5 February 2026
Three years ago, at the end of January 2023, my life quietly crossed a threshold.
My husband, Rua Inu Huni Kuin, and his son Leo took me by boat along the Jordão River in Acre, Brazil, to the village of Boa Vista. I was heading there to begin my first 30-day dieta with the plant medicine Rare Muka.
At the time, Rua Inu and I had known each other for just over a year. I felt drawn to him and relaxed in his presence, but I had never had romantic thoughts of him or imagined that we would become life partners. During the two-hour boat journey, as I sat with my intention for the dieta, a clear insight arrived — uninvited and undeniable. I saw that Rua Inu was to be my companion on the path ahead.
I tried to dismiss it. I had already been married to a South American man once before, had navigated the immense cultural and practical challenges of bringing a foreign man with me to Finland, and I had no desire to repeat that story. But the message returned again — and again. Eventually, I surrendered to listening.
Stepping into my dieta and relationship with Rare Muka and Rua Inu felt like stepping into an unknown world — not only in love and partnership, but in responsibility. I was entering a deeper relationship with the Huni Kuin tradition, with the medicines, and with the living intelligences of nature.
In many traditions, there is an understanding that meaningful journeys follow a natural arc — a call, a crossing, a period of trials and learning, and eventually a return. Not a return to who we were before, but a return with something to offer: insight, medicine, responsibility, or service.
I feel as though I am now ready to return. To return to my community to share a little about what I have learned.
Medicine Is Not a Shortcut — It Is a Relationship
Among the Huni Kuin people, Rare Muka is known as a plant that opens the gates to alliance with the forces of nature. It is not entered lightly. While many Westerners feel drawn to this path, many Huni Kuin themselves are cautious or afraid of it — not because of visions or mystery, but because of the immense responsibility and power it brings. Working with Muka demands discipline, ethical clarity, and mastery over one’s thoughts and intentions, as access to these forces can easily cause harm if approached without maturity, training, and guidance.
My journey with Muka has been profoundly illuminating. It has shown me both light and shadow. It has challenged the stories I carried about myself, about healing, about relationship, about power, and about love.
Over the years, I have worked with many plant medicines — including ayahuasca, rapé, kambo, sananga, mushrooms, San Pedro, peyote, bufo, and others – in various cultural contexts. What I have learned is simple, but not easy:
Plant medicines are not a joke.
They are not magic cures.
They are living beings who respond to how we relate to them.
Like any relationship, if we enter without presence, honesty, responsibility, respect, and reciprocity, we can easily become lost. I have witnessed stories of deep healing, but also of confusion, harm, and chaos — often followed by fear, blame, and projections directed at the medicines, their guardians or others navigating the healing spaces.
Over time, it has become clear to me that the core issue is rarely the medicines themselves. It is more about our capacity — or lack of capacity — to be in healthy and balanced relationship with ourselves, with the medicines, and with the wider web of life.
Three Years of Integration
The past three years have been both exquisitely beautiful and intensely difficult. Through my relationship with Rare Muka, with Rua Inu and his family, with the forest, and with spirit allies, my understanding of health, family, community, responsibility, and life itself has been fundamentally reshaped.
At this moment in history, Indigenous traditions and Western medical frameworks are increasingly intersecting. Alongside this meeting, confusion and polarized narratives are growing. For many people, stepping onto — or continuing along — the medicine path can feel vulnerable, overwhelming, and frightening.
I know this terrain intimately. I have walked through it. And through that walking, I have learned ways of navigating these spaces with greater clarity, courage, and groundedness — both for myself and in holding space for others.
Returning With What Has Been Learned
Through the medicines, I have gained a new and extended family — human and more-than-human. And family is built on care, responsibility, and reciprocity.
Now, three years after that first serious dieta with Rare Muka, something in me feels complete. The long integration cycle has come full circle. And with that completion comes a call — not to preach, convince, or persuade — but to speak honestly about what I have learned.
This feels like a threshold moment. Like those cold, dark mornings when it would be easier to stay in bed — yet something deeper knows it is time to rise.
So here I am, at the edge of a new chapter.
With my feet on the ground, supported by ancestors, human teachers, and spirit allies, I am stepping forward to share more openly. To bring clarity into a field that is often clouded by fear, idealization, and misunderstanding. To speak for life and nature as I have come to know them — not as abstractions, but as living relationships.
The only way forward, I believe, is through responsibility, humility, and learning from the past. Not through blame. Not through denial. But through repairing relationships — with ourselves, with each other, and with the living world.
Over the coming weeks and months, I will be sharing reflections, stories, and perspectives from this path.
If you feel yourself standing at the beginning of such a journey — or somewhere in the middle of it — I want you to know that you are not alone. We all need orientation, support, and grounded perspectives along the way.
If something in these words resonates with you and you want to know more, you are welcome to walk alongside me for a while. Stay tuned via my YouTube, Instagram and Facebook channels.
The journey is not meant to be walked alone. Together we’ve got this!