ABOUT ME
My name is TFL Hmong Shaman and this is my story. I am a Hmong shaman. I started my journey when I was 22 years old. October of this year 2023 marks my seventh year as a practicing shaman. It has been seven years of intense change, growth, liberation, and reflection. I've been shedding, reclaiming my space, my identity, learning, relearning, unlearning, and just trying to live my life in this moment.
I suppose you can say my unofficial journey started when I was just five years old. As a kid I started to experience things that other kids didn't. As a five year old, I experienced things like sleep paralysis, nightmares, night terrors, omens, spiritual visitation, and spiritual activities. It happened so much that I normalized the spiritual trauma and my shamanic sickness. As I got older these things progressed intensely.
In my blog I talk about shaman sickness, a term we call "mob neeb." I experienced this sickness throughout my childhood, teen years, and young adult life. In my teens, I battled with depression. My sleep paralysis and night terrors progressively worsened. I experienced physical pain in my legs, back, shoulders, hands, and had terrible migraine. I never told anyone this because I kept most things to myself as a kid and didn't want others to look at me any weirder than they already did. Eventually, it got to a point where I was unable to fully wake up from a sleep paralysis. I feared for my life and I didn't want to die in my sleep, or worse, be stuck in my mind. At 22, I was confirmed by an elder shaman to have shamanic guides. Ever since, my shamanic sickness went away. Just like that. It was liberating. I was able to sleep for the first time in a very, very long time. Hmong shamans do not choose to be shamans. Spirits must choose you and it must be confirmed by an elder shaman. At 22, I embarked the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual transformation.
There are many lineages of Hmong shamans. My lineage is traditional and continues the work of my ancestors. I have Neeb Txwv Zeej, also known as ancestral shamans. These are spiritual guides that flow in a family bloodline. It skips every other generation but there are exceptions to this as well. This means that my family comes from a family of shamans and the spiritual shaman guides are passed down. This is true because my great grandfather was a Hmong shaman in Laos. He died before coming to America and before I was even born. I have a special connection to him and all those before him through our shaman spirit guides. I never would have imagined myself as a shaman, doing the work of a traditional healer and performing ancient healing. I struggled with our language and it wasn't until I became a shaman at 22 that I relearned my native tongue. Stepping into this new journey, I questioned how my queer identity would intersect and impact my identity as a shaman. This did not stop me from owning both identities as equal parts of who I am. I am Hmong. I am gay. I am a shaman. Hmong queer people can lead great lives, have families, be successful, and can be selected as shamans. We are most capable of healing because of our empathy and compassion that our counterparts may not possess.
People stop by this blog to learn more about Hmong shamanism and its context. Other times people are here because they are in search of something internal. They are in need of answers, help, support, and validation in their journey and struggle. I believe that whatever you may be here for, whether just to learn more and deepen your knowledge or to really understand yourself and this journey you have been on, this is your space. You get to ask the questions. You get to search for it yourself. You get to learn on your own turf and accept what you want or deny what you hear. This is about sharing my experience with you and helping you in yours.
TFL Hmong Shaman
