Why I’m doing this…

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk… I guess I should start with a bit of a background on me, my life and what’s led to all of this…

My name is Anastasia. As I write this, I am a 30 year old woman living in Vancouver, Canada. I was born in Calgary, Alberta on July 25th to a very young woman at the time named Danna McVicar. From that moment on, nothing about my life would be what most consider “normal”. My mother was not fortunate enough to grow up in a healthy or loving home and began to struggle with mental illness and addiction at a young age. She left home very young and before she turned 18, found herself without a high school diploma or a family and a baby on the way. Her best friend at the time, Deb, who I have always referred to as “Aunt Debbie”, her brother Jeff, and her mother Judy, welcomed my mother into their family as if she had always been apart of it. When I came around, everyone pitched in to take care of me. From the few photos I have seen over the years, it seemed like I was very loved and was off to a good start in life.

Something important to note about my childhood and the experiences I will be sharing… a lot of it was told to me, and not so much things I remember first hand. I actually remember very little of my life before the age of 8 years old, which could be normal, but to me it’s frustrating at times to have to go off of second hand information rather than my own memory. So I can’t guarantee all the information is fully true, but that’s also a bit of a theme for my life… we won’t get into that now though…

Some time passed and my mothers mental health began to take a back seat as her lifestyle shifted more towards prioritizing her whims and desires, and farther from her responsibilities, such as her daughter. Vague stories of my early years mostly come from Debbie’s mother, Judy, who I’ve always called “Nana’. She has told me that my mother always loved me but really struggled with herself and eventually Danna made the decision she could not be the mother she felt I deserved and I ended up in government care. I remember this one day when I was maybe 8 years old, I’m honestly not sure, we were looking through scrapbooks she had made from me that had things like birth details, hospital photos and one thing that stood out to me was cards from people I didn’t remember. When I asked my Nana who they were I felt the mood shift and she cautiously told me (from what I can remember), they were a couple who had been in the process of trying to adopt me. Thoughts and daydreams flooded my mind of a life with a mom and dad. I believe I asked her what happened to them, wondering why my daydreams weren’t real. And this could be completely untrue but I’ve always remembered her answer being that they’d both passed away in a car accident before the adoption went through. I don’t know if that’s actually what happened, but it makes me feel slightly better than the possibility I was once again not wanted.

“Not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent’s love.” - Charles Dickens

My Nana, having kept her eye on me as I was essentially orphaned, decided after the unsuccessful adoption, that she couldn’t bare to leave my future to chance, and began the process of obtaining partial custody of me. Bless her. I owe that woman everything I am today for that choice. She was granted shared custody, with my mothers permission, and from then on, I was Judy’s daughter. Would it surprise any of you to hear that Matilda was one of my favourite childhood movies?

In 1999, when I was about 7 years old, after years of being raised by Judy, my mother came over to our house for Christmas and brought with her a little baby girl. My sister Alexis was born in 1998, and 11 months later, came my sister Hailey. This was the first time I remember experiencing the feeling of being unwanted. I was too young to ever understand why my mom had chosen not to be my mother, until seeing her choose to be a mother to someone else. I would later learn that this was likely my first memory of “childhood trauma”. I won’t recount every single moment that built the web that is my trauma, but I will say from that day on, I knew my life was not going to be easy.

You may be wondering “where’s Dad?”, well, from what I’m told, my father was significantly older than my mother when I was conceived. Somewhere in the range of 35 when my mom was about 17? Apparently he did give my mom 2 options… give up the party lifestyle, the drugs etc and he would take care of her and his daughter, or she could continue down her path and he would remove himself from the picture. Well, my mother is not one for ultimatums and pretty much told the guy to “fuck off”, so he did. My aunt says she remembers a conversation with him where he said he would be back when I was 18 to pay for my education… that never happened. In the 6th grade, when I was completing a family tree school project, I remember asking my mother for my fathers name. Since one side of my tree was scarce and the other half of my project was blank, while most kids had massive trees, I only had a few branches. She never gave me a clear explanation of who he was but tossed around names that I recall as “Michael Lucas Bailey” but my Aunt remembers “Luke” being the name he went by. That side of the family tree remained blank, and fortunately no one really asked any questions about it during my presentation. That was the last time my mother would allow the topic of my father to be discussed.

