This is the most non-Black thing I’ve ever done.

I said this to myself in the restroom as I experienced one of many purges during my 4-day ayahuasca ceremony. I had traveled more than 5,000 miles from Los Angeles to Costa Rica to embark on what some might call a spiritual journey—or spiritual bootcamp, depending on who you ask—with dozens of others seeking healing through Mother Aya, a term of endearment for the rather intense medicine.

The restroom I was in was in the “maloca,” the ceremony space where the medicine is served. It was the same room where the rest of us had done yoga just 12 hours earlier, yet it looked vastly different. The large, high-ceilinged room was hazy from the ceremonial smoke, filled with the soothing sounds of live music as shamans moved through the space preparing the brew. Before I took my first sip of the thick, licorice-like elixir, it was prayed over, and I set my intention. To heal.

They say ayahuasca, a plant medicine and psychedelic tea found in the Amazon, finds you when you are ready rather than you finding it, arriving when you need it most. If that’s true, my life in 2025 rolled out the red carpet.

That year, I went through an awful breakup that ended a nine-year relationship. I lost a dear friend to cancer and navigated unpredictable waves of grief. Financial losses as an entrepreneur burdened me while juggling motherhood. To top it off, I had a milestone birthday, turning 40 years old, an age when, by some societal standards, women are supposed to have their lives figured out. I was far from it.

I went into survival mode and returned to coping mechanisms and behaviors such as excessive food, rumination and constant complaining that I thought I had long outgrown. I desperately needed healing.

The first time I discovered ayahuasca was years earlier while watching comedian Chelsea Handler’s limited series Chelsea Does. I was intrigued by the promises surrounding the medicine, helping you confront deep-seated trauma, find life purpose, and break free from negative patterns, but turned off by the purging it produces. (“Purging” can involve both physical and emotional release, from nausea and vomiting to crying and even screaming.) And if I’m being honest, I had never seen or heard of anyone Black participating in such an extreme healing modality.

Years later, during that particularly difficult season of my life, I heard a wellness podcast guest describe their own ayahuasca ceremony and how it had offered clarity and a level of spiritual connection they hadn’t found elsewhere. Some people say one ceremony is equivalent to 10 years of therapy. Hearing about the medicine this time around was different. The podcast guest had attended their ceremony at Rythmia, a medically licensed ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica promising breakthrough transformation and boasting a 98 percent miracle rate. I googled the center and sent them an email before I could talk myself out of it. A few months later, the trip was booked.

Minutes after my arrival, I was surprised to see a fellow Black woman. She walked past my intake room with glass doors, smiling in acknowledgment, the way Black people sometimes do in unfamiliar spaces. I quickly texted my friend who had also signed up to attend and was en route: “I just saw a Black woman. We aren’t the only ones here.”

Soon, I found out that there were close to 10 of us melanated women among the 70-plus guests attending the weeklong experience. Our shoulders dropped, and our armor melted away in the presence of one another with each interaction.

Back in the maloca that first night, we all sat anxiously on our mattresses spread around the room, each of us with a bucket beside our beds, something every ayahuasca story I’d ever heard had warned me about. The room was dim and hazy with ceremonial smoke, making it hard to clearly see everyone around me. Somewhere in the darkness were the other Black women I had noticed earlier that day, along with two Black men. But mostly everyone was a silhouette. My visions, purging, and overall eight-hour journey were mild, and I wondered what the hype was all about.

But by the fourth ceremony, my body surrendered completely. My visions were vivid and deeply personal, as was my inner dialogue with what could’ve been my higher self, an ancestor, or God for all I knew. Dizzy and purging, I sat in a prayer circle where shamans and helpers rested their hands gently on my shoulders as they prayed and sang over me. I thought about my daughter, how much I missed her, and realized that I was doing this for her too.

Ayahuasca is far from a white-washed medicine. Its roots—quite literally and figuratively—are indigenous. The brew itself combines the Banisteriopsis caapi vine with the leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub, plants that have been used for centuries by indigenous Amazonian communities in Peru, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador for spiritual, medicinal, and communal rituals. Only in recent years has its use by Westerners increased due to growing interest in alternative mental health treatments, spiritual tourism, and the search for self-discovery.

Here I was questioning whether this medicine was meant for someone like me, when in many ways it existed outside the Western wellness world I had associated it with.

At some point during the week, I stopped noticing the difference between myself and the other retreat participants. Everyone was there confronting something like heartbreak, trauma, grief, or the realization that life hadn’t unfolded the way they imagined. Healing, it turns out, looks pretty similar across backgrounds when everyone is sitting in the dark with a puke bucket beside their bed. By day five, I stopped wondering whether I belonged there. If healing was accessible to everyone, then it should be just that.

I returned home with a reset nervous system, a deeper acceptance for who I am, and a renewed commitment to the practices that support my well-being. More importantly, I left Costa Rica with an expanded view of who has the right to heal.

For a long time, I assumed experiences like this existed outside the cultural landscape of Black womanhood. But standing in that maloca, surrounded by other women who looked like me, I realized that assumption had more to do with visibility than reality. The well-being of Black women should always be a priority, no matter who’s beside them.

And maybe that new perspective is my miracle.