Life Updates

Hi there.

So, where are we now? Where are you? How are things? Are you doing okay? No really, are you doing okay? Let me ask you again, how are you doing? Like, really really doing? I've been on this existential journey trying to figure out where I am and where I'm going. It's hard to know where you're going when you don't know where you're starting.

This year has really shown me just the amount that a person can spiritually and psychologically endure and go through. I've stopped taking care of myself. I've stopped giving back to myself and the things I enjoyed. I stopped dreaming and setting goals. I'm depressed but I don't want to talk to anyone about it. I have no motivation to do anything shaman related. My guides are just quietly and patiently waiting for me, understanding that I don't have the capacity to heal anyone right now because I'm far from healed myself. I'm learning to unlearn the things that I've normalize as an adult. My shaman guides are sad. They feel very distant. It's been five long years since I raised my big altar and it's been my whole life dealing with them, coping, and trying to understand them. We have a very complex relationship. I hate them. I love them. I hate this journey but I've also accepted it for what it is. I do not envy the role of a master nor do I have capacity to raise or mentor any apprentice shaman in a way that will lead them. In a way that can uplift them to the best that it can. I'd do a disservice to any apprentice shaman because I can't lead them or uplift their experience in a way that they need or would want me to. I'm afraid to make mistakes. I said that I feel distant from my shamans and I feel like that's because I'm tired of it all. I feel a sense of hopelessness for my community and also for my identity as a shaman.

I'm experiencing an existential crisis. I'm having a hard time coping through it. I do not know the meaning for any of this. I don't know why I'm a shaman. I don't know why I was born with them. I don't know if any of what I do makes a difference. And I also don't know what the future looks like. I don't know if any other Hmong shamans go through this feeling of emptiness and extreme anxiety over feeling like there's nothing. No meaning to any of this and it scares me deeply. I feel like most of my life I've been trying to give meaning to things and I recognize that its caused a lot of anxiety and also depression. Maybe other shamans also go through existential crisis as well? Maybe this is a sign of learning? Painful growth? I often wonder who helps the people who helps? In a way I'm looking forward to the tso qhua ritual. During this yearly ritual, we not only cleanse our shamans but we release them. We release the sacrificed animals. We redo our entire altar. We do a deep cleanse of our shamanic tools. And we just start anew. Maybe starting anew will actually help bring me back to me.

The above photo is of my tsaj tha ritual and ceremony with my master. It was the official day she raised my big altar. To think back to where I was then and where I am now.. how things have changed. My family has gone through so much. My career. School. My relationship. And so now here we are. Here I am. I need to connect back to where it all started and slowly find ways to thrive and to be in joy. I don't know if there's any meaning to any of this. But I must remind myself, and you remind yourself too, that we are in this moment right now. If nothing else is true or makes any sense, the least and sometimes best we can tell ourselves is that this moment we are experiencing is real. I can only take it one real experience at a time.

Take care of yourselves.

tfl Hmong Shaman