My mother definitely experienced more trauma in her life than I will ever understand, and I learned that those moments triggered the development of several mental illnesses, leaving her turning to substance abuse as a coping mechanism. My Nana and Aunt Debbie always did a great job of keeping the balance between letting me be a kid and informing me that my mom was always battling demons in her head. Debbie and Judy, if you’re reading this, thank you for that. I also will be eternally grateful to them for giving me the best life they could. I believe because of their cautious transparency about my mother’s struggles, despite many opportunities and immense peer pressure, I never turned to drugs. Until my 18th birthday when I tried weed for the first time, greened out, and didn’t touch it again until many years later.

I believe my mother did the best she could with the cards she was dealt. Between her own childhood trauma, drug use, her battle with mental illness, her countless relationships with abusive partners, raising two girls on her own after surrendering her first, her life was far from something to be admired. And yet, I always looked up to her for being the woman I saw in her. A women who wouldn’t take anyones shit, did what she had to do to keep going and always had a way of lighting up a room when she entered it. She was outgoing, charismatic, funny and absolutely gorgeous. Those who knew her didn’t call her Danna, they called her “Blondie”, and it suited her. Her big beautiful eyes, tanned skin, and bleach blond hair always turned heads. She was like my own Pamela Anderson, before I ever knew who that was. Even in her darkest days, she always had a way of putting a smile on someone else’s face.

In 2019 I was living in Calgary, dating a Comedian and working at a Medical Aesthetics clinic. Despite being an incredibly self-conscious and anxious person, I was doing pretty well for myself, and considering how my life had started, I was beating all the statistics for societies expectation of a product of “worst case scenario upbringings”. We had a lot of fun together, I started smoking weed with him, which kind of became our thing, and he was very good at making me laugh, even though I thought I was funnier. And yet, I was so deeply unhappy inside. Honestly, I was probably clinically depressed and just didn’t know it. One day after a fight with my boyfriend, I impulsively packed up all my things from his apartment and went to stay with my good friends Guadalupe and Natalia because something in me knew this relationship needed to be over. He came home, saw my things were gone, as was I, and called me. I ended it with him in that call, and at one point, I even used a Will Smith quote to explain to him why. The quote goes “her happiness is not my responsibility. She should be happy and I should be happy individually. Then we come together and share our happiness. Giving someone a responsibility to make you happy when you can’t do it for yourself is selfish”. I told him I didn’t want to be selfish anymore and genuinely believed I needed to go make myself happy. A couple weeks later, I was walking to work and had an intense urge or “intrusive thought” to walk into oncoming traffic, because somehow that seemed more appealing than going to work. I took my things home that night, and never went back to that job. The week before I left my job, I’d gotten approved for a small loan to buy a van that I had planned to convert into a tiny home. I was going to do all the work myself and when I was done, would travel the world with my new puppy Kona, on a mission to find happiness. The day I was meant to go pick up the van, the seller told me he’d sold it to someone else that morning. I was devastated. I’d only gotten a dog because of this plan and spent countless hours trying to find another van to buy but affordable options were scarce. This left me freshly single, unemployed with a loan I had no use for, a new puppy, and an online audience waiting to see me hit the road in my van and a deep feeling of being a failure. I spent weeks in bed, only really getting up to use the washroom, and if I’m honest, I likely would have let myself deteriorate to the point where I probably wouldn’t be alive anymore if I didn’t have an animal relying on me for survival. One day, an acquaintance named Caity invited me to a free Yin style Hot Yoga class at her studio a couple blocks form my apartment. I’d done yoga maybe once or twice in my life before this and at the time didn’t have much interest in doing anything besides sleeping, never mind trying something like a yoga class. And yet something inside me was screaming to “just go”, after all, it was free, I could walk there in under 5 minutes and I hadn’t left the house in weeks. I accepted Caity’s offer but in my heart knew I’d probably flake out last minute. I ran a bath and laid there as I battled with the idea for about an hour. 20 minutes before the class was meant to start, something in me made a snap decision and I told myself “just f**king go! It’s only 1 hour and then you can come right back to bed”. So I went. We spent most of the time laying on the mat, in a dimly lit hot room, holding different postures for 3-7 minutes. After about 10 minutes of fighting a confusing and embarrassing urge to cry, I burst into silent tears. Luckily the room was so hot, I knew my stream of tears would be mistaken for sweat, and I cried that entire class.

