Pilgrimage 2: Sacred Valley — Initiation by the Apus

Feb 5

January 2026 - Sacred Valley, Peru. A return. A reckoning. A remembering.

Peru called me back.

I had been here in May, just before meeting Cory, receiving my Munay Ki Rites—initiatory transmissions from the Q’ero lineage that carry energetic keys for remembering how to live in right relationship. Munay means love, not as romance, but as the highest organizing force: love as presence, love as responsibility, love as the intelligence that restores balance. Ki refers to energy or life force. Together, the rites are understood to re-seed the human energy field, helping release fear-based patterns and realign us with the Earth, with one another, and with spirit.

At the time, it felt like an opening, a remembering, as if I had been carrying these keys for lifetimes. What I didn’t yet understand was that initiation is not a single moment or a quick training, but a process that requires to be practiced with lived experience. The keys had been received, but they had not yet been tested. The love had not yet been asked to prove itself in relationship.

We imagined the month in Peru as a work portal. The perfect time to ground, create, and catalyze our projects. It felt like the most natural way to work with the earth energy. But almost immediately, the land intervened.

A house that never quite settled. Rain every day, keeping us inside. Doors creaking. Shadows shifting. Technology glitching. Delays stacked on delays. Block after block And beneath it all, a quiet sense of being watched.

Unseen spirits have a way of finding me. Not in a dark or threatening way but more mischievous than anything. Little disruptions. Strange timing. A kind of cosmic teasing. They tend to show up when I’m overwhelmed or trying too hard to stay in control. This one, at least, had a good sense of humor. After pulling out a few of my witchy tricks—a sage séance and a handful of prayers, gently sending him back to the light—the energy shifted, and he seemed to disappear.

Then my soul sister Tara arrived.

Our connection goes back years. We met in Bali during our shamanic breathwork training and immediately recognized one another. So familiar and effortless, like a thread picked up mid-conversation. We eventually discovered we both previously lived in Los Angeles, attended the same fashion school (FIDM), and studied the same degree only confirmed what we already knew. None of it was random.

Our paths have mirrored each other in deeper ways. Healing our relationships with our bodies. Recovering from past eating disorders. Learning trust. Healing from co-dependency and trauma from past relationships. Returning to service. Witnessing one another through collapse and becoming. The kind of friendship that requires raw witnessing and real presence.

Soon after her arrival, we were invited into our second sacred union ceremony with the Apaza family from the Inca Medicine School, held at a sacred lake above Pisac called Kinsa Cocha. There, we participated in a despacho ceremony—a beautiful ritual of gratitude and reciprocity in which prayers are woven into offerings for Pachamama, the mountains, the waters, and the unseen realms, before being returned to the Earth. This is one of my most beloved ceremonial offerings, one I was trained in during my Munay Ki rites, and it felt deeply meaningful to share it within our union ceremony, with Tara present as our witness.

It was a full-circle moment. Months earlier in May, I had been in ceremony at this same place with the Apaza family from the Inca Medicine School—one I was hosting with EarthLab and documented by the same photographer, Rhyz. Returning felt less like arriving and more like being received.

During this ceremony, the paqos (ceremony/spiritual leaders) chose to work with my mesa—a sacred bundle (found in photos below) and ceremonial altar that holds personal power objects, prayers, and lineage teachings, used as a living field of connection between the practitioner, the land, and the unseen realms. This was the first time my mesa had been formally activated in ceremony by the paqos, beyond the moment it was originally constructed. It felt like a recognition and a deepening of responsibility—an initiation into carrying this work forward with greater integrity now through our union.

The land itself holds a profound feminine, mothering energy—nurturing yet fierce, and uncompromising in truth. One of the surrounding mountains revealed itself as the Puma mountain, a powerful synchronicity given that Cory’s Mayan animal symbol, which we learned in Guatemala, is the Puma. Once again, the number twelve surfaced quietly, marking another moment of alignment—twelve ceremonies around the world, and twelve as my birthday number.

We remained in ceremony for hours as rain, wind, and hail moved through us in challenging temperatures. The paqos, our Andean spiritual leaders and ceremony holders, shared that these elements are signs of prosperity and abundance. It was humbling. Uncomfortable. Honest.And a few days later, the work deepened.

The Apus, the sacred mountain spirits of the Andes, are known as the great witnesses. They see everything. They expose everything. Nothing remains hidden in their presence. And they did.

What followed was the most significant rupture in our relationship to date. A fight that stripped away all illusion. Anger, blame, resentment, and irritation rose quickly and without any patience or mercy. It felt collective - patterns far older than us moving through our bodies, demanding to be seen.

Whether it was the energy of the house, something unseen lingering in the space, or the land itself - which we learned the ground our house was on was shaped by colonialism, displacement, and unresolved grief…..there was absolutely no escaping what needed to be revealed.

We chose reset the relationship again. It wasn’t an escape, it was responsibility. We both needed space. In that space, it became obvious how much we’d been living in our heads, stuck in control, productivity, and ego. The work felt endless, and our real presence with each other had slowly faded. Old patterns showed up—both of us putting work above everything else. And clearly, Spirit wasn’t aligned with that. We were working like maniacs and felt like we weren’t getting much of anything done - pure circling. It finally made sense when we saw we weren’t honoring our temple or keeping things in balance.

