What Mary Magdalene Came to Teach Me

*Trigger Warning: Discusses Cancer

For those who do not know me, I am 53 years old, a professional intuitive and feminine embodiment coach (somatic therapist).

Back in 1993, as a fresh-faced 21-year-old, I moved into a share house with a poltergeist. Thanks to my poltergeist experience I learned to activate and develop all my intuitive gifts. I learned to communicate directly with spirit guides, deceased loved ones, goddesses and ascended masters. I have been called by Inanna, Kali and Mary Magdalene.

When I was 22 years old I began having snake dreams when I was debating whether to leave my fiancé and go travelling by myself. I knew I needed to find myself. I ended up in Australia, travelling purely by intuition and met the most amazing people, including Lisa.

I treated the snakes as spirit animals. It took years to discover that the snake meant so much more! This discovery began with Mary Magdalene, who strolled into a meditation unasked and unexpected. She beckoned me to come and find her. I knew nothing at the time. That was 2018.

In 2018 I trained in clinical pastoral care and worked in a public hospital meeting people who had received a cancer diagnosis. In 2022 I trained to be a feminine embodiment coach (somatic therapist). After years offering Akashic Record Readings and programs to help women connect with their spirit guide team for themselves,  I finally found the missing piece of the puzzle to help women feel fully embodied and access spirit realms for themselves.

In 2018, I was guided to research the Cathars and went to the Languedoc region of France in 2019 my mother and I travelled to visit the massacre sites of the Cathars and walk the Camino de Santiago, 781km from the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains to Santiago de Compostela. I also connected with a past life, merging this lifetime back into my consciousness.

After this trip, I fell down an almighty rabbit hole of the divine feminine. Rather than snakes purely representing my spirit animal, I discovered the ancient Great Mother, the Dragon Mothers, snake goddesses and ancient snake worship throughout the Mediterranean. Through them I discovered the ancient role and methods of women of spirit in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

I spent years writing about the ancient symbols of the goddesses of the ancient world, particularly Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Levant. I realised how the ancient authors of Genesis had used the well known divine feminine symbols of the Tree of Life and the snake but distorted them into something to fear and distrust. Eve, the Mother of All Living, became the archetypal women who led humanity astray.

For over two thousand years, we have been told to distrust our body because it was sinful, dirty, evil and would lead us astray. We were taught to ascend out of our body to reach the divine.

It took years of research and self-discovery before Mary Magdalene gave me permission to go to sit in front of her relics. In 2023 I finally felt I was allowed to go. But after booking the trip with my mother…

I discovered I had cancer. On 23 May, 2023 I was diagnosed with an “invasive” cancer tumour sitting right on my anal verge and growing into my vaginal wall – where all the nerve endings are – meaning I was in a world of pain.

Even though I had been a hospice worker in my local public hospital, speaking to people from all walks of life with cancer, unconsciously I still believed it wouldn’t happen to me.

After “one of the hardest treatments” and 8 weeks recovery, I boarded the flight to France. Crazy precise timing. This photo was taken of my mother Jill and I in the Church of Sainte Marie Madeleine, Paris.

I was blindsided by cancer. I had 6 weeks between diagnosis and 6 weeks before the start of “one of the hardest treatments” to get my head around it. I was lucky. I had a rare form of cancer that responds extremely well to chemoradiation (so no surgery required).

I also happened to be moving house and was homeless for 8 weeks – coinciding with the duration of my treatment! Luckily my husband’s mother offered the family home for us to stay in while we waited for our beautiful new house.

The initial shock wore off and I was thrust into a new reality of treatment that caused much more pain than the tumour ever had. I was plunged into a deep sadness. My body had grown a tumour without warning me. My spirit guides had not warned me. My world was turned upside down and I fell headfirst into the underworld.

So, Why Did Mary Magdalene Come to Me?

For me personally, Inanna, Kali and Mary Magdalene appeared right before I needed them most. Who better to walk alongside me than these shining examples of the Divine Feminine who had traversed this path of grief and loss before me. Inanna had voluntarily entered the underworld to visit her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the underworld, shedding the trappings of her identity and her existence in the process.

