It was a week before I finished university. I was laying in the front lawn of our house with my roommate. We were sunbathing in our bikinis. The heat felt delicious as it pressed itself against my skin. I thought, nothing could make me feel any more blissed out right now. I was so aware of the fact that I was about to complete my degree. Even though I still had a week of packing and exams left, I was so ready to step out into the world.

The only thing that I wasn’t ready for was to be the person that I truly, deep down inside, wanted to be. The funniest part about this, though, is that I had no idea who that was. For the previous several years I was lying to myself about who I was and I didn’t even know it. Fortunately, I finally learned on this particular day.

Let’s take a moment to rewind to the day before. A dear friend of mine gave me a bag of magic mushrooms and told me to take them in a moment that I wanted to “have an experience.” They were my graduation gift from him. Little did I know, I was about to graduate from more than just university. I knew so little about mushrooms and was honestly expecting to feel like I was high on marijuana, but with more colours. Plus, there wasn’t a lot there and my friend assured me that I wasn’t going to feel much.

So, the next day, as my roommate and I were resting on the warm grass, I thought maybe this could be a good moment to “have an experience,” as my friend suggested.

“Wanna try those mushrooms?” I finally said to my roommate, Leah.

She looked at me with wide eyes and I could see the sun glisten on her face as she beamed at me. “Fuck yes!” she cheered. She also had never eaten magic mushrooms. We ran inside like a couple of giggly teenage girls that just received an invitation to prom by the hottest human in school. I’m not sure why we were so excited about this experience, because it turned out to be one of the most intense journeys I’d ever committed myself to.

We went up to her bedroom and divided up the mushrooms perfectly to the best of our ability. We chewed them with the nastiest looks on our faces. We couldn’t stop laughing at how disgusting they were. I didn’t even like regular mushrooms at the time! Once they were consumed, we called two really good friends of ours to tell them that we had just eaten them. These two friends both had a variety of experiences with mushrooms and were familiar with the voyage we were likely about to have. They both responded, “I’ll be there in a couple hours to check on you. Enjoy your journey.”

I wonder why this is referred to as a “journey,” I thought to myself.

It was just the waiting game. We smoked a little bit of weed and talked about the mundane, until I started to feel something fuzzy and yummy in my body. I stood up with excitement. I just wanted to be outside and see trees and connect to nature. I was ready to go on an adventure to the riverfront. “Let’s go for a walk!” I cheered to Leah.

“I-I c-can’t,” she stuttered as she slowly moved under the covers of her bed. I was too consumed in the blissful feeling I started to experience that I didn’t even realize that Leah began to feel worried. “You go,” she said. “I’m going to call Phil.”

Phil was the guy that she liked at the time. However, Phil turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Leah became increasingly scared as she picked up the phone to call Phil. I knew that Phil didn’t care about her in the way that she deserved to be cared for. I know that I cared for her and just wanted her to be happy. I didn’t understand why she was calling Phil when I, her best friend, was right in front of her asking to support her.

Phil answered the phone and Leah asked him to come over and be there for her because she was scared. This was a completely fair request. Phil, Leah, and I had all been talking about mushrooms recently and he prided himself in the fact that he had a lot of experience with them. Unfortunately, I was not surprised when his response was an unenthused, “I’m kind of busy right now. Maybe I can stop by later.”

This hurt me. “Why are you calling him?” I insisted for a response. “He doesn’t even care about you and I’m right here. I’m your best friend!” This both was and wasn’t true. Leah and I had been drifting apart for the previous few months and it was undeniable, although we never spoke about it.

Leah looked at me in disbelief that I continued to call her my best friend. She watched me with a firm gaze, right as the mushrooms were settling their magic into my core, and said, “Our friendship will never be like how it was before.”

I dropped my face into my hands and wept as I sat on her bed. I could feel her move from under the covers and sit in front of me. We sat together, cross-legged, still in our bikinis, right knee to left knee and left knee to right knee. I finally took a deep breath and looked up at Leah through my red face and salty, wet eyes. She was crying too.

