I started microdosing mushrooms in January 2022. I’d long been interested in psychedelics therapeutically and as a portal into greater integration and wellbeing, and Oregon, where we live, is one of the places where mushroom medicine is being explored legally. In college (and occasionally thereafter for the next forty years) I’d had positive experiences with tripping (macrodosing) for fun and insight, but my expectations for microdosing were quite different. I hoped for a restorative experience and embodied spiritual support for the changes I was undergoing. There was a lot going on. I was in my second Saturn return (but I didn’t even know about that yet), turning 60 in August of that year. My grandson Milo was born in December of 2020 and being his nana felt like my true vocation. I fell down the basement stairs and had to face some challenging truths about my body and my health. My sister Dana and my friend Delila had both self-published beautiful books and my lifelong dreams of doing the same were reinvigorated. My mushroom practice started almost two years into the Covid-19 chaos, and 15 months after leaving my job in 6-12 teacher preparation for AMI at Montessori Northwest. Leaving MNW meant I was self-employed and not working for pay for the first time since adolescence, bringing up both money fears and an intoxicating freedom. Leaving MNW also meant a profound disruption to a 30+ year friendship and an earthquake in my sense of belonging within the Montessori community I’d joined wholeheartedly at age 19. I was reading, healing, building a powerful Instagram practice, learning on line with School for the Great Turning and Kindred World and Educateurs sans Frontiers and others. I spent time every day in the garden I share with my sweet steadfast husband Dave and his mother Sue, who lives in the backyard cottage my own mother helped build as her final home. We grow food and flowers and sunbathe and skywatch. I delved deeper into tarot and astrology as awareness practices, and let my hedge witch nature grow stronger with the seasons.
My first year of microdosing was with very tiny amounts of dried powdered mushrooms prepared by the son of a friend, following dosing protocols (usually four days of dosing, three days off) that I read about or learned about through the Portland Psychedelic Society. Later I found another source of whole mushrooms collected from the wild, and in the second year, I just weighed a tenth of gram and ate it, which is easier. I stopped microdosing in November of 2023 when my sister was diagnosed with a catastrophic illness. But she is completing her last chemo treatment this week, and I plan to resume microdosing soon!
My magical niece MacKenzie had given me a journal that became the place where I recorded entries on most of the days I dosed. I also maintained my regular journal practice during this time…in a different notebook. And I was (and still am) keeping a separate household journal, a quote book, a gratitude journal, a color journal, two books of lists, and a book for Milo. Having my records scattered across several books makes reflective examination more challenging but also more succinct. I was able to isolate just the first year of microdosing and alphabetize the entries. I ended up with many entries that began with “Dream:” and those evocative sequences have been separated from this document and will appear as a separate blog post. I find the dreams more insightful when considered as their own magic, and possibly of little interest to anyone but me! I have occasionally chosen to keep a whole entry intact, but placed it in the narrative where the first sentence of the entry fell alphabetically. I chose to list the dates of the entries chronologically but of course the entries themselves are alphabetized and not chronological. The alphabetical headings were added afterwards, and apparently I wrote a summary at the end of the first year, which I’ve included at the end. So here is what the mushrooms told me.
January 6, 2022. January 7, 2022. January 8, 2022. January 9, 2022. January 12th, 2022. January 15, 2022. January 18, 2022. January 23, 2022. January 24, 2022. January 30th, 2022.
February 2. February 3. February 5. February 8. February 10. February 11. February 14. February 18. February 19. February 21. February 22. February 24. February 28.
March 3rd, March 4th, March 7th, March 10th, March 11th, March 14th, March 17th, March 20th, March 23rd, March 26th, March 29th.
April 1st, April 4th, April 6th, April 7th, April 11th, April 14th, April 18th, April 21st, April 22nd, April 25th, April 29th.
May 3. May 7. May 10. May 13. May 16. May 19. May 23. May 26. May 29. May 30. May 31.
