common to Shipibo communities. Both are impacts of a larger political and sociocultural context of indigenous people in Peru, not unlike the legacy of colonization - and resilience - for indigenous people the world over.

Without a healing centre of her own, Maestra Rogelia, like many curanderas and curanderos, needs to leave her home, family and community in order to find work, often in retreat centres far from home that cater to foreigners paying good money to drink ayahuasca. These retreat centres, where the curanderas and curanderos offering the medicine are commonly expected to overwork, accept poor payment, and where their health is not considered, much less prioritized. All these harms are eliminated with a healing centre of her own.

My contribution to supporting this vision includes organizing two 10-day healing retreats which are at Onanya Rogelia's wishes, and that she will be offering here in Peru this November. Additionally, when I complete my healing treatment, return home and resume paid work in Canada, I will donate a percentage of my income and continue finding ways to support this beautiful vision to its completion.

Your donation to this healing centre will make this vision a reality. It will also empower an alternative to indigenous exploitation and an investment in indigenous sovereignty, which is crucial to the health of our world right now. Your support will also help to elevate and restore our collective faith in the capacity of the plants of the earth to provide us with the healing that we need and that we seek. Your contribution will add strength to the importance of this exceptional and largely unparalleled medicine practice, that it is kept alive and well and all the more accessible to those in need of healing in this pivotal and transformational time for humanity and all beings on earth.

I thank you deeply for taking the time to read my story.

And, I thank you for any measure of support you are inspired to give.

If you feel called to deepen you own healing through the transformative power of these ancient traditions, Onanya Rogelia is offering 10-day healing retreats this November. I too will be there in support. Check out details at:

https://onanya.kindrootswellness.ca

With much love and gratitude,

Lore

(aka Lorenzo

- my jungle nickname)