Families rarely heal in straight lines. Yet, approached with care and intention, psychedelic medicine can catalyse and deepen the slow work of repair. In this candid, two-part reflection for Numinous Ways, Fiona —our participant in the April 2025 retreat—and her daughter, Ellie, trace a mother–daughter journey through addiction, estrangement, and renewal. Told in two voices, what follows is a raw account of transformation—shaped not only by medicine, but by foraging in nature, shared laughter, honest apology, and the quiet work of new boundaries. Together they explore intergenerational patterns, trauma, sobriety, and self-forgiveness with clarity and courage. Their words speak to anyone wondering how relationships mend after the breaking—and what it can truly take to come back to one another, and to oneself.
*****
Tripping, Healing and Children
This article is in two parts; I wrote my part, shared it with my daughter, and invited her to write in a way that best reflected her journey and how she would want to share her story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Where we were
There is a clear demarcation in my life; Before Psychedelics and After Psychedelics. Before was messy; my daughter, Ellie, addicted to Xanax, me struggling to know how to just be with her, let alone help her with her addiction. Our relationship was almost beyond repair. All I had left was my love for her; every other possible way we had to connect was damaged by her addiction and my reactions.
As the parent of a child with a drug addiction the emotional pain comes from many places; seeing not only the damage to your addicted child, but to your other child. Frustration, anger, sometimes hatred, sadness, overwhelming despair. And blame; so much self-blame. Because as a parent, it feels as if your child’s addiction is your fault. If I had parented better, guided more, loved deeper, done more, done less, been fully present, sacrificed more, seen the signs, been stricter, been different, been someone other than myself, then my child would not have become an addict.
The prevailing advice to parents of an addict is not to blame oneself. And I acknowledge that I could have parented differently, yet we could still have ended up in the same place. There is no controlled experiment to prove or disprove the fault of the parent, but looking back, now very firmly A.P., I can see the mistakes I made.
Because, for the most part, I parented as I was parented. And I was raised in an extremely emotionally dysfunctional household. My mother suffered a horrendous trauma as a child and, with no therapy, remained emotionally immature her whole life. My father had his own issues. In some areas I did the opposite from my parents; no physical punishment, more freedom, less shaming, but for the rest I was, for at least some of the time, emotionally unavailable, resented the demands of parenting, and struggled with putting boundaries in place. My children, no doubt, have their own list of things they would like me to have done differently, and I will very willingly own every item on that list, for one of the many lessons’ psychedelics have taught me is that a genuine apology is one of the most important gifts you can give to your child.
Going back to B.P. In 2022, my amazing, strong, beautiful daughter got herself clean of Xanax. On her own. She hit her rock bottom and fought her way back up. I can chart the progress from the photos on my phone. 22 September, when she was aged 22, a picture of Els and her father on my sofa. This was the day she came home and we all sat down and planned how we would navigate the mess of debt, unemployment, and broken trust. That part was actually easy; the challenge we didn’t consider was how Ellie and I would start to re-build our relationship. What was needed was to find something that bypassed our established parent/child dynamic, with all the deeply ingrained patterns of action-reaction-withdrawal.
And the universe handed it to us. The same month, coincidently, I started my journey with psychedelics. My intent was to use them to heal myself; to uncover my stuck-ness. Back to the photos; September; a picture of the friend I had my first trip with and amazing, intertwined tree roots we came across on my first foraging walk. I talked to Ellie about the foraging; about my intent, and she asked to join me hunting for mushrooms. She had experience of psychedelics from her drug years; as a party drug; as a way to get high and escape, but now she learned that they could be part of her recovery when used with intent. So, later that month, a picture of Ellie and a donkey, taken on our first forage together. We didn’t discover many mushrooms, but we did discover a shared enthusiasm, bordering on obsession, with all things psychedelic. We both LOVED the hunt for mushrooms, the slow walk, the constant scanning, the leap of hope when a ‘shroom is spotted, the joy when it is confirmed as being a liberty cap, the search for more and more and more.
First Journeys
And so, we get to 17th October 2022. A picture of Els, in an armchair somewhere in Wales. Eyes like saucers, slight grin, slumped in a posture that speaks to any psychonaut; she was tripping balls! We’d driven up the day before, with her new girlfriend, and spent the day on a Welsh mountainside finding our medicine. Medicine that came from the sunshine, the sheep and horses, the views, the endless sky, the peace, the focus, the joy; the pure joy of finding magic mushrooms. This was the way; not through some faceless street corner deal, or slipped in to your hand by a friend, but to get out there and be part of nature.
