There was a time in my life when I didn’t know if peace was something I would ever feel again.

I was living inside a marriage that slowly changed the way I saw myself, my life, and my future. These were difficult years—years of trying to understand what was happening, trying to hold things together, and trying to find my way back to myself.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I found shamanism.

I didn’t find it because my life was peaceful, I found it because something inside me was searching for a different way of living, a more authentic, peace filled, joyful way of living.

Shamanism didn’t make the difficult things disappear, it didn’t give me a life without loss, grief, fear, or uncertainty (well eventually it did, but the early stages were about overcoming the fear and uncertainty.) But most importantly what it gave me was a way to walk through those painful experiences without losing the deepest part of myself.

It taught me to listen differently—to natur...