I left that class feeling mentally better than I had in months. I got home and pulled out a yoga mat I had kept from a recent trip to Jamaica when I had to sleep in the airport overnight due to a cancelled flight home. I put the mat where I could always see it and made a deal with myself to try and do yoga at home when I was feeling really low again. Over the next couple months, I began to feel better, started seeing my friends again and even did some travelling. One day I decided I was going to move to Mexico and start a new life with the money I still had from the loan, for the Van I never obtained. My aunt agreed to store my personal belongings, take care of my puppy until I could get set up in Mexico and I took off to Tulum. The plan was to find a job working at a club, meet up with a highschool friend who moved there to get his advice on how to immigrate to Mexico, and find somewhere to live. When I arrived in Tulum with my friend who was joining me for the first week, we spent the first few days exploring, meeting people and enjoying the beauty that is Tulum. I think it was day 4 or 5, we both woke up and had agreed we’d to go to some Cenotes that day. I woke feeling a bit off and asked Meghan if she’d mind me taking a nap, in hopes I’d feel better later. She and I crawled into bed, watched some Netflix and both passed out. When I woke up again, it was about 5pm, getting dark out and Meghans side of the bed was empty. I heard the TV on in the living room, and when I emerged from the bedroom, I saw her laying on the couch in the fetal position. She looked like she’d been crying and just as I asked her what was wrong, my body began to tense up and I quickly began feeling violently ill. She told me her dad had a heart attack and she burst into tears again. I crawled over to comfort her, and my whole body was fighting my every movement. She decided she would fly home the next day to be with her dad who was going in for surgery. She left the next morning and I spent the rest of our 5 days in Tulum alone in the AirBnB with the worst food poisoning I have ever had in my life. I was convinced I had a parasite but had no idea how I would find medical attention in Mexico when I couldn’t leave the toilet or even stand up straight because my body was so tense and ill. On the day I had to leave the AirBnB, return the rental car in Cancun, I rallied myself together and successfully drove the 4 hours to Cancun without shitting my pants. I was there another 3 weeks, staying in mostly empty hostels, making occasional trips to the hotel district beaches, and met up with a few friends. I was taking an Interior Design Diploma online at the time and was meant to be dedicating half my time to that and half to building a life for myself in Mexico. Instead I was spending days hiding in my hostel bed with the curtain drawn, playing sims and watching Netflix. I had again been consumed by my depression. I was there a total of a month before I ran out of money and flew back to Calgary.

Not long after that, in March of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic shut the world down, and we were asked to stay in our homes and avoid going out in public. I had just returned from a month in Mexico, 10 days in Hawaii and was practicing yoga pretty regularly at home. Being forced to stay inside, my mental health quickly started to decline again and I found myself faced with two choices. I could go back to my depressive state of laying in bed all day disassociating while YouTube videos played in the background, or I could try and keep my mind and body active. I chose to start making TikTok’s, doing yoga, learning new things like arm knitting blankets, and training my puppy. Weeks passed and the pandemic only became more severe, new rules were being implemented and George Floyed had been murdered, triggering the Black Lives Matter movement. I was beginning to feel like the universe was testing me.

In 2019, I had experimented with magic mushrooms a couple times with my ex and my first time I had what most would call a “bad trip”. I’d say that was a severe understatement for what I had experienced. The second time was much more pleasant. I was giggly, the bedsheets moved like ocean waves, and I could see geometric patterns on the walls. When my ex’s trip wore off and mine was declining, we decided to smoked some weed and my trip began to take off again. I decided to go lay in his bedroom while he watched sports with his roommate and enjoy my trip on my own. Funny enough, this was also the night I realized that I needed to leave that relationship while laying in his bed, listening to Mac Miller and crying over his recent death.