June 2022: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, 13th, 16th,
July 2022: 1st, 4th, 7th, 11th, 15th, 18th, 21st, 24th, 30th.
August 2022: 2nd, 5th, 8th, 12th, 15th, 18th,22nd
September 2022: 16th; November 2022: 15th; December 2022: 22nd, 29th
A is for Attention.
A bit of a grief hole. Agreeing with power vs. agreeing with peers. Allison came by (accidentally) yesterday, left with a box of sticks, gave me a stunning clay rattle. Am I partly haunted by Sanford’s ghost? And I still don’t have a source, almost out. And then so much cannabis. And they gave, too, perfectly. And we didn’t even have time to talk about other stuff! A rising tide raises all boats. Ate leftovers. At the beach with Milo, Jas, Joey, Dave, and Dana. Audrey Lourde, your liberation bound to mine.
A Wild Love for the World: Our larger body is earth. We are the earth humaning. She cheetahs. She trees. The kindness of homecoming. An integrity invited into my sense of self. A being who gives a damn. Nothing you do can sever you from the body of grace.
B is for Belonging.
Babies are not removed from nature, so the conflict shows up there: sleep, sex, food, belonging, socializing, movement, communication. Beautiful hedgewitch tarot reading. Better read some more of my Joanna Macy stuff. Big nap—also napped a lot on the 30th. Birthday dose. Black Strip, to awaken love of natural history and a sense of belonging. Body, mind, spirit, voice. Body (marshmallow), Mind (huckleberry), Spirit (fern), Voice (hawthorn). Booth somewhere—Jas manages it. Bowl in basement—the warren maybe? Broken wrist confirmed. Brooms.
C is for Collaboration.
Called police about stolen Honda. Camelias to the compost! Can’t shake it, 12:30. Cats and gardeners. Cheerful and productive. Collaboratory is shaping itself. Color stories: red and orange, abc of color, I want to make my own greens. Cranky guy in communications. Crows calling.
D is for Dance.
Danced. Day of soul work and grieving and tears and sushi lunch on our bed with Virginia. Dave has Covid, but made it to a.m. meeting for NCMPS and sent the recordings out. Dave has shingles confirmed. Daybed. Dear Joanna, I feel seen, I feel heard. Did a load of laundry. Did not go to the pawn shop with her. Didn’t seem to care for the granola, but what I really meant, anyway, was trail mix. Difficulty parenting isn’t difficulty with nature, because the cultural expectations of parenting are not natural. Dinner with Jo and Ben. Dosed yesterday am and took 3 drops of ghost pipe tincture at tv time…snoozed almost immediately. Dose near the edge of the Lila supply. Drive to beach, lost wallet, Jamison hung the tv, Will was arrested….
E is for Exploration.
Educateurs sans Frontiers. EsF at RC, 6-7:30 am. EsF meeting including Alan Preece this morning: I felt inclusion, belonging, like I had a voice. EsF talk with Jacquie.
Earthling hands. Eat less, and more plants. Emails, Taliesin, Hershey, wands, EsF. Emptied dishwasher. Exploration of ourselves. Every otherbody.
F is for Feeling.
Fare-thee-well, Jen. Feeling called by Meat Loaf: He got those words out there. Felt the sangha forming. Five twos. Float. Food not that tasty. Forgot yesterday! Freewrite with Katey (also in brown journal)
Forget buildings, brands, behaviorism.
Forget the crappy clothes that never knew you.
Forget the denim that didn’t hold the right ass, designer jeans,
everything that was supposed to happen at puberty but didn’t.
Forget the things that everyone else told you had to be capitalized,
your town, your country, your father’s name.
Forget the phone for five minutes. Fuck the phone.
Forget POV and how it was raped by porn.
Forget the porno promises.
Forget tinder and sponges that swell in your belly so you won’t eat.
Remember the body.
