I was born in Venezuela to Trinidadian parents.

English was spoken at home. Spanish was spoken at school, and everywhere in between with brothers, cousins, and friends. Before I ever understood the word global, I was living it.

My home was a revolving door of arrivals and departures. Family came from everywhere. An aunt from Borneo. Cousins from Australia, Canada, the United States, Trinidad, Barbados, the UK. Venezuela was the meeting point. There was always someone landing, staying, leaving. Suitcases were part of the furniture. Airports felt familiar long before they felt intimidating.

Travel wasn't something we planned. It was simply how life flowed.

Life changed early for me. My father, my anchor to the earth, died when I was nine. Grief cracked something open inside me, and what came out was rebellion. I didn't want rules. I didn't want school. I didn't want to behave. I wanted movement without direction.

My mother, wise and Trinidadian to the core, made a decision that would quietly alter the trajectory of my life. She sent me away.

At fifteen, I was put on a plane to Barbados to attend boarding school. I cried the entire way there because I didn't want to go. I cried the entire way back because I didn't want to face my mother. I was homesick, defiant, and determined to return home at any cost. I succeeded. I was expelled three days before my birthday and arrived back in Venezuela on my birthday itself. When we got home from the airport and I finally stood in front of my mother, she looked at me and said:

"Today is your birthday. Tomorrow we'll deal with what happened."

Something unexpected happened. Barbados gave my mother back her daughter. I returned changed. Softer. Clearer. Ready to do something with my life.

Where Tourism, Flight, and Marketing Became My Language

I didn't follow a traditional academic path. Instead, I discovered my university through work. I trained as a bilingual executive assistant and loved it — loved being useful, loved productivity, loved organizing, anticipating needs, executing details. Work gave me structure, dignity, and momentum.

From there, I moved fast. I became the right hand to an architect deeply connected to government projects. Then, with quiet courage, I sent my modest résumé to an international corporation opening operations in Maracay, Venezuela. They hired me. They trusted me.

I became the person who organized everything. Meetings. Events. Executive schedules. Nothing fell through the cracks on my watch. That instinct — to hold the entire picture with care and precision — became my signature.

Margarita Island called me next. I worked in hotels, resorts, timeshares, and convention centers. At Laguna Mar Hotel & Beach Resort — home to the largest convention center in South America — I organized events most people twice my age wouldn't dare touch. The launch of Fiat Uno in Venezuela for over 800 guests. Roche Laboratories' annual meeting for over 600 people.

These weren't just events. They were living organisms. I didn't call it marketing back then. I just knew how to make things work beautifully.

When Life Became Responsibility and Travel Became Medicine

After Chile, life asked something else of me. My family had to migrate from Venezuela to Trinidad. There were responsibilities that could not be postponed. Hearts that needed tending. Mine included.

For many years, life became responsibility. Underneath it all, there was a broken heart with the potential to destroy my future if left unattended. So I traveled to heal. I traveled to reclaim myself.

Anthony Robbins. Joe Dispenza. James Arthur Ray. These teachings became anchors. Plant medicine journeys. Spiritual study. And the unwavering presence of my Pundit Hector, may God have him in His glory. Without him, I may not have survived.

It took me nearly twenty years to come back to myself. But I did.

Why Alchemy Life Travel Is Not a Pivot, but a Return

Today, living in the United States, I am founding Alchemy Life Travel. This is not a career change. It is a homecoming.

I have spent over three decades organizing movement. Of people. Of ideas. Of experiences. I understand precision, logistics, budgets, emotions, and expectations. I understand how a single dinner, hotel, or moment can define an entire journey.

Travel, done right, heals. It restores. It reminds us of who we are.

If you are here, you are likely someone who knows that journeys are not accidental. Neither was mine. Welcome.

It was the bicycles' fault.

Around 2008, my best friend and I were both carrying more than our fair share of life. We were seasoned travelers, free spirits by nature, but that year felt heavy. For the first time, everything in my life rested squarely on my shoulders. Every decision. Every responsibility. Every consequence. My mind buzzed constantly with details and obligations. Exhausted doesn't quite cover it.

So, we did what sensible, slightly overwhelmed women do. We went to Paris.

We arrived, settled into the hotel, and that first evening my friend casually said, "Tomorrow, let's rent bicycles and discover Paris like Parisians."

My entire body froze. Paris suddenly felt enormous. Busy. Demanding. My resistance rose in protest. What? No! Are you out of your mind? I'm too old for this. I can't remember the last time I rode a bike. Have you seen how Parisians drive? We are going to get killed.

With gentle insistence — she always gets her way — she looked at me, smiled, and said: "It will be fun. You'll see."

A voice inside me whispered something inconveniently true: You don't want to be that travel companion. The one who says no to joy before it even has a chance.

So, reluctantly and very much "for her sake," I said yes. That yes changed everything.

The next morning, as we rolled out of the shop and down a hill, the breeze hit my face, the speed kicked in, and something inside me snapped open. Joy. Pure, unfiltered joy. I started screaming at the top of my lungs:

"THIS IS THE BEST IDEA YOU'VE EVER HAD!"

My body remembered something I had forgotten. We weren't tourists anymore. We were just two girls riding our bikes through Paris.

The city softened. The noise integrated the movement. We pedaled without urgency, stopped whenever we felt like it, laughed constantly. We went to the Louvre, and instead of going in, we lay on the grass, reading a magazine, doing absolutely nothing productive. No schedule. No guilt. No pressure.