Like Inanna entering the Underworld, I descended deep into the darkness, feeling my way cautiously through the daily radiation treatments and the two weeks of intravenous chemo, walking around with a pump strapped directly into my veins, leaking a steady dose poison into my bloodstream for five days. I learned to live in the darkness, feeling all the grief and sadness and shed all the judgments and beliefs I had around being unwell.

Like Inanna, I shed all of my preconceived ideas of who I thought I was. I was left naked, unable to be who I was but still not the person I was going to be. I sat in the discomfort and allowed myself to be torn apart.

This image of Inanna is by Jo Jayson. It hung above my bed in France in my trip in 2019. I should have guessed I was in for a wild ride!

Then there is Kali who was brought in when diplomacy and tack had not succeeded, making a bloody path of destruction for the new to flourish in its place. Her intense shakti or feminine energy transcends the Western view of good versus evil. Kali is the goddess of destruction and salvation, who transcends time and death, destroys ignorance and guides her followers to enlightenment.

Kali is associated with time, death, endings, change, transformations and destruction. Kali is familiar to many as a symbol of women’s rage. Kali’s energy is intense, ferocious, determined and courageous. She shouts “Enough!”

Kali stood beside me, equal parts motherly care and sacred rage. She worked on me, gently but firmly guiding me towards a new level of authenticity, humility, vulnerability and self-compassion.

Kali’s energy is intense, ferocious, determined and courageous. She encourages us to live fearlessly and has a reputation for being available to help us destroy all that no longer serves us, when we need help dismantling something in our life that no longer benefits us.

But she is also Me, the mother. She definitely respect and honour, but she does not come to me as a fearsome destructive force. She comes as a mama bear protecting her cubs. She loves as fiercely, caring for those she loves. She rages not to destroy us but to protect us, often from ourselves.

Finally, it was Mary Magdalene who witnessed her beloved be tortured to death but was able to stand firm, holding space for her beloved.

Surviving Treatment

During chemoradiation treatment my pelvis went to hell and back. My radiation oncologist had warned me this treatment was “one of the worst”. I learned the hard way that he had not exaggerated.

I was in screaming agony and unable to stay in my body a lot of the time. I was in survival mode, moving as best I could from one potential crisis after another. I shut down all nonessential interaction. I messaged friends but I had nothing to give. I hibernated, lying on a couch on my side watching renovation shows. I had no concentration. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t focus long enough to read an article let alone a book. I started watching reels, trying to leave my body as much as I could to bear the pain.

Radiation was burning me inside and out. Whatever pain relief they gave me, nothing took the edge off the burning sensation that was a constant throbbing in my pelvis. Some days I could not string a sentence together. I slept with a stack of wet facecloths beside the bed, rotating them between my legs as my hot skin dried them out.

I had to watch reels and escape my body so I didn’t scream going to the toilet. I tried everything to reduce the burning but chemoradiation had literally burned every layer of skin off between my legs.

By the final week I was spontaneously sobbing just to walk to the car for my daily radiation. In the car I had to warn my sons that I was going to have a cry to release some pressure, making sure I sighed and said, “that feels better!” afterwards so they knew I was okay.

But what was most peculiar was that every time I tuned in and felt into how I was doing inside, all I felt was calm and peace. “All is well” my spirit guides reassured me. All is well. I had an inner spaciousness that sustained me even in my darkest moments. I could crawl into myself and surrender into the unknowing and the mystery of it.

Even when I could barely walk, I felt held. This flew in the face of my daily reality.

During my cancer journey I had no time to build a spiritual toolbox to get me through. I had to trust I had everything I needed and fully surrender into the process.

Experiencing chronic pain and having no control over my life, my spiritual practice and beliefs were essential to my cancer journey, ensuring that I had the inner reserves to enter this dark night of the soul.

I was told to surrender into the process, knowing I was loved, guided and protected by my Spirit Guide Team. My life was stripped to the absolute essentials, prioritising my husband and sons. I came out of the treatment with a real appreciation for this life and a desire to seize the day.