Fundamental Human Needs: The elementary children already live the merging of the physical and spiritual territories in their daily lives, including the classroom. But having conversations with them about the chart allows us the opportunity to talk about Dr. Montessori’s viewpoint, about logic and simplifying, about graphics and how they can shape, even distort, the information presented. And don’t be fooled for a minute by thinking the children are naïve or that their expression is primitive. Children have as much of a right to consider their lived experience as the basis of truth and the foundation of identity as anyone else. And we are the ones who don’t understand, just like most of us don’t speak or understand Salish. We could get the idea and infer and interpret, but there are going to be nuances conveyed in the worlds that are not accessible to us. The children enable an observation of identity and community and social belonging that we all lived through in our own development, but that most of us don’t see in our daily lives. Children are RADICAL in every sense of the word. They are the roots. They embody the natural world, they give a human body to the cosmos. The gift of the elementary children is the opportunity for the adults in the world to learn about belonging. We have to make sure they are free to use their moral imaginations and their mythic imaginations and their existence right now, their immediate presence, their cenote moments, their wells and their rains, to create themselves and our future. We live in a world built by children’s response to nature. We have to recognize that the greatest tool for a positive future is that they learn how to take care of each other. We have to commit to the well-being of the whole community, all of the children, and stop the emphasis on individual achievement.
G is for Gravity.
Gardened. Gardened, worked on handouts and keynotes, helped Jas and Milo get ready for the beach. Good for all the plump squishy parts to float away from the solid core of me. Good gravity—less stretching. Grief hole, shame bag, back pain, lots of tears, so many tears that it hurts to shed, it hurts to breathe.
H is for Here.
Had a cry about my mother and also thought about MNW a lot. Hand Chart. Happy Birthday, Jack. Harder than I thought to make time, and that stupid block game on my phone, OMG. Hedgerow: Put a quote a day, and be selective when following; it can be streamlined. He likes to play percussion and dance with me while Dave plays piano. He loves adults’ tech. He loves reading. Helping each other in the preparation of school gardens. Here I am, three months into microdosing. Here in the dark, I hold you near, and Nana’s song is the song you hear. How inescapable is the past, how over. How utterly odd—the nib retracted on this new fave pen I procured from the Papazone (not to be confused with the Nanaspace) recently. Humans and Nature is taking the call for submissions on theme of the Cosmos. Human Tendencies, Characteristic, The Story of Numbers. Human tendency to rest: Maria Montessori never did, she died working.
I is for Insight.
I am also smoking more pot than I’d like and I am eating and sleeping strangely at times. I am a teacher who is learning. I am called to be one of Gaia’s voices. I am calling it morning pages even if it didn’t happen first thing or in the same book. I am frustrated. I am getting in the way of what wants to speak through me—the part of myself longing for expression now is the ecosystem, Gaia. I am more Meat Loaf than Thicht Nhat Hanh. I am not in control of what happens.
I didn’t think/feel that Dave was sympathetic or understanding enough about my complicated feelings of belonging, so I ate through a bag of potato chips and then cried for most of the day—and told Jacquie about it. I dosed today, just a few of the OG left, after some pretty consistent one day on, two or three days off, single capsule microdoses. I dreamed my mother was a witch on fire; I was seven or eight and I woke up afraid. I feel positive. I feel like myself. I feel like starting a Montessori dating app. I feel my responsibility is to love them and to be committed to that love and how they will change through our reciprocal love for each other, through our kinship and connection. I feel pain for Elliott, but also connection. I feel relief to be starting this practice. I have dosed three times, most recently today, since last writing. I have, in fact, dosed since then, but erratically, to say the least. I just feel wellbeing in connection with this. I keep testing negative but I have a headache, blocked sinuses, post-nasal drip, tightness in chest, constant peeing, fatigue.
Insight: Jackie was dying and I was too busy with MNW to give room for it in my heart. Sound familiar? Insights and epiphanies among the aches and tears.
Intensity! In times of great abundance, it is what we don’t have that spurs us into creative movement, action. In 2014 Valerie told me that she had some social security money saved up and would Dave and I use it to turn our double garage, built in 1978, in the backyard (now Rain or Shine Gardens) detached from our 1913 boho bungalow in SE Portland, into her home.
