tales of Suchita

I have lost track of the number of people who have asked me why I don’t pursue my healing practice for others more diligently. For years, I have focussed only on decoding myself, using all the tools I have learnt to unlock my own mysteries.

I think after 18 years, I have some understanding of who I am as a person. This has not been an easy journey, of course. It has been foundation shattering to get myself off the safe pedestal I was kept on, never to be seen or heard. To see all the ways I have abandoned myself. To see the anger at myself for letting me down. To hold firm when everything in me is asking me to go back to the way things were.

A few days ago, I finally named my healing practice: the unwilting heart. I will talk more about it but today I want to talk about how I found the courage to take this step.

In shamanism (yes, yes, another thing I have to talk about, I will) we have something called a Medicine Walk. We go to a place of nature, set an intention and without our phones or journals, walk through the place.

The task is to notice things, like a treasure hunt, that catch our attention. It could be the cawing of a crow. Or two cats fighting. A fruit on a tree. An oddly shaped tree branch. Animal footprints on the path.

Since there is no journal or phone, we have to remember what nature reveals to us. An hour later, once we’re back, we make notes and then discuss how the treasures we collected link back to our intention.

For the Medicine Walk I did in 2026, I had one too many intentions: right from my as yet unnamed healing practice to how I have grown since I last did the walk in 2023 to how I can get back to fiction writing. My teacher will remind me here that Suchita you need one intention to get the best possible guidance. A muddled intention leads to muddled guidance. But I wanted to know too many things.

It is a good thing mother nature is far more intelligent than me. She chose one intention from my many and revealed guidance for it.

There was a fork in the road, right as we started. What could be more metaphoric than this? While my teacher went left, I went right. As soon as I turned to the right, I was confronted by an army of monkeys. I got so scared, remembering all kinds of anecdotes of monkeys snatching things, jumping on people, being violent.

I kept looking back, seeing my teacher becoming smaller in the distance. I almost turned around but before I could, I felt a nudge on my shoulder, asking me to keep going. I did. And as I walked, the monkeys started to thin. They left the path the further in I walked and I was easily able to cross the threshold.

The walk from there on became a metaphor in itself. Every time I would pause, nature would tell me: not yet, keep walking. Every time I would feel tired, a breeze would blow, revitalizing me. There were many places to rest and I would sit on some for a moment, soaking in the colours around me, looking for treasures, not realizing yet that the entire walk was a treasure.

I came across another fork in the road, and like any curious child, asked mother nature if I could walk down it. She said no. I, thinking curiosity is good, walked down it anyway. I got many signs that I was deviating and halfway through, I listened and came back.

I laughed at myself as I returned to the original path, wondering if mother nature was sitting somewhere, head in her hands, exasperated at my stubbornness.

What I took from the entire experience is this: I was supported and guided throughout. Mother nature sent guides in the form of crows, monkeys and birds to help me forward. She sent animal footprints to remind me I was not alone. When I said I wanted to walk till the end of the road, I wanted to know, she gently reminded me I couldn’t and needn’t do everything.

That reminder made the responsibility of offering my healing to others more bearable. It stopped feeling like a giant leap and started to feel like one step.

After much mulling over, the unwilting heart was born, symbolic of exactly what the Medicine Walk showed me: the warrior spirit and fearless heart that keep us going, even when we would rather turn back.

And now…the real work begins.