welcome to my dieta paige

Hi, I’m Paige!

I’m a student of plant medicine and astrology, a breathworker, and current huachuma apprentice.

I first started working with plant medicine in my early twenties, at a time in my life where I was unconsciously desperate for healing; when my older brother suggested a trip to the Amazon to sit with grandmother ayahuasca.  

This initial experience changed the entire trajectory of my life. Her lessons were tough, but she freed me from nightmarish depressions and a life of self loathing. I ended up spending many months in South America and sitting with the medicine in the company of maestros from various traditions in Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador.

The medicine woke me up and eventually led me to sit with iboga. I fell in love and was ready to dedicate my life to this plant. Truly. I had a ticket booked to Africa, a visa to Gabon, and a center ready to welcome me as a student. But, life (as she does) threw me a curve ball. A job offer – as a resident correspondent at the United Nations Headquarters, tasked with covering conflict zones + humanitarian efforts in the Middle East. I was being pulled by my heart toward the plants, and my head toward war.

I spent 7 years in that city. And in my last year there, the entire life that I built fell to pieces. It started with tragically losing my grandfather to suicide, suffering through an abortion, and ending a long-term relationship, my dog suddenly passing away, and finally, my apartment building went into foreclosure. I was slipping into a deep unconscious state already, but then I started binge drinking and eating to avoid even one moment of being in my own body, even one moment of feeling the depth of my pain. I didn’t leave my bed for months. But, I couldn’t stay if I wanted to. The plants were calling.

I came back to Peru and to the plant medicines a year and a half ago. I decided to begin again, to begin the journey that was always true for me, again. This time around, I am in grandfather Huachuma’s hands. Together, we started peeling back the layers of my childhood trauma. Recovering from sexual assault and violation. Uncovering what gifts I have in these healing spaces. I started working with the local plants on a one on one basis. My body, my spirit, my mind — working with the plants single handedly brought me back to life. And, the more I learn about the plants, the more I learn about myself, and my own roots.

I started to remember that nature lives inside of me, that my soul is always speaking to me — through my body, my dreams, my intuition. I started to remember the wisdom that my own grandmother passed down to me. Her love and use of herbs, her fascination with astrology, her maternal creative force. That everything in the natural world operates in cycles. There is the seed, creation of life, growth, harvesting the fruits of that life, the spread of the original seed, and ultimately, the death. The death equally as important as the life.

Now, through breath, plants, and connecting with the natural world, I have slowly decompressed, and deconditioned myself from all of the death that became me. I have turned that death into fertile soil and now I’m planting my seeds. my dieta paige is a seed — planted in some very nutrient dense, wise soil.

Estoy aqui, where I belong. It is my life’s mission and soul purpose to share my experiences with these plants, to be a channel to spread their healing, to be a guide for others to help them heal themselves. Just as the plants and my many teachers helped me heal myself.

I hope you join me on this journey, standing in fertile soil, ready to share myself in all my vulnerabilities and all my studies as a channel for the plants. My modalities include the breath in our lungs, the voice in our hearts, the plants that surround us, and the cosmic world within us.