I read someone on the internet saying, “I like to make my own greens,” and I think that’s a great way to think about life goals.
“I seek to be my own teacher, beginning with a hunch or a twinge, asking, ‘Where do you want to go with that?’” wrote Kim Stafford. Is there more than one fucked up black pen?! I think I might be losing a connection with Toko-Pa now that she has moved east…she seems more formal and Jungian—neither bad, but just not the wild BC feeling I got from her here. It’s a lifestyle. It’s my life. It’s okay. I’ve been sleeping in the south den since D. tested positive, and really enjoying the immersion in my own creative work…street/sky view, visiting crows, facing west.
J is for Journal.
Joanna Macy, last Wild Love class, so good. Jo’s apartment. Journal: 3 things you thought about today.
K is for Kinship.
Kathleen Berry is in the writing group with Katey Schultz. Kinship Bookgroup.
L is for Learning.
Last day in Oakland. Land back for babies is giving people back to the land, planting them. Late dose. Later, after many hours with Milo, I’ve been thinking just now: What if Jas did Montessori Awareness Practice with Milo’s sleep in the room? Layer Cake. Learning tied to achievement is not the way for me anymore. Let new mornings awaken me to new days and new ways of being. Let the altars shine. Left side, ankle, hip, neck, wrist—all aching. Lion’s Gate dose. Listened to Chapters 9-11 of Radical Acceptance…feeling it. Listen, oh listen to Nana sing, then later you will see what tomorrow brings. Lost my phone—not fun. Lots of reflection and bringing forth my mother and the ancestors. Lughnasadh dose at dawn, back to bed at 7, woke up sad, low, tearful, frustrated.
M is for Magic.
MacKenzie visit. Made tea, lemon and green. Made decision not to go to Oakland for pd—big decision. Make Voices of Esf an initiative itself, a self-organizing platform, a hedgerow. Many rabbit holes, and like many things we talk about, we don’t talk about all of it. Maybe a shower. Maybe I will go to cat food next, and just small amounts, and gradually transition to the front for the crows, save the back for jays and smaller birds. “May sorrow only carve the cup that holds your joy.” Claire Dacy, A Wild Love for the World. Meat Loaf thanked all the women who ever loved someone like him, and his body was four months from dying at his last concert. Mental health talk, soul talk, seed talk, magic, story.
Milo! Milo for walk, soup, bath. Milo 4-10:30 pm, so sweet. Milo helped. Milo is here, napping on the north den couch where the tv has been ‘broken’ (and usually the remotes hidden) since your first overnight when we watched Rising Appalachia play in New Orleans live—so good. Milo loves to water. Milo 9-4:30, and so much fun. Milo overnight the night before.
Montessori Tarot: Major Arcana, theory, story. Sensorial is The World. 4 Suits: Elements. Fire, Water (including The River and Pouring), Earth, Air.
Mostly body-focused: My back and wrist did not hurt in the pool. Much physical pain, wrist, knee. Much smoke. Must have skipped again without knowing—sheesh—maybe my doses need to shift. My great-grandma, my mom’s mom’s mom. My plan is to finish these and start on Amber’s but I am also feeling the raw.
N is for New.
Napped, sad. New lunation, tried twice in a row. Nice talk with Virginia and Milo. No cannabis today. No—Jo and Jas can do it, lol. No joints. No joints. No joints. No joints. No joints.
O is for Opening.
Oh I know you belong inside my aching heart. Of course, Equinox. Om seed—Johnny Appleseed’s birthday. OMTR zoom, wrote MTR intro of Hedgerow and emailed it to Lynne, learned of David’s suicide…On January 19 of that year, MLK Monday, she moved in, left the coast, never saw it again. Only what has made it to the surface of time’s cenote and not yet vaporized into future. Opened MNW boxes.
P is for Play.