While in my Covid quarantine, trying to keep myself stimulated and avoid falling back into a dark place, I remembered I had some magic mushrooms in my weed drawer. I’d only done them a couple times with my ex, never taken them alone, had nothing but free time and so I decided to make some mushroom tea. I don’t remember them being as effective and it definitely wasn’t as strong of a trip as the first few times, but something about it left me feeling lighter. It became apparent to me that something in these mushrooms was positively impacting my self-esteem, my overall mood and just left me feeling over all less anxious in life. Between the mushrooms, the yoga and my awareness that I needed to take constant care of my mental health or I wouldn’t survive, I began to change as a person. I began to care more about the planet and less about my appearance. I focused more on what I wanted out of life and less on victimizing myself because I wasn’t given the same start to life as those around me. I started posting on Instagram and TikTok more, I had noticeably lost weight without trying, despite years of diets, gym routines and eating disorders. I just felt good in my own skin for the first time in my life.

The Pandemic and its restrictions had become “the new normal”, and I was starting to get restless. I had quit drinking entirely as it only brought me down and decided I wanted to move somewhere new and chose to relocate to Vancouver. I moved into my friends apartment that she left to go to LA early in the lockdown, before flying restrictions tightened and borders closed, leaving her trapped there. I stayed there for several months, saving up my EI payments so I could have a good chunk of cash in my pocket to move to Vancouver and by the end of July, I had managed to make it happen. I started a new life in Vancouver, wanted to get into acting and take modelling more seriously, I was making new friends and doing well. I quickly realized the roommate I’d met in a Facebook group was not the sweet, self aware person I’d originally thought and after several slightly traumatizing experiences living with her, made a desperate choice to move out, again. This cost me a huge chunk of the money I had saved and with no more money coming in, I found myself living in an apartment on East Hasting, across form an onsite drug detox centre, where I was surrounded by people who embodied my biggest fear. People’s who’s lives had left them fully reliant on drugs to escape reality, living in tents and makeshift shelters on the street below me. And if I’m honest, the only thing that separated me from them was the four walls around me, the mattress on the floor I was sleeping on, and the fact that I still had not touched any drugs, besides a one time MDMA tablet at an unforgettable house party in the Hollywood hills, weed and mushrooms. And in a short amount of time I knew I would run out of money to pay rent, and there was a very real possibility I’d soon be on the street below, right next to all those struggling to battle their traumas.

After a few weeks of living in my Hasting apartment I had agreed to meet up with this guy from a dating app, we had a nice dinner and he walked me home. He asked to come in to use the bathroom and despite my initial hesitation, I let him up to my apartment. I think when he saw where I was living he kind of felt sorry for me. I had no furniture, was eating out of a cup with chopsticks and sleeping on the floor with my dog. But he never once made a comment or led me to believe he was judging me. Then next time we met up he said he had a gift for me. He pulled out a tiny mason jar and a thing that looked like a really large key. He explained that the key was actually a little pocket knife and I should always carry it with me because this area was dangerous. In the mason jar were magic mushrooms. He knew I had tried them a couple times and he himself had as well. I thanked him for the gifts, gave him a hug and got out of his car. I only saw him one more time after that when we went thrift shopping.