Feeling It All

My treatment began with a canulla inserted into my upper arm that was used to administer chemo. For the first week and the fifth week of treatment I was given a black polka dot bag to carry the little bottle around that fed the drugs into my blood stream. Every other week I went to the hospital to have the line cleared ready for use.

It was unnerving having it attached 24/7, and navigating showers and sleep with the long cord attached to my arm. I made a conscious decision to treat all of the chemo and radiation as healing modalities, not poisons. I made friends with the drugs that could potentially cure me.

Deep in the depths of my cancer, I understood Mary Magdalene so much more. She leaned in, encouraging me to feel it all – the good, bad and the ugly. She kept nodding and smiling, inviting me to feel it all, even the pain. She felt very tantric, inviting in the full spectrum of consciousness.

Lucky for me, I had been consciously practicing Shakti Tantra since 2017, after being called to India by Kali Ma. One of the core tenets of Tantra is to embrace all and reject nothing. Because it’s all life, the parts we love and the parts we detest, the parts that scare the crap out of us. Tantra is an embodied spirituality. No experience was excluded from the mundane to the blissful.

Tantra is an exploration of the spectrum of consciousness. No human experience was excluded. It included everything from the mundane to the blissful. Tantra created maps to help others navigate through this world. Tantra is an embodied spirituality. It includes sexuality. Nothing is excluded. So, this makes it different from all other religions.

The word Shakti means power. Shakti is the divine feminine power. Shakti is the innate power in reality.

Mary Magdalene calls us into the dark corners of ourselves, to all the denied, rejected, and ignored parts of our psyche. These are the parts of us we were taught to fear. At first, we might recoil because we were conditioned to be terrified of our own inner power. We have cast light on the dark exiled pieces of ourselves hiding deep in the shadows of our own minds.

She waits patiently to be fully seen and brought into the light of remembrance once more. Because when we are brave enough to face ourselves. We find she is not monstrous but magnificent. She is our instinct, our intuition, our embodied wisdom.

I staggered through my cancer journey knowing I had allies in the spirit realms and Inanna, Kali and Mary Magdalene by my side. This fierce trio were my inspiration. They gave me the strength and resilience to surrender fully into the pain and endure. 

This painting is ‘Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre’ by Harold Copping.

The Fallout

After my last radiation, the nurse pulled me aside and asked how my pain was. She could tell I was in pain by how I was sitting and walking. After a short conversation she sent me to emergency, where I sat all night waiting for a bed in emergency. It took 20 hours for a bed to be free on the ward. I remained in hospital for 5 days, until my pain was manageable and the skin between my legs had begun to recover.

I was discharged the day after we took possession of our new home. I literally left hospital (the same one I had been a hospice volunteer) and into my new life in our new home. All the hard work had been done and I moved into our new home, with boxes towering in every room. The timing could not have been more perfect. All the hard work had been done and over the next weeks I began to unpack the boxes, stacked in every room.

After treatment my body miraculously started healing. Within two weeks, I grew the softest velvety baby skin between my legs. A fresh start. A new beginning. I had had only six weeks between diagnosis and treatment to get my head around it, followed by six weeks of chemoradiation. The speed had left little time to fully process any of it.

After my treatment I had 8 weeks to recover before I flew to France. I began having regular sessions with my somatic psychic practitioner Endra O’May. When I dropped into my my pelvis, drawing our attention and energy into the damaged part of my body, I would tremor. Tremoring is what wild animals do after they have been through a traumatic event. Tremoring beneficial for trauma release in war veterans and rape survivors.

With my training as a feminine embodiment coach (somatic therapy) I understood what my body was doing and just relaxed into it, allowing my body to tremble and shake as long as it needed. Incredibly, these sessions moved all of the visceral trauma so that anniversaries of my cancer journey are not triggering. I do not have flashbacks or unresolved emotion around my treatment.

I’ve debated whether to use this photo. I’m clearly unwell, thin lipped and pale. I’m in the thick of treatment, but still needing to put on a brave front for my children and my husband. I can see the strain in that smile.