A few days later, Tara and I were called into a Peyote and Wachuma tipi ceremony led by our shaman & ceremony lead Greg Diaz, both without our partners, so we could meet our own journeys fully as we were both experiencing similar relational issues and witness one another through the reckoning.

Hours before the ceremony, my body began to unravel. A sudden, severe migraine came on. I questioned whether I should sit it out. Then, just before entering the tipi, I vomited. My mind immediately began searching for an exit—reasons not to go in, reasons to stop. It felt like the same pattern that had been moving through the relationship: resistance at the threshold, wanting relief without surrender.

I nearly talked myself out of it.

One of the space holders gently reminded me of something I already know well, that the medicine is always working, long before we ever step into ceremony. The purge had already begun. The unraveling was already underway. There was no backing out of this one. And I knew it.

Sitting with the Great Mother, in front of the fire, the medicine worked on me with precision. Truth became simple. Everything unnecessary burned away. The fire—and Greg, who was holding the ceremony—kept returning me to the same question about the water I carry and offer to the world: Is it pure? Does it give life?

The ceremony was long. 12 hours. Challenging. Humbling. I stayed mostly upright in the tipi the entire time, without leaving once, in full devotion to why we were there and to the work that was moving through us. There was no bypassing, no checking out or escaping. Only presence. I was deeply humbled by the devotion Greg and the spaceholders brought to the space—how they honored the elements, tended the fire, cherished the waters, and stayed anchored in the simplicity of what sustains life. Everything else fell away.

As the night moved on, patterns became unmistakably clear.

Anger & shame surfacing in the masculine. Victimhood rising in the feminine.

Not as personal indictments, but as inherited dynamics—ancient, collective, and ready to be seen. The medicine made no attempt to soften this. It simply illuminated what was already there.

Then the shaman returned again and again to the same unmistakable message: there is no inner or outer union without presence. Anything else will eventually be exposed so it can be transformed. Purification is not a single moment or ceremony, it is a daily practice. How we walk. How we love. How we show up for our partners, our communities, and the Earth herself. How we tend to life as an altar—every single day, in every moment. That’s when it landed for me how much I hadn’t been tending to my own altar. Truly. There was a time when every morning was rooted in reverence, prayer, devotion, offerings. Lately, I’d been going through the motions. Half-present. Half-hearted. I have the tools. I know the rituals. But I hadn’t been honoring the work fully. I’d been living in my head, distracted, complacent. And that needed to be seen and exposed, to be brought back to my truth.

I came out of the ceremony reborn. Clear about my own edges, my defenses, where I disconnect, where I harden and deny. I recommitted to the path and to the relationship, not from effort or willpower, but from truth, desire, and the real willingness to change. In this temple, past mistakes and familiar patterns cannot be carried forward. They must be seen, honored, and transformed.

The morning after, Cory and I sat together and had one of the most honest, heart-opening conversations we’ve ever shared. There was no defensiveness, no urgency to fix. Just presence. We spoke the truth, even the parts that felt exposed and uncomfortable. In that quiet space, it became clear that our love is real not because it is easy, but because it can face what is ugly, unfiltered, and true.

When you’re on a spiritual path and deeply committed to personal alignment, it’s easy for the ego to masquerade as sovereignty. It kicks and screams, insisting on independence, righteousness, or self-protection and especially when things get messy. In relationship, that voice often wants to run the moment discomfort appears, calling withdrawal “boundaries” and avoidance “self-respect.”

But sitting there together, stripped of performance and defense, it became obvious that we had called this work in. And when all the stories fall away—when the roles, wounds, and justifications dissolve—what remains is the simple question of what actually matters. Presence. Truth. The willingness to stay. The choice to meet love not as an escape, but as a place where real growth is allowed to happen.

That morning reaffirmed something I already know in my bones and soul: I must continue to honor my plant medicine path. It is one of the deepest ways I stay connected, humble, and in right relationship—with myself, with the collective, and with the Earth. Through ceremony, I place myself in ongoing communion with the Great Mother with my heart connected to the dirt, saying: I’m here. I’m listening. Show me what needs to be seen—within me, within others and in what is meant to be brought into the world.

The medicine knows what to do.

My role is to be willing. To be a messenger. To let these experiences move through me. Not just for my own healing, but so they may serve others as well. To become a vessel for alchemization. This is the true priestess path: laying ego and self on the altar again and again, allowing what is heavy, painful, emotional, and physical to be purified so something truer can emerge.

This is my sacred work. And I accept the cost of it because this is how the medicine is carried into the world, especially in a time when humanity is being asked to remember, and more guides and messengers are needed on behalf of the Earth and the collective.

A few days later, on our way to the airport, we made one final stop at the Temple of the Moon which is my favorite temple in Peru. We offered prayers and gratitude to close the chapter. To honor what had been revealed. To release what could not move forward with us.

As we stood there, I remembered something my teacher, Devi Ma, shared with us in one of our channeling sessions before the pilgrimage began. She told us that as we moved through different lands, some would be places of deep clearing where the collective consciousness would work directly through our relationship. She warned that there would be moments we would want to quit. Moments when the weight would feel deeply personal, even though the work would not be ours alone. That through our relationship, the gridwork, our ceremonies, and our initiations, a deeper alignment and clearing would be taking place—much of it unseen.

Peru was one of those lands.

It did not bring us back to create more.

It brought us back to remember what presence truly asks of us.

The chapter closed.

The path continues—to Egypt. Another land of full-circle remembrance, where ancient threads begin to converge.