By the grace of trauma
The capital T trauma that brought me onto my path, and life ever after. + A news drop at the end.
To those who don’t know me: My name is Osher. I speak, write, design and lead experiences and community around getting well / better, toward a better world. I am a medicine custodian, cultivator and facilitator. Themes of my work include embodiment, sovereignty, agency, community, creativity and service. I work with different populations- from creatives and leaders to recovering addicts and self-harming teenagers, to name a few. I also dance, write poetry and create wearable art. I’d like to do more of the last three.
I share below my personal story not without resistance, as I feel strongly that this work is not about me, nor should it be. Moreover; sometimes reading people’s personal stories can have the unintentional effect of glorifying them, waxing their human lives with some false veneer of all-knowing and happily ever after, à la Joseph Campbell’s hero monomyth. The cave, the elixir. And while certainly there was a cave and there is an elixir alright, the truth is, I still go back to the cave and I will forever distill that elixir. I am as human, and as alien, as they come. An alien in the sense that it took me a moment to find my place on this planet. A human in the sense that I’m still figuring it out. I share my story as an offering of vulnerability, hoping others find resonance in aspects of my humanity, and my alienness. If this is not for you, see you in my next post hopefully.
Why today?
Dates matter. April 9th marks the anniversary of the capital T trauma that sent me onto my path at the ripe age of 18. A loss so profound I temporarily lost the ability to understand language due to how dissociated I was.
Solo alien. Wrong planet?
Growing up, I felt like an alien among humans. Fifth of 6 kids in a religious household, I was born not only to a family but to an unbroken lineage dating back thousands of years. The energy that animates my work and many of the principles by which I serve come from the lineage I was born into and the household I grew up in, but before I had to come back and discover those gifts, I had to run away from them.
One distinct aspect that informed my alienness was the feeling that my brain was operating differently than everyone I knew. I felt as though I had an open antenna to a knowing much greater than myself. I could write and say things I had no business knowing. When people complimented me for being bright I dismissed them in the same way you would if someone complemented you for an answer you got from your AI of choice. This was not my knowing, I was just the one accessing it. That state did not feel like a blessing. It felt confusing at best, and disorienting at worst.
Though I could not focus in school for the life of me, I could also not fail an exam if I tried (and I tried). School felt excruciatingly boring. In middle school, I could no longer bear it and I wanted out. When I told my parents that, they casually said: “You can only leave school when you graduate.” So I decided to graduate years ahead of schedule. And I did. I figured out how to turn my ADD around and unleash its gift of hyperfocus. A story for another day. I graduated high school some 2.5 years ahead of schedule, thinking I’ll never attend another school in my life, only to end up in Wharton a few years later. So much for that.
Two aliens. Life makes sense.
At 16 having already graduated high school, I was free to roam, F around and find out. On an expedition with a friend I met my first love. He was not just another Alien. He was an alien who had figured out this planet. His name was Gedaliah. When David Bowie died, people said Bowie made it cool to be different. Gedaliah made it cool to be an alien. He introduced me to art and movies and music I never heard of. We went on adventures together. He was not only a poet but a poem. And for reasons unbeknownst to me, he saw me. Life, the first time, made sense. Until it didn’t.
Enter: Capital T trauma
When I was 18 and a half Gedaliah died. There was no seeing it coming. He was a healthy young man, just short of turning 22. A pacifist that died at the hands of terrorists. The irony. The pain had me shoot so far out of my body that I was unable to speak or understand language. That is how dissociated I was. I had to go back to living at my parents’ house. I remember looking at people’s faces as they were talking to me and thinking: “I used to be able to make meaning of the sounds that come out of their faces.” It was a dark and blurry time. I remember judging myself for being unable to come back from this void. I had a life before I met this person. Why couldn’t I resume that life?
By the grace of trauma
The initiation that followed that trauma is too sacred to get into here. What I can share is that by the grace of this trauma I have arrived on my path some 20 years ago, long before it was chic to do so. It wasn’t long before my healing path brought me to altered states. Working with mushrooms, specifically, for the first time, evoked a deep sense of familiarity, like arriving somewhere for the first time but feeling like I was from there. That same voice, that open antenna I had access to as a child, came back online, only now it was not confusing nor disorienting. It felt like homecoming. I was relieved to be back, and I was welcomed with love. I left my homeland early and began a 20+ years exploration of the outer world and inner world that continues to this day.
In pursuit of the wrong goal
That first initiation was not a happily ever after, by any means. It was a beginning.
The first few years of adult life were perplexing. I tried to follow familial and societal expectations and programming, pursuing a business career with the belief that once I found an intellectual challenge, I would find my purpose. If only. I traveled. I dated again. I got my undergrad degree in the Netherlands. I went to Wharton and got my graduate degree. I moved to NYC where I even married a guy. I pursued jobs in advertising, tech and investment, but was disinterested if not checked out. I thought what I was missing was an intellectual challenge to feel engaged in my career. Ha.