One day while cleaning my empty apartment and listening to Ariana Grande’s newly released “Positions” album, I decided I wanted to do some mushrooms for the first time in a few years. I popped some dried mushies into my mouth, chewed them up, and soon found myself dancing in my underwear. And despite having almost nothing to my name, I felt blessed. I made a weekly habit of taking mushrooms but instead of dancing around I decided to experiment with how my mind worked on them. I laid down on my mattress, put in some headphones, listening to a guided meditation YouTube video, I closed my eyes, and let my thoughts take the drivers seat. This trip changed my life. And I know that can sound a bit cliche, but I’m so serious when I say that it completely changed every ounce of my consciousness and thinking. Within weeks I was signed up for a 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training Course, I was spending countless hours researching the effects of magic mushrooms, psychedelics, and mindfulness. I even started falling down rabbit holes on the internet and making TikTok’s about my findings. If you’ve ever read declassified documents on the the FOIA “reading room”, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This eventually led me to learning about something called Qi-Gong, which is a form of energy work mostly practiced in China. It’s like Thai-Chi, but different. I became obsessed with learning about the body, the mind and the possibilities we have inside us. Over the course of several months, while working on my yoga courses, doing my own research and experimenting on my own psyche with magic mushrooms, I became a completely different person. The girl in 2019 who was too insecure to leave the house without makeup or too depressed to get a job was thriving! I started working for myself online doing freelance social media management, which gave me some income to finally buy myself furniture. I was making new friends, going boating with strangers (something I would have been way too shy and anxious to do a few years ago), talking to and bringing food to people living in the tents below my apartment. I even started dating again. I was transformed in my mind, body and soul and really couldn’t think to thank anyone or anything except the magic mushrooms and my drive to create a life worth staying alive for. I began meeting people at parties who also had interest in psychedelics, its therapeutic benefits and learned that there was a real possibility psychedelic assisted therapy could be an alternative medicine to pharmaceuticals for those suffering with trauma, mental illness, addiction and more.

And just like that, I had found my purpose. Years spent watching my mother and people like her battle their demons on their own because they weren’t provided the right help, tools, resources or alternative options to not just cope with their struggles, but work to heal them, began to infuriate me. I refused to pursue superficial goals like modelling or acting and standby as the world burned before me, when I fully believed what had helped me could help others. I felt an overwhelming sense of purpose and a need to share with the world what mindfulness, psychedelics and self discovery had done for my mental health. So I began to brainstorm ways I could help people, I started following social pages that aligned with my interests and values. I began making yoga and meditation practices a regular part of my routine, eating more foods that made my body feel good, not just my tastebuds, smoking less weed, drinking more water and even purchased a small amount of stocks for a psychedelic company I’d done some brief research on. After some time I had to make some life changes because the online work wasn’t come in anymore, since many businesses were struggling through the pandemic and some even closing their doors altogether. I moved in with a roommate, got a job at a yoga studio and medical clinic and worked on my schooling. Life kind of took over and as I got busier with work and my social life, slowly my efforts to help others took a backseat.

On September 26th 2022, while at work, I got an Instagram DM request from someone named Sarah. I don’t usually check my requests but something in me pushed me to read it. The message stated that we didn’t know each other but it was about my mother and it was important that I contact her father John. I immediately knew that something was wrong. Sarah’s father John had been dating my mom on and off for years, and she had never reached out to me before. I responded to Sarah letting her know my mother and I hadn’t spoken in months, and asking what it was regarding, and waited for her response. The last time I had spoken with my mother was back in July when she had said some pretty horrible things to me, actually probably the worst things she’d ever said. She blamed me for who my sisters were and the one thing she’d said that still lives rent free in the back of my mind was “no one will ever love you”. I had taken a week to reply to her long hurtful rants. My response had come from a more healed place than previous conversations, where I expressed I had forgiven her for everything wrong in my life I had once blamed her for, I forgave her for her hurtful words. I explained that she didn’t really know who I was as a person and many assumptions she made of me were based on a Facebook account I hadn’t used in close to 10 years. Over all I had said my peace to her for the first time and finally felt free from caring about her opinion of me. While waiting for Sara to reply, I went to my conversation history with my mother and saw that she never did read that message. Sarah informed me that mother had passed away.

It’s been several months since she passed and every day presents new emotions, opens up both old and new wounds and I find myself forced to face childhood traumas I’ve spent years trying to forget. Luckily, I have learned how to be kind to myself while I work on healing.

Don’t worry, it’s not all dark clouds and heavy showers over here. Her passing has giving me back the drive and motivation to get back on track with my purpose. And so I present to you, The Bodhi House Company. A space for those seeking the tools, resources and support to overcome their trauma, addictions, mental illness or even just build a stronger relationship with themselves, while providing access to a community of people on the same journey to a happier, healthier human experience.

So I hope you’ll join our community and come on this adventure with me as I dedicate my life to helping others find light in the darkest of times.

Namaste

Anastasia McVicar

For my mom, Danna McVicar