Today we’d like to introduce you to Catherine Adunni.
Hi Catherine, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My interest in healing with plant medicines began after watching a YouTube video of a gentleman who suffered from PTSD. He carefully explained his experience with anger and how it has ruined every important relationship in his life, including the one with his parents. He didn’t know why he was angry, and he couldn’t control it no matter how hard he tried until he met Ayahuasca. I knew then that I had to learn more. This was what I was searching for to help me repair the relationship with my mother and all the resentment I’d carried throughout my adulthood. At this stage of my life, I realized that my mother was getting older, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity of having a loving “mother-daughter” relationship despite the traumatic experiences of being sexually molested at a young age. For over 25 years, I blamed my mother for not keeping me safe and paying enough attention to me.
At the age of nine, my mother divorced my Father and began a new relationship with a man named Sherman “Bud” Preston, who later dubbed the serial killer of Toledo, Ohio. He mostly killed women by choking and sodomizing them, and he committed most of these murders while living with us. My Mother and I was not aware of this until after we had moved away from him, but I was aware that he was a predator and of the worst kind. He earned my trust by making my Mom the enemy, and by giving me things and allowing me to do the things my mother forbade me. He eventually started asking for kisses, and this led to more and more sexual molestation that last for three years until I burned our apartment down. I had watched my mom try to leave him several times but he was excellent in emotionally manipulating her to stay. My family despised him so I figured if I burned the apartment down, we would have to move and my family would take us in but not him.
I’m grateful that it worked out and no one was hurt but looking back on this event sure let’s me know the Angels were with me. This story led to many years of not trusting men or women who loved dangerous men for that matter, and believe me, it spilt into every part of my life. I was a compulsive angry mess and I knew my life wasn’t working because of it. Ayahuasca helped to peel back the layers and to re-examine the beliefs I had acquired from these events. “She” showed me how to replace anger and rage with compassion. So I began a long journey of now ten years working with her and other plant medicines to find some peace. In the last couple of years, I was encouraged by my teachers to begin my apprenticeship as a Medicine Woman and carrier of the sacred ways. My name is now Mother Jaguar. I hadn’t fully stepped into this role until the death of my mother who I was a caretaker to for the last five years yet, her death encouraged me to embrace what the medicine was calling me to do… “to be of service” to reuniting other’s to the guidance of their higher selves instead of serving the limiting beliefs of their ego’s.
Most are operating from an event or a series of events that traumatized them in the past, thus accumulating behaviors that lead them into more suffering and this makes us incapable of discovering our full potential. Everyone deserves the time to peel back the layers and layers of mask or personas they’ve created to protect them in order to get to the root of what’s been hindering them from living life fully with confidence. These beautiful sacred and ancient medicines are a doorway for that and I’m eternally grateful to have found them and plan to live out the rest of my life in service to them, the Divine Creator and humanity. My work here in the US is mostly with an indigenous tobacco snuff called Rapéh (Hop-pay) in various forms and for various purposes. I use this plant medicine in ceremonies as a tool for meditation in order to steady the mind and calm the nervous system enough to allow participants to become more aware of themselves and find a little more peace in their day to day lives. In large ceremonies, we incorporate sound healing (instruments), healing Icaro’s (plant medicine songs from the Amazon), and other heart-opening songs to take participants on a journey back to feeling, something most have been guarding themselves from for years. I also organize ceremonies in Brazil where other plants like Ayahuasca is legal to use.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It definitely has not been a smooth road yet. Every challenge got me here and was worth it. When I found this medicine, it had already been compromised by what I call “spiritual pimps” or not so honest urban shamans who were taking advantage of vulnerable participants and operating from a super inflated ego. So in most cases, I again had to learn to protect myself while trying to heal.
Over the course of six years, I had sat with several “Medicine facilitators.” Some who were not very accommodating to people of color, some who slept with their participants, some who where looking for money and power… etc, Until I found my brother Haru Kuntanawa (Chief of the Kuntanawa tribe) in Acre Brazil and my sister Waxy Yawanawa (Chieftess) of a subset tribe in the mountains of Acre Brazil. They were both walking the good road with humility, honor, sacredness and in service to the healing of humanity. The other obstacle was being a Woman of Color in this type of work. It’s mostly men who are respected in this work, and boy have I been ridiculed (smile) for not knowing enough or for simply being a black woman in this work. But, that hasn’t stopped me from being of service because it’s not the recognition I’m chasing. This work is a soul’s work.
Can you talk about how you think about risk?
Without taking risk, there couldn’t be an opportunity for gaining experiential wisdom.
Contact Info:
- Email: Themotherjaguar@gmail.com
- Website: www.motherjaguar.com
- Instagram: @catherineadunni
Image Credits:
Cassandra Johnson
Jasey Smith