For the next two hours, we balled our eyes out together as we held hands and communicated some of the most important messages in the world. We talked about the importance of connection, of being a good friend, of supporting those that we care about. We spoke about the need humanity has for hugs and how we need to contribute to that more. We spoke through tears and snot and sweat and even a little bit of drool. It was so scrumptiously messy and these words needed to come out.

This sort of conversation was brand new to me. I never even explored some of these thoughts before.

Otter, one of the guys we called after we ate the mushrooms, let himself in our house and walked up to Leah’s room. He could hear us crying from downstairs. “Whoa, what’s happening here?”

“We love you, Otter!” was all we could manage to get out of our voices boxes when we saw him.

“I love you girls, too,” he said with warmth and a gaze of true friendship love. “I’ll just be downstairs. Mark will be here soon, too, I think. Whenever you girls are done, we will be there.”

“Thank you, we love you,” we said again through our weeping tears and dramatic sighs. Otter closed the door behind him and Leah and I continued moving on the same train of reflection and pulling out the roots of the weeds that have led us to believe the world is a sad and disconnected place. It felt like I was slowly discovering some of the greatest secrets of the world.

Still, to this day, eight years later, I continue to reflect on this experience as the time that I really learned how important it is for us to hug each other and that it is not only okay, but natural and beautiful to need people.

By the moment this journey was complete, the sun let us know it was time for dinner and our friends were patiently waiting for us in our living room as they connected on their own and subtly listened to the tears coming from us in Leah’s room.

“How was it?” Otter asked as Leah and I finally reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Wow,” was all I could get out. “I’m actually a little scared.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I feel like I’m viewing the world differently.”

“It’s normal,” Mark said with a genuine gaze.

We made dinner together and placed it in the oven. As it was cooking, I decided to call my Dad and tell him. I needed some support. I literally went from being a person that did not hug people and prided herself in the fact that she doesn’t need anyone to being someone that wanted to give endless hugs and fully understood how incredibly magical it is to need people and to be needed. I called him, hoping that he would provide me with the reassurance that I needed.

Have you ever witnessed your entire worldview shift in one single moment? Maybe it has happened many times for you. But, do you remember the first big shift? This was mine. If you’ve never experienced this, think of it as realizing that in your entire life, you were never who you thought you were, but you were actually someone far more connected, happy, and free than you could ever imagine.

I told my dad. I explained everything to him and voiced my confusion. Thankfully, my dad has had his fair share of psychedelic rodeos. “Dinner’s almost ready,” Otter said as he poked his head out the front door, momentarily taking me out of the story of the day I was sharing with my dad.

“Perfect, I’ll be inside in just a minute,” I said. He smiled and walked back inside.

“You know, sweetheart,” my Dad began, “everything that you have experienced is normal. It can be common for people to have these experiences and not be able to hold onto this new worldview so they go back to their old habits and beliefs.” He took a deep breath. “Would you like to go back to your old habits and beliefs?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“No…” I said.

“You must integrate.” I could hear his hopeful grin through the phone. “Make sure that this worldview doesn’t escape you. Embody it. Live it. Remind yourself of it. Don’t let it leave you.”

“I won’t,” I sighed happily, feeling comforted by my dad’s support.

“Dinner’s ready,” Leah said as she stepped out on the porch.

“I’ll be right in,” I said as I held the phone to my ear. She walked back inside to set the table up. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Anytime, honey. You’ve got this. I love you,” he hung up the phone.

To this day, I mark this moment as one of the most transformative moments that completely changed my life forever. I owe so much to this experience and I am forever grateful for Leah, Otter, Mark, my dad, and the friend who gifted me the mushrooms. This one day inspired the spiritual life, mission, and vision I live and have continued to dive into ever since this one single moment. It has truly shaped my life and to think that I “wasn’t supposed to feel much,” is something I still laugh at.