God, on Mushrooms

Author’s Note: The Pivot Diaries was a series of personal essays about reinvention: leaving, burnout, faith, migration, healing, ambition, womanhood, and becoming.

These essays were also the beginning of questions that continue to shape my work: about gender, power, capitalism, spirituality, identity, race and place. The personal was never just personal — it was a way of thinking through larger systems, stories, and structures in real time.

This Substack has since evolved into Thinking About, but I’ve kept a small selection of these essays public because they remain foundational to my thinking and my voice. This archive is not separate from the work that follows — this is where it all began.

This is the continuation of a story that began here.

And there you are: on a mountain, in Mexico, on mushrooms.

As the tea starts to kick in, you giggle. You have done some crazy shit in your life, but this? You are crazy, girl. People will one day ask, what it feels like to be on a mushroom journey, and it will be hard to fully explain your own experience of it. An intense dream, but you are fully awake…A lucid dream? A series of visions? A trance? All of the above, but not quite. Something in between those things. Better yet: the culmination of them.

The first vision you see is so left field, you know your conscious brain is no longer in the driver’s seat. You see a domestic worker who began working in your parent’s home in your adolescence. You see a series of scenes of him spread across the over two decades you’ve known him: washing, sweeping, ironing, mopping—and doing it all with joy. You realize you rarely think of him and recall how often you ignore his calls now that he has retired. You have never really thanked him for all the ways he faithfully served your family. You have never been to his home. It feels urgent, critical, and necessary to do so now.

You see your ex-husband. His scenes are brief, but before they leave, you gather a revelation: not all of that was for naught, and not all of it was about you. Release, release.

Then you see your mother. Over the past months, you’ve harbored so much hurt. Her image as a Pastor has felt more important than your needs as her daughter. But now, you don’t just see your mother, you feel her. You feel like you are inside her, so much so it feels like if you reach out your fingers, you will touch her rib cage. You feel not just the past few months—but years— from what sounds like her heart, beating. You feel the heaviness of her fears…the weight of holding a whole church together as a female pastor in a patriarchal society… and doing it alone. When your mother previously told you your divorce was difficult for her, it felt incredibly selfish. But now? You get it. A wave of feeling pulsates through you. It is forgiveness, but not just that. It is something thicker. It’s almost like a farmer is digging through the soil of your soul, pulling out strands of anger from the root, and planting seeds of compassion. You feel so much compassion for your mother, the emotions spill through your eyes, and the tears flood your face.

Tangible tears give way for images of blood: you see a pool of it surrounding your sister. You had fought with her during your divorce too, but what you see has nothing to do with that. You see something about her you have always known, but never fully comprehended the magnitude of: her strength. Hers is a strength that’s easy to miss, because it is quieter and gentler than yours. You see her strength in the context of an experience you’ve never had: childbirth. You thought you understood what her first birthing experience must have been like; after all, you’ve researched and produced shows about the racism Black mothers encounter in the American medical system. But that knowledge is no longer cerebral; it’s somatic. You feel it in your body—those hours when her pain was so casually dismissed, and how it ripped her flesh apart. A few months before this vision you are living in, she posted about her rainbow baby on Instagram: her third pregnancy and second child. You see all the blood that flowed out of her when the second pregnancy did. What a badass, you think. You give thanks for those beings: all three of them. They are yours, too.

A picture of your cousin flashes: you have been so upset with her for abandoning you when you needed her most. Release, release.

Then: a rainbow in the clouds, a canvas of faces. Women who’ve held your hand, had your back, most of them Black. Their faces swell larger and larger, until what you see, you recognize as God. God as a woman; God as a Black woman.

A tap on your shoulder—the facilitators. “Would you like a booster?” Yes, you say and sip more grams of mushroom tea. You stubborn, stubborn girl.

The gentle trip spirals into a mental rollercoaster. You move from micro to macro: strangers’ lives—a homeless man in Brooklyn, a prisoner in a cell, a billionaire at his desk, a megastar onstage. You catch glimpses of an underworld, but mostly you start to understand hell as a place on earth. As you witness a series of disparities, you see letters come together and form one word in bold capital letters: GREED. The next day, after your trip, you’ll find you scribbled in your journal many times: Greed is hell.

Flying with the fish and swimming with the birds: this is what you, your siblings and cousins used to say as children when you saw a drunk adult. You feel like you are flying with the fish and swimming with the birds. For what feels like a few minutes but could have very well been a full hour or more, you start to process what it must be like to hold the entire universe: to hold every thought, in every head, in every body, in every country; to hold all living things from the sky to the sea—and all of it, at once. Damn, God, your job is hard, you think. It’s one thing to sing a hymn like “How Great Thou Art,” quite another to feel the mightiness of God pulsate through your veins. Omnipresent, omnipotent God: the consciousness feels overwhelming… too overwhelming for a human being. You apologize to God for how casual you’ve been about him; for each time you’ve questioned him. Also, were mushrooms the fruit God asked Adam and Eve not to eat in the Garden of Eden? Truly, it was for their own good. You are terrified your brain might break. You suddenly understand how sane people go mad: they have seen things too much for one cortex to contextualize. God, if you let me go back, I promise I will never come this close to the sun again. Suddenly, you remember what you learned to do in your prep class if your journey gets scary. Breathe, breathe.

The nightmare turns dream again. Things slow down. You see God, no longer as consuming fire, but as creative force. You see dead bodies become soil, become flowers, become food, become nourishment in living bodies: it’s the most magnificent art show you’ve ever witnessed. The sixties hippies and modern-day climate activists make more sense to you now: we are all connected, to each other, to this earth.

Scenes from your whole life flash before you—the good parts—like one highlight reel on a continuous loop. You see almost every happy moment you’ve ever had. Memories you recognize as once lost are found again. Your father carrying you on his back. That youth church camp in Yankari Game Reserve where you saw baboons and crocodiles for the first time. Dancing with the cousins you’ve lost touch with. Paris, in the springtime. Those moments when you and your ex-husband laughed till your bellies hurt. You see that you’ve already had so much goodness in your life. You feel goodness: it is like every good feeling you’ve ever had is bathing you. You weep again, but this time the tears meet the crease of your smile, the white of your teeth.

Scenes of darkness return, but this time the darkness feels light. You see yourself experiencing every worst fear you’ve ever had, but you are not afraid, because you are not alone. You feel God with you, in a way you’ve never felt before. Is this how Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Bible went into a fire without fear? Is this the God-presence they felt? You gather in your bones a knowing you once understood in your brain: you are not alone. In the valley of the shadow of death, you were never alone. No matter what is to come next: you are never alone.

You hear a whisper as the mushrooms start to fade:

You are divinely held.

You look around, all the members of your group are gone, and it’s just you and the facilitators left. Again:

You are divinely held.

This is not the journey you expected, or frankly even wanted. You wanted whatever it is Steve Jobs got while he was on psychedelics that helped him shape Apple; you wanted a life-changing idea that would make the risk of leaving your job worth it.

Instead:

You are divinely held.

Six hours after your first sip of tea, sometime around midnight, you are gently guided to your room and tucked into bed. It will be about 6 a.m. when you finally shut your eyes and finally leave the mystical realm.

This is what remains:

I am divinely held.

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*Author’s Note: I had two mushroom journeys in Mexico, that yielded very different experiences. I have compressed the memory of these journeys into one essay. All the memories I’ve described are true, but I’ve rearranged the sequence of some of them for narrative flow. Finally, I’ve shared a lot of my experience, but not all of it…because I don’t know allofyoulikedat.