05/06/2026
When I was sitting in the jungle in Peru, a medicine woman said to me, “You’re going to work with flesh and bone.”
Immediately, my ego jumped in. Well, of course, I thought. I’m a bodyworker, a massage therapist. Of course I work with flesh and bone.
I kept that thought to myself. I didn’t want to be rude, and I certainly didn’t want my sarcastic, egoic side raising its head and stamping its feet.
The medicine woman looked me directly in the eye and said, “With animal flesh and bone.”
I looked back at her as if she was insane and this time spoke aloud.
“Realllllllyyyyyy? I’m not so sure about that.”
She simply replied, “It’s in you. I can see it.”
Something stirred inside me that day. Although I didn’t want to admit it, I couldn’t ignore it completely. I pushed her words to the back of my mind and convinced myself they were nonsense. My ego certainly thought they were nonsense.
Yet those words had already begun to awaken something within me—something ancient, something remembered. A feeling of knowing. Deep down, I sensed she was right.
I returned home and tried to forget about it, but her words lingered. They teased and taunted me, refusing to disappear.
Not long after, I booked myself onto my first drum-birthing workshop with a beautiful woman who had been working with animal hides and drums for many years.
The moment I birthed my first drum, something clicked into place.
Everything about that day felt sacred. The ceremony honouring the animal. The nervousness I felt holding the hide in my hands. The wooden hoop beneath my fingertips. The lacing and strapping. The stretching of the hide over the frame. The soft, warm, wet flesh beneath my fingers.
It all felt right.
I left that workshop knowing it would never be my last.
Working with human flesh and bone as a massage therapist and bodyworker is, in many ways, no different from working with the flesh and bone of an animal whose spirit still exists, even though they no longer walk this earth.
You feel the lumps, the bumps, the patterns, the weavings, the stories. Every mark, every scar, every discolouration has something to tell us.
It’s all the same.
We are all part of the same body—human and animal, flesh and bone.
We carry our stories, our traumas, our successes, our heartbreaks and our joys within these bodies that we inhabit. We can try to ignore them, suppress them, or dismiss them, but eventually they rise to the surface.
You will feel it in your cells.
You will know it in your DNA.
Your ancestors will call to you.
And when they do, you will know what is right and when the time is right.
My calling is flesh and bone—both animal and human.
To honour.
To nourish.
To respect.
To hold ceremony.
This is a calling to walk in the footsteps of my ancestors, to remember my animal body, to follow those who have walked before me, and to leave footprints for those who will follow behind.
For my ancestors of flesh and bone.
For my kin.
I hope that everyone finds their beauty path, their true path. And when that path presents itself, I hope you honour it, no matter how uncomfortable, alien, or absurd it may seem at the time.
Follow it.
Trust your knowing.
Within that knowing, you will find a deep and lasting peace.
Awen
✨💚🦌
