It was 2023 when I was in the Andes of Peru, when I truly perceived the call of the Great Mother, our Earth. Today I feel I’ve been hearing this call all my life—even as a child—but I just didn’t pay attention. I was distracted, busy with other things, and truly too caught up in my mind to even slow down and listen to the whispers of nature.

Shamanism isn’t a belief system—it’s a way of being. It exists in many forms around the world, rooted in Indigenous cultures that know the Earth as sacred and alive. In the Q’ero tradition of the Andes, the lineage I am humbly learning from, everything has spirit: the mountains, the stars, the rivers, even the unseen realms.