When I was looking for a name to try to represent me, “Journey” seemed to best capture my essence. It came to me that we all embark on at least 4 Journeys sooner or later during this lifetime.
1. Life Journey
From the moment we are born until we die, we embark on this lifetime Journey.
My journey began on a snowy winter day in a small village in Romania. My childhood was shaped by instability and changes of scenery, which I feel really contributed to who I am today.
After my parents left the country to build a better future for the family, I was raised by my Grandma. I remember beautiful natural scenes of a wild, free little girl running through fields, playing with plants, and drinking fresh cow’s milk.
Everything suddenly changed at age 5, when I had to move to my aunt’s house in the city. It was the first great shock of my life: going from complete freedom to feeling like a bird in a cage, fiercely educated by an exigent auntie and nuns at school.
Not even the time to get used to that environment, one year later, my parents decide to reunite the family, and I am moved to Italy.
So there I was, 6 years old, in a new country, with a new family, a new language, and a new school. I am grateful that, as a kid, you adapted very quickly, and it was easy for me to learn the language by being among classmates. At the same time, I’ve developed a huge passion for learning and studying, finding comfort in all subjects from history to geography, science, math, and the arts; they were all fascinating for me.
Studying became my anchor, a safe space where I was undisturbed by the external world, a coping mechanism that stays with me to this day.
I lived in Italy until I was 16, when I decided to move back to Romania to spend time with my grandma, who was getting older.
Once again, I was the new girl, in a new country, new school, this time all by myself, Relearning a language that somehow felt both familiar and foreign. If in Italy I had a great group of supportive friends and school was exciting, in Romania I didn’t find the same environment, so I turned to books, this time focusing my energy on my desire to help people and get admitted to med school.
My whole life, I was into literature and humanitarian studies, so I had to start from 0 with science and chemistry. Even though no one around me would bet a penny on my success, I was admitted with great results.
Med school was quite challenging in many aspects, but I will leave this subject for another time.
2. Travel Journey
The second Journey I am referring to is the Journey around the World, which began involuntarily as a kid, living between two countries: Romania and Italy. And continued as soon as I was allowed to travel.
I remember saving from my scholarships to pay for my first trip back to Rome and Athens as soon as I turned 18.
During University, I studied very hard to keep my grades high enough to have summers free for my travel plans and to earn the scholarships I needed to study abroad.
Every summer, I worked and traveled in the USA. And I spent a year abroad studying in Poland and Italy.
The only downside to travel for me was that every time I came back, I could not settle for the lie that this was the only place and only reality where I was meant to live, and I always looked forward to where to leave next.
Even when I got into my career as a doctor, that calling for adventure was still screaming for my attention.
In December 2024, I went to Asia for the first time, to Thailand. And in a Blue Temple in Northern Thailand, something cracked open in my heart, an emotionally intense call for exploring more I couldn’t ignore anymore.
After saving enough money to ensure I had the financial freedom to travel for at least a few years, I started my journey in Asia.
3. Healing Journey
The third type of journey I am referring to is a healing journey I intuitively embark on in search of answers and understanding of my behavior.
Balancing studying, working, and traveling with the self-imposed expectation of being great at all of them was not easy and had repercussions for my overall health.
After years of meeting everyone else’s expectations and having enough of my anxiety, I finally began to listen to that voice inside of me and prioritize myself.
After the trip to Thailand, I decided to quit my job as a doctor and plan the exploration of Asia I had longed to do. Thinking that this might be a little bit too uncommon and crazy, I also started to do therapy and make sure I am mentally ok.
I moved to Spain with a scholarship in Entrepreneurship, and while studying, I dedicated all my spare time to healing physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Reading, therapy, EMDR, meditating, breathwork, sport, and nervous system balancing. You name it, I tried them all. I just wanted to feel better!
A journey that kept revealing and clearing all the stories, emotions, and patterns that kept repeating in my life. This healing journey has been going on and on since then, with each layer shed revealing deeper awareness and knowledge.
If you were to ask me which technique works best, I’d say they all do, in their own way, contribute to overall well-being.
After 5 months of deep work, I was invited to a Shamanic Circle. This experience was the most significant I had up to that point in my life. It felt like everything finally started to make sense and fall into the right place.
The Yoga Teacher Training I did in Bali was life-changing for me, opening me up to a more balanced way of living. That was not really aligned with the initial plan of hopping all over the place in Asia. This marked the beginning of a new style of traveling for me, one more oriented to experiencing the place than to being a tourist.
After Bali, I moved to Thailand, where I alternated between Buddhist monasteries and Shamanic training, learning as much as I could about meditation, Vipassana, Spirits, and natural ancestral Healing.
Each experience deserves a well-extended explanation for itself, so I will leave that for the next Blog posts.
4. Shamanic Journey
The 4th type of journey I am referring to is the Journey in the Shamanic State of Consciousness.
May 31st 2025 was the day something cracked me open to a new way of perception. This was the day when all that had happened in my life started to make sense. The day when I finally acknowledged the fact that we are way more than what we can perceive with the 5 senses. It was something very new and unbelievable at first, but so easy and natural once you let go and allow things to happen. For me, Shamanism is about remembering:
- Remembering who we truly are and where we come from.
- Remembering that we are not alone.
- Remembering that we are way more than we limit ourselves to perceiving.
- Remembering that we are here to help each other find that in all of us.
With the sound of a drum, I was able to access worlds where inspiration, healing, and knowledge is available to us.
Since then, I was guided to the Foundation for Shamanic Studies Asia, which, thanks to their courses, The Healing Series and The Knowledge Series, I got the structure to help you in your journey too.
Right now, I am a student of the 3-year Program of Advanced Shamanic Initiations, expanding and stretching my perception even further to be at the service of you and anyone who needs healing, guidance, and support on this journey called life.
Today, I am still journeying. Sometimes across countries, sometimes through emotions, beliefs, and old wounds, and other times through the unseen worlds explored in shamanic practice.
This blog is where all those journeys meet, for me and at your service.
If you have ever felt that there must be something more than the life you were told to live, you may find pieces of your own journey here too.
Thank you for being here ! See you in the next posts! “