Grief, Guilt, and Forgiveness: The Hidden Medicine of Ceremony

The healing that doesn't look like healing — until you feel it

People often come to plant medicine searching for clarity, peace, or purpose.

What they don’t always expect is what rises first: grief

Grief for time lost.

Grief for choices made while surviving.

Grief for the parts of themselves they had to abandon just to keep going.

Or sometimes, guilt.

Guilt over the harm they’ve caused.

Guilt Over how long it took them to face themselves.

Over how they coped when they didn’t know better.

These aren’t signs that something’s wrong. They’re signs that something real is moving. You don’t heal by skipping over these emotions. you heal by walking with them

San Pedro doesn’t force these feelings out. It softens the wall around them. And when the body finally feels safe enough. The tears come. The breath deepens. The holding loosens.

You don’t need to understand it right away. You don’t need to name it clearly. You just need to stay with it, long enough for the emotion to move, and long enough for your heart to see what was underneath it all: You’ve been doing your best. You’re still here. And that matters.

Ceremony creates a space where nothing has to be hidden

Maybe you’re grieving someone you never got to say goodbye to. Maybe you’re mourning the version of yourself that had to survive without tenderness. Maybe you’re holding guilt for things you said or didn’t say, actions you can’t take back.

We’ve seen people sit in silence for hours. We’ve seen people sob. We’ve seen people write letters, bury stones, sing, scream, forgive, or simply breathe. And we’ve seen that when these emotions are witnessed, they lose their grip. What was stuck begins to move. What was avoided begins to speak. And what was shame becomes grace.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean they deserved better. it means you deserve peace. We’ve been told that forgiveness means letting people off the hook. That to be “spiritual” is to soften, to say it’s okay, to understand the wounder more than the wounded.

That’s not real forgiveness. That’s spiritual bypass. And for many of us, it’s a betrayal of the self.

True forgiveness, when it comes, is not for them. It’s for you.

To release the shame, the self-blame, the poison that violation left inside you. It’s not about saying, “They didn’t mean to.” It’s about saying, “I didn’t deserve that, and I will never allow it again.”

Sometimes forgiveness looks like rage first. Sometimes it looks like silence. Sometimes it looks like building a life where your boundaries are sacred and no one like that gets near again.

That’s the kind of forgiveness we make space for here At the Huachuma project. And only if it ever feels right, on your own terms.

You may not come to ceremony looking for this kind of healing, but it often finds you anyway. This is why we keep our spaces small. Why we work slowly. Why we allow space for quiet. Because grief and guilt are sacred. And they deserve to be welcomed, not rushed.

When people leave our retreats, they don’t always say, “That was beautiful.” Sometimes they say, “That was hard, but I feel like I finally let something go” And that’s healing.

Final thoughts

If grief rises, let it. If guilt comes, breathe with it. If forgiveness feels impossible, stay open to the day it won’t.

The medicine doesn’t just help you see. It helps you feel. And sometimes, the deepest peace is not found in an answer, but in finally being able to lay something down.

Here at the Huachuma Project, we don’t rush that. We make space for it. And we walk with you through it.