We were present. We were kids again. Unworried. Free.

It's astonishing how unfamiliar freedom can feel when you've been living in survival mode.

Ten days passed. Ten extraordinary days. Leticia's sister and her niece joined us — and of course resisted the bikes too, until they tried them. One afternoon, we got caught having to circle the Arc de Triomphe — a five-lane roundabout of pure Parisian chaos, sirens blaring. I lost sight of my friend and was convinced she had been run over. Meanwhile, she was somewhere else thinking the exact same thing about me. We both survived. Obviously.

And here's the most surprising part. When I returned home, life was still there. Intact. The world had not collapsed in my absence. The only thing that had changed was me.

I came back lighter. Clearer. Reconnected to what actually matters. Empowered — not through effort or control, but through internal strength and a fresh view.

Trust that joy doesn't dismantle responsibility. It lightens it.

Sometimes, the most important journey isn't across continents. It's the one back to yourself.

A Brief Context: Bufo Alvarius and the Lineage of the Medicine

Bufo Alvarius, often referred to as the Sonoran Desert Toad, is native to the Sonoran Desert regions of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. What makes this toad sacred is not the animal itself, but the medicine it carries — a naturally occurring secretion that contains 5-MeO-DMT, one of the most powerful entheogenic compounds known to humanity.

For thousands of years, Mexican indigenous lineages and shamans have worked with plant and animal medicines as tools for healing, remembrance, and direct communion with Source. These medicines were never recreational. They were ceremonial, intentional, and deeply protected.

Bufo is not a drug. It is not a shortcut. It is not for entertainment. It is a sacrament. A teacher. A mirror. And it must be approached with reverence, preparation, and respect.

What follows is not a recommendation, nor an instruction. It is simply my lived experience.

The first time I connected with sacred medicine was through Bufo Alvarius. At the time, I had no idea what that even meant. Like most people, my references to altered states were vague, cultural, secondhand. Everything changed with a phone call.

My best friend of over forty years called me one day and said something that would quietly reroute my existence. She told me that a friend had met a Venezuelan shaman — initiated by elders from a Mexican tribe and sent out into the world to carry what the toad teaches. That's how we refer to it, with love. Simply. Reverently. The toad.

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. But I trusted her completely.

What followed was a deep dive into rabbit holes I didn't even know existed. Stories of healing. Of profound clarity. Of people touching Source. Of encounters with God — not as an idea, but as an experience. Something ancient woke up in me. I was in.

Then the bad news came — bad news in disguise. She wouldn't be able to come after all. She said I should meet the shaman in New York and do it alone. Panic doesn't begin to describe what flooded me in that moment.

I prayed. A lot. I called my brother — my spiritual guide on earth. He laughed warmly, then told me the story of when he did mushrooms in the Venezuelan Andes after our father's death. He said the grief that had consumed him simply lifted and never returned. He calmed every one of my doubts.

In the end, something very clear emerged: I needed to live this. Not hear about it. Not read about it. I needed to experience it myself. So I booked the session.

The Journey to the Space

I took the train from Philadelphia to New York. I carried a small tote bag — inside it my Kundalini Yoga clothes, all white, chosen deliberately. Pure. Intentional. I prayed the entire way.

My stepdaughter met me at the station. We walked to Central Park on a beautiful day, to a secluded area with green grass, beautiful trees, and large grounding rocks. The space was fenced, quiet, protected. It was perfect.

We climbed over the fence. And there she was. The shaman. A stunning, olive-skinned Venezuelan woman with long, straight black hair — she looked as if she had stepped directly out of a Native American lineage. Rooted. Powerful. Soft and commanding all at once. Her name is Mili. Puro amor.

She protected the space. She spoke to the spirits. She explained everything calmly. The crystalized medicine is placed in a pipe and smoked. One long puff. That's all.

I followed her instructions. And then... I was gone.

The Void

As I closed my eyes and was gently laid back, reality itself cracked open. It shattered like mirrors breaking into infinite fragments. And then I entered the void. There are no words for what happened there.

The next thing I became aware of was Mili calling me back. It had been an eternity — contained inside ten minutes. I didn't want to return. I told her, begging: just a little longer. Please. Just a little longer.

What I was experiencing was Love. Not love as emotion. Not love as concept. But Love as substance. Whole. Infinite. Profound. I had merged with the Void and felt God's Love so completely that language simply collapses in its presence.

I became one with everything.

It's funny how we hear it all the time. We are all one. Gurus repeat it. Books print it. People quote it. But until that moment, I had never truly understood what it meant. You have to live it to know. And now I knew.

When I regained full consciousness, I opened my eyes under the most beautiful tree I had ever seen. The green was unreal. Radiant. Alive. I remember thinking: I left the third dimension... and I came back to the New Earth.

I saw Mili. I hugged her and cried. I told her through tears: "You have no idea what you do. This is extraordinary."

What Was Crystallized

Three things became permanently clear to me after that day.

First: everything I had ever read, studied, contemplated, or learned intellectually was now integrated. I didn't believe it anymore. I knew it.

Second: 'We are all one' means that I am not only connected to every person, but to every living thing. To hurt another is to hurt myself. I will never knowingly harm another being again.

Third: we live in God. Everything is made of God. We are divine particles. God is not separate from us — God is the quantum field itself. And God is Love. Only Love. Love is the only thing that is real. Everything else is illusion.

Every human being should have a shamanic experience at least once in their life. Not for escape. Not for thrill. But for remembrance of who we really are.