Pandemic as portal. Partners: farms, Symbiop, schools, farmers’ markets. Play: pattern play, poetry play, intuition play, color play, listening to your inner voice play, awareness practice. Post-eclipse. Privilege is claimed so beautifully in the song “Resilient.” Putting things to temperature-regulating rights (at least—more later) after our MTR gathering last night with Liana, Courtney, Jen, Shazia, Jenny, and Amy.
R is for Realization.
Rain or Shine Gardens. Read about Lion’s Gate. Realization upon reading a bit in my gratitude practice—I mean journal: Work wasn’t keeping me from being my witchy self, my creative self—it was keeping me from enjoying it. Realized that what we seek / need/ tend toward is a balance of help. Reflection, imagination, self-perfection, self-awareness. Regenerative gardens for our community. Remembered while retelling: orange shirts, landscape, zoo. Rising Appalachia livestream with Dave. Ruminated till 12:30.
S is for Story,
Sang. See with more compassion and appreciation. She knew she wouldn’t, but she didn’t let on. She shows up in ghosts: David Bowie, John Lennon, and now Meat Loaf. Shift. Showered, emptied and loaded dishwasher and just now ran it. Skipped 17th because Milo was here. Skipped yesterday because I was busy with Milo. Smoked a lot, stretched a little. Smoked at noon. Smoked at 5:30 pm. Smoked at 5 after a day! of EsF and tech. Smoked many joints.
So hot, heat wave. So I believed that they, like me, “felt seen” by the song. Songs are ghosts. Soul talk: With Jas about job, with Jo about job, with myself about work, with Dave in our bed, with Vix about Covid. Speak to the earth. Started the color-a-day journal. Started Volume 5 of Kinship. Stella and Corinne came to the Rain or Shine Gardens and Grace Hall, and left with gifts that I gave with abundance. St. Gertrude for the win. Story of cenotes. Story of wells. Such good sex though.
T is for Time.
Take to your heart these words I say / Go to sleep, love, it’s the end of your day. Taliesin needs more time for follow up work. Talked to Daniel and Krishna. Talked to Ginni. Technically it’s five minutes to noon, so it is still morning on the day after winter solstice. Ten day tolerance break for cannabis while in CT and NY, and supply insecurity too, then heavy re-assumption of the pot smoking and the kinship-proximal emotion flux, conflict, intensity, change, across the generations. The cats missing Dave helped. The feelings at home in the warren, at peace outdoors. The garden helped. The growth was tricky sometimes, uncomfortable, painful. “The only thing to teach is how to fall in love.” Anne Herbert. The rosebush moved. These are Gaia’s hands. The singers I love have to be able to sing about love. They’ll do it if you do it. They started that way but got really removed. Thinking of a babyhouse. This book has been lost since I prepped for Carly and Nick’s wedding on 10/7/22. Today I learned (TIL): Kathryn Lillian Gruber was originally named Catherine. TIL (I think) that I am more Irish on Skip’s side than on Valerie’s. Took care of Milo—awesome. Took care of Milo yesterday. To support human beings in belonging is to give back to the land. Tough weekend for tears and being tired of daily work. Tree of Life. Tried Montessori Awareness Practice about my fall: “I am an accident.” Wow. Trying to lean into myself and my present.
Twelve weeks. 2021: the year that gave us shame bag, grief hole. Two Tutus.
U is for Understanding.
Upsetting email response from Sarah. Urban, Milo, post-Amy and Shazia.
V is for Violets.
Valerie was four months from dying when she moved into the cottage. Virginia being so competent with the car helped. Virginia’s 33rd birthday. (Virtual) RC with Eli and Allison.
W is for Wellbeing.
Walk more, and less tv. Watched Part 2 of my EsF presentation—so good, so moving. Watered plants. We are each of us part of a kinship circle that ripples outward from each of our divine selves manifesting the now—and these are the people right now, whether they are elementary kids or born in 2020 or our parents or grandparents, we are all in it together, making the future and making the past. We are together and our souls are free. Wellbeing. Well. Went for a float with Chaya—her first time. We’re a Montessori fractal—we are each of us a microcosm of human wholeness and potential. We’re not just supporting the development of the children, but also of the place. We shall be known by the company we keep. What color do you need to manifest more of in your awareness? What color has a message for you sometimes? What do the children need to understand about this before they can read about it (storytelling as conversation)?