Double life
While my day job life felt off, a new world was coming online. I began more intently traveling my inner landscape, studying the human condition and immersing myself in various modalities and practices. These included: Internal Family System (IFS), Ayahuasca, Vipassana, flow coaching and somatic therapy, to name a few. Through it all, music and mushrooms were my M&M. It was a place that offered not only clarity, but solutions, when nothing else did.
At the request of a growing circle of friends and family, I began sharing my time informally holding space for them and in turn their circles. I saw people overcoming depression, addiction, trauma, and finding self love, abundance and purpose. Done right, mushrooms held a key that seemed to open so many doors. For years, I lived what felt like two parallel lives – working to pay the bills in what felt like purposeless jobs, and pursuing a life that felt on purpose but not making any income doing so.
Dance medicine
Long before I could sit and meditate, I could go for hours on end without a thought in my head. The dance floor was the ceremony and dance was my medicine. This exploration brought deep connections to my life, community and creative expression, and ultimately it brought me to Burning Man. Arriving on playa was an experience that resembled my first experience with mushrooms in just how familiar that first time had felt. Psychedelics and Burning Man can both be misunderstood from the side as an escapist recreation. Yet both, done right, provide a blueprint for actively participating in creation.
Gratitude with capital Attitude
Through years of informally holding space for others, it became abundantly clear- good things came out of my early initiation. But. There was always a but. That dichotomy is what I call “gratitude with capital attitude.” The gratitude: Good things came out of this pain. The attitude: Couldn’t those good things be achieved with less pain? Couldn’t I be broken into less pieces? a million? a billion? Did I really have to become completely undone? Spoiler alert: It turns out, I really did. To bring people back from the void (teenagers among them) I couldn’t have just learned about it, or experienced it briefly. I had to have moved there. Address change and all.
Hello, wings.
In January 2017, following a breakup, I left NYC to CA to take a job running a family office. I moved for a job and found my purpose. The job turned out to not be what it promised to be, and shortly after said move, I left my former career to dedicate my life to holding space full-time. I never looked back. When the ground is pulled from under us, we grow wings alright. This shift came with no assurances whatsoever, short of knowing I was finally doing what I was put on this planet to do.
Enter: 42
A few years ago, following a process too deep to get into here, 42 was born. What is 42? 42 is the code name of what is animating this work. Much like ayahuasca is the energy that animates the jungle brew we love so much. If this sounds far out, leave it where you found it. All this goes to say: a proprietary medicine asked to be cultivated and the process of ushering it forward was not one of trial and error, but an arrival, much like a birth.
The birth of 42 came to a head in the mountains of Basque Country in northern Spain when I sat in solitude for 7 days in the nonstop heavy rain, in a tent that was all but waterproof, fasting and teetering on hypothermia. At the end of this week came 42’s inaugural ceremony. The tent was replaced with a renovated 15th century grand castle, water fasting was replaced by chef prepared meals, silence was replaced with divine tunes of a beautiful sister musician, solitude was replaced by the company of dear friends. This juxtaposition of purity and exquisiteness stood to symbolize all that 42 was to become.
Being a custodian of medicine did not come with any manual. Lineage holders are normally men, wearing a feather headdress, a turban, a mitre or a shtreimel. It seems that independently of lineage, headdress matters. I didn’t know why I got to be a custodian of medicine. I still don't. There surely are more disciplined, more serious, more worthy candidates. I made mistakes and lost friends navigating this terrain, including those who wanted me to be a flawless guru they could follow. That is not me. A quote by Albert Camus which guides my work is:
Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead.
Don’t walk ahead of me, I may not follow.
Walk alongside me and be my friend.
- Albert Camus.
Community ever after + a news drop
Friends walking alongside we really are. More than anything, 42 is now a community. A beautiful collection of deeply grounded sovereign individuals committed to bettering themselves in service of a more just and more beautiful world. We commune online on our community chat and in person in group events. Our next retreat is dedicated to how to safely hold space and allow oneself to be held. Both our online chat and upcoming event have just a few spots open. Join us.
A news drop: We are in the early stages of scouting a community property in the Utah mountains, to allow us to share space and time in the time between ceremonies. Imagine a lush riverside mountain property where you can come for a weekend visit, a seasonal residency or you can even own a place which can be rented out while you are away.
A place to come to disconnect from distractions, and reconnect to self, to nature, to life, to community, to service. You can be in service different ways: cook meals, teach yoga, offer bodywork, tend to a garden... or you can just focus on your creative pursuit or practice- write music, create art, write a book, work on your deck, get back to your body, fast, sit in silence.. All in the company of like-hearted others. We think of this entire exploration as a co-creation. If you want to dream and bring this dream to life with us, reach out.
