Wild Free Woman Chapter 2: To be extra-sure

How I became a Wild Free Woman

Chapter 2: To be extra-sure

July 2019

I had just put in my notice for my job that I would be leaving in one month. This lab job was a second go at working in a lab, seeing if there really was something there in the chemistry lab for me after all. The answer from my soul, again, was no.

A little backstory to how I found myself working at a chemistry lab again. Summer of 2017, I was out for a First Friday art walk in my hometown with my partner and his brother. We stopped by a local bar, the Top Hat, for dinner after checking out a few galleries. It was packed there! As we walked through the crowded place, this family of three—a blonde-haired woman, a tall slim man with a southern accent, and their 2-year-old—waved us over. They were about to leave and could see we needed a table. As we stood there next to this family at the high-top table, I learned that this man, Tyler, was a chemistry professor at the University of Montana. We related as I shared my experience studying there several years prior. His wife, Ellie, took note that I was a chemist in a past life (as I call it), as she shared about her experience working with the legislature.

They had plans of opening a medical marijuana testing lab in Missoula. Because cannabis had passed as a legal medicinal plant in Montana, Tyler was feeling passionate about testing this plant. He had survived cancer himself, and it was important to him that the plants and products people were ingesting were healthy and free from known toxins that commonly contaminate marijuana.

I was working at a sweet local herbal apothecary shop in Missoula, having just finished my year studying Shamanic Herbalism with a woman who would become my Priestess mentor and teacher. The reason I studied Shamanic Herbalism came to me in such a clear way earlier in 2017, when I was in Japan.

I had been teaching Hatha Yoga, practicing and teaching Reiki (which is a Japanese energy healing technique), and uncovering my own subconscious beliefs that were holding me back. My honey had been to Japan three years prior and was going again for a fourth and final time to complete his journey of filming ski and snowboarding on the legendary island of Hokkaido. He invited me along this year, which I was excited about because I had not been back to Asia since I left in 2015 to take care of sick family.

So, after a week on the north island of Hokkaido, we flew south to visit several places, including Kyoto, which was the birthplace of Reiki. After traveling up Mount Kurama, the place Reiki was channeled and brought to earth, I walked around a local pond near the flat we were staying in. I felt so lost, so unsure of my next moves, and so weighed down. I had a question circling around in my mind as I walked the semi-circular path around this large pond: “What can I do to feel empowered?” As I walked, I stopped to see this magnificent tree trunk—two tree trunks, rather—wrapping around each other as they grew upwards. I was struck by the beauty and uniqueness of how these two trees were growing. I placed my hands on the trees and my curiosity from my walk came up again: What can I do to feel empowered? And it was as if the tree answered me with an insight that came from not hearing anything outside of me, but hearing some inner feeling within.

“Go back to school, but it doesn’t matter what you go to school for.”

Noted. My mind started spinning with ideas—the first one being my master’s in bioremediation, focusing on mushrooms. But I knew I already had a well-developed analytical side (read: left brain) and I wanted some real, solid, structured training around my feeling, creative, and intuitive side (read: right brain). That’s when the term “Shamanic Herbalism” came to me.

The trees, intertwining in the background and a mushroom covered tree in the foreground.

Now, I had no idea what made herbalism “shamanic” and didn’t really know anything about shamanic practices at this point. But I noted this very clear term in my journal later. Upon arriving back in the States, I looked up this term “Shamanic Herbalism” and found a woman in Virginia whose website pulled me in at every look. I kept her website open on a tab on my computer for three months before mustering the courage to contact her. Yes, I am one of those people who has multiple tabs open on my computer at all times.

After contacting her, I knew immediately I wanted to work with her. My body was shaking with nervous excitement after our introduction call together, and working with her fundamentally changed the course of my life. More on that later.

So I had completed a year of studying Shamanic Herbalism and was working at the sweetest herbal apothecary in town. I had the itch of change stirring within my soul again after working there for a year, but I didn’t know where I would be going. That’s when Ellie called me up and asked if I would like to be hired at their lab as their first employee. YES was the clear answer. I wanted to test myself to see if I still had my chemistry knowledge. To give you a time-frame, this was four years after I had graduated and I hadn’t exercised my chemistry muscle at all since graduation.

Me, Emma, working in the lab again.

It felt so good being back in a lab, developing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for ways to test cannabis. There was also a part of me that felt really good continuing to work with plants, and to weave in my Shamanic Herbalism wisdom with my chemistry knowledge. I really loved working with the spirit of cannabis, yet this industry of medical marijuana felt deeply exploitative of the marijuana plant. I could almost hear the cries of the cannabis plant as I took out each sample, analyzed it for its constituents, and then discarded it in the scientifically sterile way that we do in labs. My Shamanic Herbalism training had taught me to commune with the spirit of the plants, and that it’s really the energy—the spirit—of the plant that heals, not just the chemical constituents. I felt quite a cognitive and soul dissonance working at this lab.

Plus, I did really well when I was developing all these new practices and tools. But once we settled into a routine, I started to feel bored again. And my Priestess training was really calling me to dive deeper onto that path.

So this brings me back to the beginning of this chapter—July 2019. I had started my Priestess Training several months prior and had bumped down to part-time at this lab. I knew when I moved to part-time that I wasn’t long for this science job. I didn’t like the monotonous and isolated work of this lab job, yet I deeply enjoyed using my brain in this chemistry way again. A sign of something to come. But for now, I knew I didn’t want to work in a traditional chemistry lab, and I knew I wanted to learn the ways of the Priestess.

Standing at the oldest stone circle in the world, in Ireland, Summer Solstice 2023.

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