What happened to me and to Dave 33 years ago….what a radical act of responsibility and love, to choose life, to choose to parent, to choose the child—our Virginia Jasper Colby Stone—who chose us. “What is corn? Light transformed by relationship,” wrote Robin Wall Kimmerer. What the shrooms keep telling me is communicate, collaborate, consider yourself mycelial. What you are telling Milo, Jas, is what you want yourself to know, too.
Where to begin?
seed stories
root stories
vine stories
leaf stories
food stories throughout
rewrite the plant book
redefine help
grow gardens
the storied garden
the cosmic garden
the intergenerational garden
the toddler garden
plant bibliography or biography….
Wanting to do my own things my own way doesn’t make me less AMI. Who taught Grandma to knit? Wild be our dreams, so mote it be. Woke at 5, trainers meeting at 6, dose at 8, smoked at noon (Wedding Cake) out in the sunshine on the back porch. Worked on handouts. Work of water. Wow. Write first. Wrote Chaya’s copy, wrote to Amy Sunshine on her birthday, started working on Urban’s MTR. Wrote to Amy at My Courageous Heart. Wrote to C.C.
Y is for Yesterday.
Yes! Magazine, personal transformation: Ruth King, Shawn Ginwright, Rachel Horne. Yesterday was a day of great synthesis for me—and today too. Yesterday: Winona LaDuke, the mushrooms, Giuliana, hedge schools at the edge of the enchanted life. You are fighting sleep. You’re going to prepare an environment for 6-12 year olds to resource, ground, inspire, and guide themselves in collaboration with you in an exploration of the world. You’re going to tell them lots and lots of stories and they’re going to have many conversations. You’re only as refreshed as your last cucumber, your last hug, your last shared truth. You want to feel rested.
And in conclusion:
What else have the mushrooms been telling me? Center belonging and place. Recognize systems. What wholeness really means: recognizing that we are deeply entwined. Have a growing awareness of transformation—the fruiting body is just a local now phenomenon, but the mycelial network is vast and communicates with itself and with other species, other kingdoms, totally in everybody’s friendship circle. Symbiotic AF. And then there are the spores—all potential, all patience, yet together they can influence the weather.
Also manifesting in a big way this year: amaranth. And there was self-heal and plantain all over the place. And beans. Tonight a pod exploded toward Dave’s banjo while he was playing.
I didn’t pick the mushrooms. I have never, outside of childhood curiosity, picked a mushroom. I’ve seen mushrooms in the woods, east and west, but I’ve never gone to the woods for the mushrooms themselves. I didn’t pick the mushrooms.
The mushrooms picked me.
The mushrooms picked Paul Stamets for sure. He is on fire with it, giddy with it, unabashedly living in awe and in love with the mushrooms.
I’ve been microdosing mushrooms—tiny tiny amounts—every three days or so since January 6,2022, the start of this book. And here’s what I feel: mycelial connections. Underground connections of nature. The centrality of food, our most intimate interaction with the universe. Thinking about food as medicine, oh my stars, thinking about medicine in general. Thinking about what makes a good trip, what makes a good life. Thinking about myself as a fruiting body of the ancestors and Milo and all the babies as the spores, the spores.
Realizing this: the mushrooms make me take on the perspectives of mushrooms. They make me act like a mushroom, and recognize the mushrooming of myself, because I fucking eat them and we become the incarnation of each other. I am my food manifesting.
And I think that it’s possible that a lot of people would have similar reactions to inviting the mushroom teachers into their lives.
But the mushrooms want to be free. They want to be safe, and to have many places to live so they can help us.
Milo liked the endpapers of the Fantastic Fungi book a lot.
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