Medicine Baby

I was conceived on LSD in the summer of 1969. 

Maybe. 

Not the year part, no one argues about that, but the conception part has been a topic of conversation my whole life. My dad swears by it, my mom swears that I was conceived in St Louis, Missouri, and they were stone cold sober. My parents had already spilt, after having my two older sisters, my mom escaping to the world of the feminist lifestyle of the late 60’s. Inexplicably, and despite the fact that no two people on earth have ever been less suited to one another, they decided to give it one more try, which I take as a testament to the love of their children.

My mother does agree that the LSD adventure on a northern California beach that summer DID happen, but maintains that it was later in the summer, which means she would’ve already been pregnant with me. But they both agree it was a magical day, and since there were so few of those between them, I like to think it was on that day that I was conceived. 

Either way, the confusion, the fact that no one actually knows WHAT happened and when, is a theme throughout not only my conception and birth, but my entire childhood. I’m a mystery born of mystery, with DMT in my blood.

G E S T A T I O N

There are a few remarkable things about my time in the womb. One is that my mother was experiencing great anxiety and sometimes panic attacks. Also there was great unhappiness and sometimes verbal violence in the marriage. My parents were attempting to build community in Humboldt County at the time, and were part of a motley group of hippies (in the truest sense of the word). My parents were building us a house to live in, but in the meantime we were living alternately in a goat shed, a tent and the back of the station wagon, and finally a rented house. So, stability wasn’t really a thing. 

The big event of my gestation, however, was that my mother took mescaline (a psychedelic) while she was pregnant with me, and she was in a sauna. She was about 6 months along, and she had a ‘bad trip’ in which she saw a freight train coming at her with the word FEAR written across the front in neon letters. Speaks to her anxiety, and, poor thing, and this was THE last time she took psychedelics. 

This event has rippled through my consciousness many times. At times I have been in fierce resistance, blaming my mother for taking “drugs” while pregnant with me, “proving” how little she cared for me. At others, I have been deeply sympathetic to a woman in huge pain who was using plant medicine to try to see past it, for the health of her baby and family. More recently, I have had my own initiation with plant medicines, and have found out that some cultures actually prescribe plant medicines for pregnant women to help with illness, discomfort, labor and the spiritual wellbeing of both the mother and child. 

But mostly what I am aware of is how the fear of that experience for me and my mother - literally being run over by a train with the word FEAR on it - has been lived out through both of us, and has been a cornerstone of my spiritual and emotional journey. Fear has been, and continues to be, my teacher in so many ways, through panic attacks, anxiety, hiding behind others, dimming my light, playing small - fear and anxiety have stopped me from all kinds of things! As I step more fully into my gifts, I see that this Initiation into fear has been a powerful knowledge base. Humanity has been driven by fear for millennia. This is changing, but only recently. We are lucky enough to be born at the beginning of this transformation - from a paradigm of fear to a paradigm of love. And I am lucky enough to get to be a leader in that transformation.

As an evolutionary healer, I NEED to know about fear. I have to have the experience, the depth of feeling it induces, and be willing to go to those depths, in order to be truly empathetic. Through the depth of my experience with fear, clarity arises and the discerning eye on other’s dynamics blooms into full fruition. It would not be so wise, accurate or compassionate without this personal knowledge base. 

So, my conception and gestation feel like my first initiation. In the womb I was already being trained for being with ALL that humanity is. ALL that I am. The intensity, fear, and connecting to other realms was not easy on my little nervous system, but it was training me to love it all anyway. 

And, in the pacing I became accustomed to, the next initiation was not far behind: my 

B I R T H

My father was a medical student for several years, and so had a pretty good knowledge of basic medicine, and they decided, after two less than optimal hospital births, that they were going to have a home birth, with my father delivering me, no midwife. The birth took place in the attic of a rented house not far from the house my parents were building for our family. They were living in a make shift community at the time, a raggedy bunch of hippies out on the coast of beautiful Humboldt County in Northern California. Many of their friends, about 10-15, gathered downstairs awaiting my birth. “And Chloe played the mouth bow,” my mom likes to say about them all gathered downstairs awaiting my arrival. This felt like community to them. 

The birth was long, but uncomplicated, and I was born on February 23 at 8:30pm into my father’s hands. Moments after being born, my mother got inspired to lick me, “like a cat,” she said, from head to toe.

Soon afterwards I was taken downstairs where I was passed around from person to person so they could greet me and welcome me to the world. 

I have had the experience of telling this story a number of times, and often people find it beautiful and magical, which is what my parents intended, and in many ways exactly what it was. I feel so blessed that they cared so much for me and wanted the experience to be meaningful, intentional and community centered.  My parents loved me and welcomed me the best way they knew how, with open hearts and open arms. 

And also, it feels like my birth was all kinds of compensations - for previous births, for the ways my parents had been “conforming”, and as a marker for what they wanted for their future. I was a symbol of new life in new times when love was free, and passed around openly. My birth was performance art for a new way of living; the opening ceremony for the new paradigm human.  

Which is the perfect frame for the Initiation that I now see was taking place in my system. I was being prepared and trained to be in service of the larger collective and use my life as a marker for humanity’s evolution. When I am in resistance, this feels like me putting the needs of others before my own, and that my needs for slow, quiet, calm connection and contained attunement in my first hours in this new world were ignored or overridden by the performance of the thing. But as I rise to my purpose, which includes years of feeling all the feels of these initiations, the gift of these experiences floats to the surface, and I see how deeply aligned to my highest gifts they are. How even in gestation and birth I am who I am, already receiving my place in the complexity of humanity and the universe. I am left with such a feeling of wonder and awe that I could be so uniquely myself before any concept of self had arrived. That this order is divine, and as I rise up to see it more fully, the magic and intelligence of this vessel, this incarnated Effie-ness, which can never be repeated, becomes astonishing, magical and precious. Not from some ego place of thinking I am better or smarter or that my pain was “special.” In fact, maybe specifically because it’s NOT special. My specific experience IS my beauty and my gift. And so is yours. The unique intelligence that wants to come through me to this world to serve humanity comes through these Initiations. If I don’t pay attention to them, reap their benefits and honor them with my own attunement and reflection, they die with me, and the wisdom of these experiences goes un-excavated, unused and unloved. This is the real tragedy of humanity, not our suffering and pain, which is inevitable. It’s in our inability or unwillingness to mine for the gold within that pain that hurts us most, and in a much deeper way than any of the suffering of the human body, because we are denying and ignoring the very wisdom Life has given us in this lifetime.

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This piece is the first in a series of writings about my own Initiations. In midwifing myself through these experiences, I have come to find my Purpose scattered across these landscapes. Reclaiming my “trauma” in a way that is deeply empowering has been a life changer for me. I am offering mentorships in Initiations for those of you who suspect you have more to learn from Life’s most intense experiences. Reach out if you’re called to dive in.  And look for further Initiation writings from me coming soon.