medicine woman

Swan Blessing Past Life Story - Unbinding Plant Wisdom

Offering from the Amazon Shuar Series by Susan Thompson

Today I share again with you the moving Swan Blessing experienced by our dear sister, Nicole Ahava, doll enchantress and plant medicine woman. These are not titles that Nicole gives herself but this is what I see and feel around her so strongly. I will always be grateful to Nicole for awakening my own ancestral memory of shamanic doll-making and plant medicine. It is a path that once re-awakened, is hard to ignore!

We both knew that there was a memory with Nicole of still needing to hide and work in secret. This is something that many of us feel now and it can be very hard to reconcile with only the rational mind. I hope Nicole's story helps all of those feeling this fear to come out of the darkness and share your wise medicine with us again.

I am walking barefoot through a familiar forest. I come upon the well. I look into the deep pool and see her. She is a tribal woman, with long dark hair and dark eyes. She takes my hand and we cross the threshold, I am there. It is dark, the land is barren.  She dances around a fire. I see so much pain inside her. This is a dance of mourning. Her face is full of sorrow as she stomps and writhers around the fire. 

She shows me her journey. I see her wondering naked on the bare earth. She is a very small child. There has been a great upheaval and her family has left her behind. She is found by a wise old woman who takes her in, raising her and teaching her wisdom. They walk the earth together. This is where she learns her medicine. Later she is a grown woman she takes me to her village. We are in front of her mud hut with her six children. They are so beautiful. They have very little but there is so much love. She shows me her work with plants making medicine.    

There has been great famine, all the people in her village have been driven away from their lands. They now live on barren land, fighting starvation and illness. Her husband has gone to a far away land to work.  The women from the village cover their heads as they go to her for medicine and scurry away quickly with her brew hidden in their robes back to their huts. She is living in fear and isolation. She shows me how they come, soldiers, tearing her children out of her arms. They are taking them away, she pleads with them desperately, she vows never to use her medicine again, but they take them all away.   

Finally I see her lying on the bare earth, she is old and lonely, overwhelmed with grief. She lets her body go and is instantly free.
I am back in the forest at the water’s edge we are facing each other. I honour her. I understand why she made that vow. She smiles at me. She knows why we are here. It is time to let it go. We hold each other with deep love and she transforms into light she is surrounded and embraced by her family, her children, her husband, the wise old lady and her mother they are all free. 

I am standing before the daughter of the well bound heavily. Together we cut the bindings and instantly I feel myself expand, I am free. She takes me into her sacred well, all the daughters are there. I am floating in the sacred well. The daughters are washing away all that burdens my soul. I am cleansed, pure, light and free. 

The first time I got an email from Sacred Familiar about the swan blessing I knew it was something that I just had to do. I put it aside for a while but the swan medicine continued to call me. It is a very sacred and profound blessing. In this life I was born a healer. As a child I would give healing to sick animals, I would lay in my bed at night and send healing to people. I was cut off from my medicine after receiving one of my vaccinations and very quickly it was forgotten. Years later when I began to explore my own healing I became a Reiki master and it all came back to me, but I would find that every time I shared my medicine the energy would get stuck with me or my children would get sick. I could not share my medicine because I was afraid that it would harm my children. 

The swan medicine really is very gentle as she continues to unfold and expand in my life. There have been many changes I have been able to share freely without fear, I feel as though a channel has been cleared from which I am free to connect and receive more clearly and my medicine is changing, becoming more potent. Julia really is a divine magical being.  I extend my deepest gratitude for these beautiful blessings to you Julia beautiful sister. Thank you. 

Nicole 2013

Thank you precious sister for your healing story. I believe it is a beautiful gift and medicine that Nicole holds in her gentle soul. Nicole will be holding her Spirit Doll Workshop at Seven Sisters Festival next month. When she came for her Swan Blessing I saw that Nicole is a powerful healer and one of her strongest gifts is working with Plant Medicine to create Medicine Dolls for sick children - beautiful comforting dolls for them to take into hospital when they are feeling afraid and to become dear friends to them in the long weeks of recovery at home. For those who wish to look into purchasing one of Nicole's healing dolls or receive a distant healing session from Dream Empire, you can find her here and on Etsy.