I would love to tell you that this first trip together allowed us to talk, to heal, to resolve, to air and repair. It didn’t. The reality is that I was unable to switch off the parenting head that told me to protect my child from all possible harm. So, when the girls said they were going out to look for bugs to draw, I imagined them walking unknown streets, clearly not fully in control of any of their facilities, and asked them instead to stay inside and draw imagined bugs. I remained on the sofa, guarding all exits, while the mushrooms filled my head with their fungi language, and visuals distorted my vision; as I discovered, for me, any dose above 2.5 grams has to be a solitary experience.
The one moment of connection I can recall is when, not long before I became incapable of focussing, I read aloud the adverts from a newspaper supplement. I was particularly animated and excited about leather jackets, and Els found me hilariously funny. For the first time that I could remember, my daughter showed an appreciation for ME. Me as a person, not as her mother.
Over the course of the next two years Ellie and I walked our own journeys with mushrooms. We micro and macro-dosed. Sometimes our paths converged; another foraging weekend to Wales with both Ellie and my son, Theo. The trip we took together on our second evening there, had Ellie and I lying together on a bed but in our separate worlds, and Theo downstairs, until he appeared wearing a quilt and impersonating a woodlouse. Last year Els and I went to the Medicine Festival. We consumed a mild dose and relished in our shared satisfaction of seizing on a word or phrase, and over-enunciating it repeatedly. We also found it uproariously funny when our camping stove continuously self-ignited, and subsequently spent an afternoon composing an appreciation essay to the tent neighbour who solved the issue for us. These shared moments, as two beings experiencing joy and laughter were a milestone, as they were among the first in many years where we simply just enjoyed each other.
Walking the Path
When I pitched, to Christoph of Numinous Ways, the idea for this article; how tripping with your adult children can bring understanding and healing to the parent/child relationship, I think both he and I imagined I would write about just that; a shared trip that changed our relationship in an identifiable way. It may happen for some, and still could for us, but, upon reflection, the reality is there was no one experience that was transformational. What did happen is that we both, slowly, but steadily changed at a deep and profound level. Ellie also experienced the normal maturing that takes place up to age 25, and only she can identify what changes may have been from psychedelics.
The challenge, for me here, is to explain the changes in my psyche in a way that is quantifiable. In trying to express the B.P. I have typed, deleted, composed, decomposed, so maybe I just free-style……
Self-worth? Hah. Blame; me, you, the dog, the weather. Judge, judge, judge. Validate me. I’m trying to be a good person. See me. Chameleon. Where do I fit? Does anyone like me? My children should know better, be better, listen to me and all my dumb fucking wisdom. Sigh. Do as I say, not as I do. I opened my mouth and my mother spoke. WTF?
BREATHE.
Sadness. Self-pity. Poor, poor me. Over-give. People fucking pleasing. Not saying No. Here comes resentment. Sigh again. Need me but don’t bother me. Cross-face. There’s more. It’s my job to be the parent, tell them, tell them, TELL them how to live their lives. Stop. Just stop beating myself up. Trying, but failing every step of the way. Why did I say that, do that. I’m right. No, I’m wrong. Will this voice in my head just shut the fuck up.
And A.P?
This is easier to express in complete sentences. I found self-awareness; the ability to step back and watch my mind spinning its stories. I realised that the messages; the inherited script that I internalised in childhood, of not being enough, of having to hold it together, be responsible for others, the belief that my worth came from what I gave, not who I was, were the wrong messages. NONE OF IT WAS MY FAULT. I was programmed by two damaged people. I do not have to be useful to be valued. I learned to be emotionally open, to see my triggers and not react, to set boundaries and find that people did not withdraw their love or approval.
And specifically, as a parent, I saw how I was responding to my children through the lens of those childhood messages. That their behaviour unconsciously tapped in to my old wounds and I reacted from defence and control rather than presence. How I loved them deeply, but certain conversations and emotions felt unsafe, so I kept things functional. And the biggie; I saw parenting as something I had to get right rather than allowing authentic connection.
Where we are
Today I am able to experience my children as individual humans on their own journeys and not as MY children. It has been a challenge, the urge to fix or shape is still there, but can be allowed to pass without sticking. I am learning the ability to be present with what is and not seek to control. I willingly admit and own my mistakes. I am emotionally honest, and give love that is not conditional on behaviour, achievement, or meeting my expectations. Not all the time; I still get pulled back in to my old way of being, but can see it, if not immediately, then afterwards upon reflection.