Cancer was a deeply humbling experience that brought many unconscious beliefs to the surface to be healed. The shame of having cancer. The guilt that I was letting everyone down. Learning to navigate pain, crying in front of my children without traumatising them too.

Cancer has taken me into one of the biggest initiatory changes of my life and it’s not over yet. This short 6 week treatment left me without skin between my legs, internal scarring and side effects that continue to arrive.

No one tells you that radiation continues to burn for weeks, months, sometimes years, after treatment has ended. A physio told me that she was discussing the side-effects of radiation with a radiation oncologist who admitted to her that they can last for 43 years!

Yes, the ongoing scans to check the tumour has not returned or metastasised (spread to other areas) are stressful – I’m human! But even they are becoming less stressful as the time rolls on and the likelihood of a return reduces.

The joys of cancer is that a survivor knows if she’s been blindsided once it can happen again. Cancer has a tendency to grow unannounced and unexpectedly. Having worked as a hospice volunteer in my local public hospital, I had met people who had been given a cancer diagnosis. I saw firsthand how indiscriminate cancer was.

Cancer can occur anyone anytime, regardless of how clean living, fit and healthy you are. Knowing this can reduced the shame and guilt around a diagnosis but it does not help the eternal question Why?

My body has changed so much anatomically. I continue to discover ways chemoradiation has damaged me with internal scaring and damaged lymph nodes. Chemoradiation might have damaged my bones as I now have mild osteopenia (precursor to osteoporosis), and it has decimated my immune system as I am being monitored for mild neutropenia (low white blood cell count).

Chemoradiation has catapulted me into medical menopause. I put on 10kgs and aged overnight. While my body is slowing regenerating physically, it was a longer road to recover emotionally. It is almost two years since my cancer diagnosis and I am still rebuilding my inner energy reserves.

I am changed from this experience.

I am not the same person I was.

I lost trust in my own judgment. Also, since cancer I had no desire for anything non-essential. My life became very small. My friendships dried up. I lost all interest in small talk, superficial conversations and connections.

My tolerance for bullshit evaporated. I focused on my immediate family.

I did not want to be caught up in things that created stress, confusion or world take me off track. I tried to stay truthful to where I was in the here and now without feeling like I could not change. I had to be realistic with my energy levels.

I lost my spark. I had no self-belief or self-confidence. Many days I would struggle to put a sentence together. I had no words. This was so much more than brain fog. My vocabulary had dried up. I had nothing in the tank.

I lost friendships. I had no energy. I hibernated, hoping rest and solitude would improve my inner reserves. I have to let go of a lot of beliefs around how things should be.

Facing Our Fear

Fear and resistance to fully feel pain and suffering is not a superpower. Fear is what holds us back from fully loving and living life. But the root of all fear is the fear of death, and resistance to what is. Because we all die.

Our fear and our resistance is a gateway, a portal to being a fully realised human, anthropos. We can’t become en-lightened by denying, ignoring, and rejecting our mortality. By embracing all levels, layers, and dimensions of ourselves we become more authentic, and comfortable to express the truth of who we are.

Our fear is a signal to pause and feel into. If we can give it space to contract and compress, we we feel it fully, it will naturally dissolve and expand once more. This is what the ancient grief rituals allows their people to do.

Howl. Vent. Wail. Weep. Beat their chest and pull at their hair. Give voice to the pain they felt. Give movement. Feel their suffering, feel their inconsolable emptiness. Share that age-old question “Why me?” with thousands of others all feeling the same. When we think “Life’s not fair!” we look around us and see that yes, loss a natural normal part of life. Share the grief of insurmountable loss. No longer feel so alone. This is what I feel these grief rituals did.

And afterwards the inner sadness would be swept clean. No more tears I shed. Scoured clean. Raw. A new beginning. Ready to greet a new day. The burden of sadness lightened.

This is sacred work.

It is not easy to do alone. Life was never meant to be a solitary ritual. It was meant to be done together, in community. We need people that support us when we enter the darkness instead of always turning towards the light. We need to feel safe and supported so that our nervous system is not activated, and we can relax into the process of descent.