Part 2 - The Cup Goes Back

I said I was still deciding what my place in this field should be. I am not deciding anymore. Here is where I landed, why, and what I am asking for now.

The cup goes back to Roberth. Back to Miguel.

Back to the people who actually hold this lineage, who carry it in their blood and their language and their land. They are the ones who should stand at the front of the ceremony. They are the ones the reward should return to, so it can go back to their community, back to Pahoyan, back to the people who gave this to the world and have been asked to give and give without ever really receiving.

That is not me walking away. It is me finally understanding what my place actually is.

I have been dieting for ten years now. From the start, it was never just me learning from them. We have been teaching each other the whole way through. Their medicines, how it is prepared, how it is applied, the ethics around it, the field it lives in, the tradition, the icaros, the belief systems underneath all of it. And in return, what I know of this world, the one they rarely get to see up close. The plants that live on our land and their medicinal values they have. for years we have been exchanging plants and the european oak has made it to pahoyan too. It holds similar qualities to Noya Rao it seems. i am learning about my own culture and healing modalities through the teachings they bring. Something settled in me through all of it, ten years of it, that had been circling for a long time. I am not stepping back from the medicine. I am stepping into a different place in it.

I am not saying Roberth and Miguel are the only pure ones left in this field. That is not what I mean. What I mean is that people like them are becoming hard to find, especially now, with plant medicine gaining the kind of interest it is gaining. Everyone seems to be turning into a shaman lately, and a fair amount of that has more to do with a quick buck and feeding the ego than with years of diet and lineage.

That worries me. Not abstractly. We need safe spaces, and safe spaces are not guaranteed just because someone means well. I have seen people hold ceremony with what looks like the best intentions in the world, and still retraumatise the people in front of them, because they never properly looked at their own shadow, never went through their own process before deciding they were ready to hold someone else's. Wanting to be a spaceholder is its own story, one I will get into another time, but it is not the same thing as being ready to hold one. This is how Mother's House Academy has emerged. (I will share more about this in another blog).

With Roberth and Miguel, I have not seen that pattern. I am always amazed by them, and I have deep respect for the force they bring in ceremony, for what comes through them there. And then in daily life they are almost shy, humble, ordinary, they eat, they joke, they love Cumbia music, they get tired like anyone, and laugh, so much joy spending time with them. That is why it feels safe to hand the cup back to them.

I am not stepping out of ceremony. I will still serve alongside them. I will still sing the icaros. There will still be Medicine Tribe ceremonies. But the main work, the front of the room, the weight of what is actually being held, that belongs to them.

When we opened the door for extra retreats with them, it did not take long to fill. That told me the energy is already flowing this direction, ahead of anything I could plan or push. I am not building this from theory. I am following where people are actually asking to go.

In September, I am bringing a group to the jungle. To diet, to actually learn from the plants and from the people who have carried this knowledge for generations, not the version that fits into a weekend. We will also go to the new land, and sit with the village directly ton talk about the near future and the amazone river that will break out of the banks again. In October they will be back in The Netherlands to share their knowledge, traditions and medicines at Mother's House.

Pictures: Jan 2026, the situation in Pahoyan during the flood. Miguel and Roberth organising a foodbank with the help that came through Mother's House Foundation and it donors with 100% of received donations going directly to the people in need.

But this is where I want to be honest about what is needed right now, because it is a real and urgent thing on the ground.

Pahoyan, where Roberth has lived his whole lfe, is under pressure from every direction at once. Deforestation upstream has changed how the water moves, and flooding has already pushed families out of their homes. The land itself sits exposed too, at risk from illegal land grabbing and drug trafficking, with real territorial violence behind both. None of this is separate. It is all the same pressure, closing in on the same piece of ground, and it is why relocating the community to higher, safer land is not something that can wait.

I cannot in good conscience keep serving this medicine, keep taking from what it gives, while the very people who carry it, the lineage holders and the keepers of it, are being flushed off their own land. That is not a metaphor. It is water rising around their homes while I sit somewhere dry teaching about their medicines. I will not build anything on top of that and call it sacred work. I have made it my personal mission to help these people preserve their culture by relocating them onto higher grounds in the jungle and n

ot forcing them into citylife.

"Six hundred euros gets one family a house on safe ground. There are one hundred and seventy families who need one. My wish is to have them moved before the end of this year, before the flooding starts again. I am actively looking for people to help make that happen".

So this is what I am asking. If you have ever sat in ceremony with Roberth or Miguel, if this medicine has ever done for you what it did for me, this is a way to give something back that actually reaches the source instead of circling around it. And if you are called to diet yourself, properly, with the people who hold this tradition, come with us in September or October. Sit with them. Learn what they actually carry.

There is more than one way in. You can save a family. Six hundred euros builds one house, and every euro toward it counts, whether you give the full amount or a part of it.

DONATE HERE.

You can come and see it for yourself. Join us in September, diet with us in the jungle, learn from the plants and the people who actually carry this, and visit the new land with us. Or join us in The netherlands in October.

Schedule a call with me to find out more Book a call here, or check the website. www.themedicinetribe.nl

If you see yourself somewhere else in this entirely. This project needs more than money and more than hands in ceremony. If you read this and feel there is a place for you in it that I have not named here, reach out. Tell me where you see yourself adding value. I would rather hear it from you than assume I already know every way this needs support. What medicine can you share with the world?

Giving back to the source. Not as a phrase. As where the ground actually is.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Tamara