And I reflect a lot. On the parent, and person, that I want to be. On the relationship I want to have with my children that is based on the people they are and not my vision of how they should be. On forgiveness. Empathy. Being authentic. On being a parent, a person, they can be proud of, not for what I do, but in how I show up.
I have two incredible children. Part of me is humbled at how they shine despite my parenting before psychedelics, but the healed me recognises that we become the people we are because of both the positive and negative experiences in our lives. And it now feels as if the positives have outweighed the negatives. What I know, without a doubt, is I, we, could not have reached this place without psychedelics.
Fiona Cooke
August 2025
Ellie
I will add a disclaimer here: Ellie talks about her medical diagnoses and how SHE felt psychedelics helped. We do not make any medical treatment claims. Fiona.
Mum. The healing of mine and your relationship was not a forced one. It did not come from intention as one might imagine; nights spent tripping, dissecting where our relationship went wrong. Not that I don’t believe we could’ve done it this way, or that anyone else could do it this way, but it wasn’t our path. Our path came naturally, without pressure from either side, and with a lot of individual work and realization. We started our psychedelic journey together tentatively, up on a soggy hillside in mushroom season with nothing but hope. For me, I needed this. A list of antidepressants and antipsychotics prescribed by the doctor to treat my BPD left me feeling hollow, inhuman, and hopeless after being told ‘this next medication is your best option’. Because getting clean was not the hardest part for me, it was raw-dogging life after with the reality of PTSD and a personality disorder and nothing to numb it with.
When you suggested that I try magic mushrooms to help with my mental health, it appealed to me. A small part of it, I think, to the addict in me, hearing mushrooms and thinking ‘high’. But the bigger part was desperation to be clean, functional, and happy, and a belief that mushrooms could be my medicine. And, as I know you’ll love to hear mum, you were right. Beyond right. You asked me to write about how mushrooms healed our relationship, so I’ll keep this bit brief, but mushrooms did more for my mental health than any medication or therapist could ever.
Our healing began before we actually took mushrooms together. Our healing began with foraging for our medicine in Mother Nature. Foraging gave us something solid to connect over, letting us forget our years-long struggle to understand, communicate, empathize, relate, not re-open old wounds, not over-analyze, forgive. By taking me foraging, you cultivated a passion for mushrooms in me. You gave me back an interest to have for myself, after drugs had stolen all of mine from me.
After this, came trips shared together. Purely silly, giggly, joyously happy trips. Not the introspective, healing kind, that I know you’ve done many of alone over the years. But we had fun together. Proper child-like fun. And fun turned out to be exactly what we needed; fun was the biggest healer for us. Fun allowed me to see you as a person, as a human that I would choose to have in my life, not just ‘mum’. Drugs took me young, even though my sobriety came young too; at 22, I had still 6 years of addiction under my belt. And it made me fucking self-absorbed, along with the usual teenage self-absorption. I did not see your value back then. Mushrooms helped me see the beautiful, strong, endlessly loving and giving person you are.
A few months of mushroom medicine put us in a place to have vulnerable, walls-down conversations about the difficulties of my childhood, teenage years, and our relationship in the present. This didn’t happen on mushrooms, and didn’t need to, as we’d individually progressed to a place of self-realization and openness to understand each other. A conversation had over video call, with you owning mistakes you felt you’d made when bringing me and Theo up, and not excusing anything, wasn’t something I expected to hear from you. That’s not a comment on you being a person to shy from apology, but a comment on how, as someone’s child, I didn’t think I’d want or need that conversation to happen. That conversation, coupled with a video you recorded after, telling me all the reasons you love and appreciate me as a human being, was healing.
I’m not sure of the right way to end this, but I think a pretty good ending, is to say that I love you mum, and I’m proud of us.
Ellie Calway-Brooks
August 2025
Disclaimer (please read)
This article includes personal accounts referencing addiction, PTSD, and BPD, as well as experiences with psychedelic substances. These reflections are not medical advice and do not constitute an endorsement of self-medication or of using psychedelics to treat any condition. Psychedelics remain illegal in many jurisdictions and can carry psychological and legal risks. Do not start, stop, or change any medication or therapy without the guidance of a qualified clinician. If you are seeking help for addiction or mental-health challenges, please consult a licensed professional or an appropriate support service.
More from Memories, Dreams, Reflections:
