Eliza’s Journey of Healing and Self-Discovery

From Childhood Trauma and Illness to Hope, Love and Inner Freedom

Eliza is a 29-year-old woman from Eastern Europe who grew up in a deeply traumatic environment.

Eliza is a 29-year-old woman from Eastern Europe who endured a deeply traumatic childhood. The absence of a stable father figure, emotional instability in her mother, and years of psychological abuse left deep scars — both emotional and physical.

She later developed celiac disease, hypothyroidism, and Crohn’s disease.Despite years of medical treatment, her inflammation levels (Calprotectin) stayed extremely high: 1500–2000.

She lived in constant fear.She felt she was “surviving, not living.”

And she longed for healing.

Finding The Magic Garden

After speaking with her therapist — who was trained by the Hungarian-Jewish psychotherapist Andrew Feldmár — she first learned about sacred plant medicine.

She found The Magic Garden, listened to Jacob & Ecaterina’s music, read the website, and immediately felt trust.

One month later, she entered the green gate of The Magic Garden for her first retreat.

Her First Ceremony — A Turning Point

Her first ceremony was overwhelming and life-changing.

She realized — for the first time — that her pain did not isolate her from others.It connected her.

She felt a lifetime of emotional pain rising from her heart, and with Ecaterina by her side, she released years of silent suffering. She finally felt seen.

This experience prepared her for what became a physical miracle.

A Medical Breakthrough

After her first ceremony, her Calprotectin levels dropped from over 1500 to 500.

After her second ceremony…

They dropped to 91.

Something decades of medication had not been able to shift.

Her medical team was astonished.

Five Retreats and a New Life

Between 2023 and 2024, Eliza participated in five retreats.

She went from being afraid of dying→ to having something precious to live for.

She now understands that:

• Healing is possible

• The past does not control the future

• She deserves love, safety, and belonging

• The Universe can act as a loving mother and father

• Music and ceremony reach places talk therapy cannot

She feels more like herself with every ceremony.

Integration — Reclaiming Her Lost Childhood

During an integration session, Jacob guided her to meet the Cosmic Mother and Father, universal archetypes of unconditional love.

Through visualization, active imagination, and therapeutic work, she began to rewrite the early wounds of her childhood.

She painted the childhood she should have experienced — a powerful anchor for her healing.

Today — A New Way of Living

Eliza now feels:

• present

• connected

• loved

• supported by life

• guided by the Universe

• hopeful

She often says she has become an “ambassador” for The Magic Garden, because she shares her healing with everyone who needs hope.

She says:

“If reality does not exist the way we think it does, then there is no reason to live an unhappy life.”

A Beautiful Development in Her Life Today

Although this is not described in her original letter, something deeply meaningful has happened in Eliza’s life since her healing journey began.

In the last year, she has slowly and gently rebuilt her relationship with her mother.

What once felt impossible — or even dangerous — has transformed into something tender and real.

Today:

• They spend time together

• They talk openly

• They have been on holiday together

• They even went skiing side by side

• And their bond is warmer, softer, and more loving than ever before

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This is not a “quick fix.”It is a sign of the deep inner healing she has done — work that changed not only her inner world but also the relationships around her.

This reconciliation is a living testament to how healing ripples outward and touches every part of life.

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Eliza’s Full Story (Unedited)

My mother was very young when I was born, and she was not ready to become a mother. She was very impulsive and emotionally unstable. She blamed and punished me for being honest or just being myself, and sometimes she locked me out of our apartment. We lived together with my grandmother, and since they were constantly arguing, she didn’t like that I loved my grandmother. She even told me that my grandmother didn’t love me and only wanted the worst for me. She never showed emotions toward me, as long as I can remember, except for once when she broke up with one of her boyfriends. That time she said that we only had each other, and she hugged me. When I was 8 years old, she met my stepfather and moved out. I stayed with my grandmother, which was a major trauma for me, and I blamed myself. She told me repeatedly that she knew it was bad living with my grandmother because she was evil, and promised that I would move in with them when they had space. I developed fear of my mother, as she was very mentally violent, while at the same time I wanted to live with her and wanted her to love me the most. My grandmother used my fear of my mother to control and “blackmail” me.

When I was 13, my mother and stepfather moved into a large apartment, where they turned the extra room into a storage room and said it would have been too small for me. As I entered my teenage years, my relationship with my grandmother started to get worse. When I was 16, my mother and stepfather sent me alone to Canada, because they believed I wasn’t on a good path. They told me I had no choice. In Canada I lived with a wonderful family and actually wanted to stay there, which my parents initially offered. Because I missed home a lot in the beginning and cried, they told me that I couldn’t stay, because I didn’t know what I wanted. I moved home again when I was 18 and lived for the first time with my parents, until I lied to my mother about a very small thing because I was afraid of her. This made her say that I had to move out, and so I moved back to my grandmother. A year later I moved back again with my mother and stepfather for yet another year, until I finished high school.

My father went abroad to work and did not contribute to my life. Many times I was told by my mother and grandmother to ask him for birthday gifts, money, etc. for myself. He now has another wife and daughter, who is spoiled and gets the best of everything. I can’t even stand to spend time with his new family, and he makes me feel guilty about it and has several times said that I hurt him with that. In 2017, when I became very ill, both my parents refused to help me financially to get medication, and it was my stepfather who helped. In 2018 I had the last major trauma related to my mother, when she said that she didn’t know why she even spent time with me in front of family friends. At that time I realized that I was not even a little bit stronger than I was as a child, and it deeply hurts me not to be able to understand why I deserve such treatment. Throughout my entire childhood my mother also constantly criticized and humiliated me in front of other people whom I cared about. I believe that because of this I don’t feel like a person who deserves love, who belongs, and who deserves happiness.

For as long as I can remember, I have had really bad stomach cramps.

When I was 13 years old, I was diagnosed with celiac disease and had stomach ulcers. In 2012 I found out that I had hypothyroidism, which runs on my father’s side of the family. I still had stomach pain and felt generally unwell. During the first period when I lived with my mother, it started to get worse, but my mother thought it was nothing. During the second time I moved back again, it became really bad, and I began having heavy gastrointestinal bleeding. I kept it secret until I couldn’t be alone with it anymore and went to the hospital. They began examining the problem but could not identify the cause. In 2017 I moved to Copenhagen, where I was finally diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and began taking medication. I still have flare-ups and have gone through three rounds of 8-week steroid (Prednisolone) treatments, until I began biological injections. This year I was told that there is already a certain amount—but not concerning yet—of scarring in my intestines. I struggle a lot with this, because I absolutely believe that my Crohn’s disease stems from my inability to handle my trauma, and I am sure it is my soul that must be healed before my body can even begin to get better.

As a child, I struggled for years with panic anxiety and believed that I would die, so I cried every night before I went to bed and prayed for one more day. I also experienced physical symptoms such as shortness of breath, heavy chest, and rapid heart rhythm. Around 2016 I again struggled with panic anxiety after experiencing an attempted break-in while I was home alone. From that day I always feel panic when I am alone in the dark.

In relationships I also struggle a lot. I have difficulty letting people get close to me, and many times when someone begins to come close, I suddenly become irritated and distance myself, and suddenly all positive feelings I previously felt for them are completely gone. I have also noticed a tendency to be more interested in people who are unavailable. In friendships, it also often happens that I become overwhelmed by the connection and disappear.

I believe that my biggest struggle is that I feel that I am merely surviving but not living. I can never just be in the present moment and enjoy things, because I feel that something bad will come within a short time. I am not confident in myself and feel that I cannot survive alone. I have difficulty trusting people and women in general, even though the connection in many cases was so good at the beginning that I developed close relationships with some, even placing them in a “mother role.” Maybe I have problems with my own femininity as well as accepting myself. I don’t feel that I can be honest with people, and I believe there have been very few people I have ever been completely honest with. For the most part I am afraid of other people and avoid contact, while at the same time longing for companionship, support, and understanding. I often feel that something is wrong with me, and that I do not belong.

I don’t think I know what love really means or what it is like to experience it. I can understand the reasons and make the connections between childhood traumas and my current struggles, but deep inside I feel that I am still the little girl who feels alone, and I cannot process and let go of the pain.

Lastly, I struggle a lot with creativity. As a child my favorite activities were drawing, painting, sculpting, or just playing with my imagination, but in the last 10 years, every time I try to do something creative, I feel a terrible pressure. I believe it is because when my mother realized that I had talent for it, she forced me to make creative gifts for all family members for Christmas/birthdays, etc. I know that at some point I simply couldn’t do it anymore and have struggled to even start drawing or painting since, and I believe it is also because I find it impossible to be in the present moment.

On March 17, 2023, Eliza steps through The Magic Garden’s green gate and then makes a series of journeys in our spaceship. In her own words:

Around December 2022 I spoke with my therapist. At that time I felt quite hopeless, not only about the future, but also about the past and the present. My therapist was mentored by and now works together with the well-known Hungarian-Jewish psychotherapist, Andrew Feldmár, who has worked a lot with psychedelics in a therapeutic context. It was from him that I first heard about sacred plant medicine and the wonders psychedelics can do for the human mind.

There has never been a time in therapy when I wasn’t aware of my issues. Even though therapy was generally beneficial, I felt stuck and unable to actually handle the “baggage” I have carried for the last 28 years. There is a big difference between knowing something with your everyday consciousness and KNOWING the same thing in an altered state of consciousness. I remember asking my therapist: “What do you do when you know your problems well but cannot deal with them, and it feels as if you are stuck in an endless cycle of worries, where you live your life as if you were in a war zone?” He answered me: “I learned a lot from mushrooms, and I try to remember those teachings in difficult times.”

In that moment I knew that I had two options:

1. Go away just to be with myself and let all the feelings come up until nothing is left, or

2. psychedelics.Since I felt that option one was quite unrealistic and would probably take years or my whole life, I decided to research psychedelics – and I already knew that sacred plant medicine was exactly what I needed. After a few days of research, I found The Magic Garden’s website, began reading all the information they had, listening to their music, and very quickly felt a deep trusting connection to this place, which was completely unknown to me. About a month later I was at my first retreat.

   
   

I remember when I entered The Magic Garden’s Roundhall, full of excitement for this and an overwhelming feeling of fear. We began the sharing circle, the energies were quite intense, I began to cry when I shared my story with the others. At that moment I felt alone and separated from other people, as if it was my destiny to be misunderstood and excluded. As I struggled with my feelings that came up during my sharing, Jacob said to me: “Everyone has problems, you are not alone in this.” In that moment I felt a bit proud, as if he was telling me that the pain I feel is not that serious or not that “special” in a way. It was something I had listened to for many years from my parents: “Why don’t you get over yourself? It was so long ago, move on!” My family never listened to my feelings and therefore never legitimized them. My first ceremony completely transformed the meaning of Jacob’s words, and I understood that pain and trauma are not something that separates us, but rather something we all share. We are united by our pain, and in the end we are never alone.

When the ceremony morning arrives, I feel extremely scared. I listen to other participants sharing how calm they suddenly feel, and I cannot relate to that at all. I still never can. Since my childhood I have struggled a lot with the thought of dying. It seems like a perfectly likely possibility that I will die during the ceremony and never return, but my life feels so empty and hopeless at that time that after taking a realistic look at the way I live, death doesn’t sound so bad after all.

The ceremony begins, and I receive the first round of the medicine. I remember that I don’t feel much, and when Jacob offers the second round, I don’t hesitate at all, but while I wait for my second dose, I suddenly feel as if I am beginning to take off. I am transported to another reality, which seemed so much bigger and more intense than the reality I experience on an ordinary day. I feel so small. It feels as if I am being taken by a powerful tornado, and in that moment I realize that I absolutely have no control over the situation, and the only thing left for me to do is fasten the seatbelt, lean back and just wait until the storm passes. It is a liberating, yet terrifying feeling. Then it begins.

I constantly feel terrible physical pain in my heart. Ecaterina comes to help me, and when she places her hand on my heart, I suddenly see a deep, dark, rocky abyss. I quickly realize that this is my heart. I want to investigate it further, but immediately receive the message from within that I am not ready yet. In that moment, however, I feel one with my heart. I feel so much pain. In fact, I feel all the pain I have ever felt in my life at once, and therefore I begin to cry. However, I am not sad at all. For the first time in my life I feel so “seen” and validated. I feel that no one should ever feel the pain I feel. Then I realize how strong and beautiful I am, and how much respect I deserve for having endured the hard times. I feel my mother’s pain, but decide to put myself first and allow myself to investigate my feelings for what they are, without trying to find excuses for my mother, father, or grandmother and thereby discredit my own experience by letting them take up space that is meant for me.

After this, the ceremony becomes an experience of letting go, which feels surprisingly easy. As time passes, I begin to hear the others around me as they return from their journeys. At that time I am still very much in the process, and the idea of coming back seems like a very distant future. Time continues to pass, and I find myself in a situation I had never prepared for: I am the last participant who is still journeying – and let me say, I am still journeying a lot. Being the last “on the other side” brings me into a state of panic, and I feel that I am trapped in this Other World without a way back to reality.

I remember listening to the others talking together and thinking that I will never be able to talk to another human being again. Of course, not only am I able to do that, but I do exactly that. Even though I have always felt uncomfortable being close to other women, I quickly feel a connection to Ecaterina, and in the middle of my struggles I specifically ask for her. She stays with me for what feels like an eternity, and I keep asking her about my chances of ever returning to normality.

As I struggle with my own perfectly-fabricated personal hell and try to escape back to reality, a realization suddenly hits me: I have been alone since before I was born, and my only chance of survival was to become my own comforter, which ultimately meant that I always had to be in control of the situation. I understand that this is a coping strategy that kept me alive, but one that has slowly been killing me as the years have passed. I became my own worst enemy, the only person who could drive me insane. The next thing I remember is seeing intestines in front of me with a glowing red area. “This is it,” I think, the way out is the way in, and I am ready to go in. As I approach the red area on the intestines, I see blue veins coming together in front of me, the flaming red area is gone, and I am finally back.

Interestingly, I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease in 2012, which was identified as Crohn’s disease in 2017. I have always had problems with my stomach and was already diagnosed with stomach ulcers in 2007. In 2013 my disease was so severe that my doctor told me not to plan too far ahead and maybe not spend too much time planning my university years. I began treatment for Crohn’s disease in 2017 and have gone through four rounds of steroid treatments, various biological injections and immunosuppressants by the end of 2022, none of them working. For patients with Crohn’s disease, the severity is usually measured by the Calprotectin value, which indicates the level of inflammation. The normal range for this value is under 50, and for five years my results varied between 1500–2000 without major improvements. The reason I am writing all of this is because after my first ceremony in The Magic Garden, this value dropped to 500. It was a miracle.

Jacob, Ecaterina and the people from The Magic Garden showed me that there is an entirely different way of seeing Life, one filled with compassion, love, and understanding, and while my first experience shook me to my core, and I immediately said that I would never do it again, two months later I was at my second retreat.

Fast forward to today (May 2024), I have participated in five retreats in total and believe the changes they have brought me are quite significant. I am still afraid for my life before each retreat, but unlike the first retreat, where I felt that even if I died, it would not be worse than continuing to live an unhappy life, I now feel that I have so much good in my life, so much to live for, and that I truly do not want to die now. The Magic Garden gives me a new chance in life. For the last ten years I have looked at my life full of regret, thinking of all the things I could have been if I had had a different childhood and parents. After my second retreat I understand that while asking such questions is completely normal and in a way an important part of a grief process, we actually don’t need to look for answers to these questions. This is because it is in fact never too late to change your life. I understand that the past is behind me, and even though it will require a lot of work to become truly “reborn,” it is possible, and I can become the person I was always meant to be.

The power of the medicine is very strong, and it will take you by the hand and show you what you need to see, in a very gentle, caring, and loving way. The experience itself has never been fun for me, on the contrary I have been taken into my personal Hell almost every single time I participated in a ceremony. However, there is great reward in taking the courage to face your demons, and with every ceremony I undoubtedly become more and more “myself.” This does not mean that I am not sad when I think about my childhood, but I now understand that regardless of what happened, it does not need to affect my present or future.

Besides the power of the medicine, the power of The Magic Garden, Jacob’s attention to the participants, his wisdom, respect, and care; Ecaterina’s loving, motherly presence that has always given me safety and supported me through the hardest times; combined with the most amazing music they create together; and not least the helpers and the entire community at The Magic Garden – all of this is incredibly strongly healing. In fact, I believe that what they have created with the intention to help others and ultimately heal the world is stronger than the medicine itself – but this is not to undervalue its power, but to express the power of the people and the music in The Magic Garden.

Many people, including myself, never received love from their parents, at least not in the “right way,” in the sense that of course, when you truly love someone, you love them in a way that is good for them, so they can be their authentic selves and feel safe, unconditionally. My own parents always had conditions, and I very often felt like a burden to them, even just by having simple needs such as needing to use the bathroom at a time when they were busy with something else, or coughing at night when they were sleeping, so I suppressed everything and tried to be invisible for years. My therapist has always told me that I live my life as someone who is traveling on a bus without a ticket, even though I have the same ticket as everyone else. We all have the right to live, take up space, and enjoy the life the Universe gives us. Another important learning was that not only does the Universe love me – otherwise I would not be here – but that the Universe can also be my good mother, father, grandmother and help heal the deepest wounds. The Universe creates wonders for us every single day, and it is only up to us to see Life for what it truly is and make the best of it.

In June 2023, in one of the integration sessions, Jacob says something along the lines of: “No one can prove that Life is not a dream, so what do you want to dream?” Even today I feel that this is a very powerful way of seeing Life, and while at the time I thought to myself that I wished I could live my dream, I now feel much closer to being able to do that, by making decisions that feel right for me and trusting that the Universe will be there to catch me if I should fall.

It is difficult to express my gratitude and love for Jacob, Ecaterina and the team from The Magic Garden, and my friends often joke that I have become an “ambassador” for the place, by speaking for them at every opportunity I get. I simply don’t believe that I could have done the work I have done without them, and I truly thank my life for them. I can finally enjoy the Present Moment without being trapped in the past or the future, and not letting myself get lost in any intrusive thoughts that might arise. I still have a long way to go and a lot of work ahead of me, but by knowing that I have my Magic Garden family who will be there to support me through the hardest experiences, I have no doubt that I am on the right path. If I could send everyone to The Magic Garden and have them listen to their healing music, I would do it.

To round off, I want to share an experience from one of my recent ceremonies, where I saw a picture of Alexanderplatz in Berlin. It is the platform for the regional train. Before I get a chance to examine it, it becomes a strange 2D painting, and the next moment it is a picture on someone’s living room wall. I wonder who lives there and whether it is even relevant. The next thing I know is that the picture on the wall is gone along with the living room, they are only a small part of a much larger picture, and by much larger I mean infinitely larger. In fact, it all suddenly seems irrelevant. Then I realize that every moment dies as soon as the next moment arrives, and that reality in the way we experience it is non-existent. Then I think to myself: If reality does not exist, then a reason to live an unhappy life cannot exist either.

Already after the second ceremony, Eliza’s numbers miraculously drop to 91. Three days after the ceremonies we always have an integration evening to make sure that all travelers have landed well. Often one or more participants need follow-up integration work. On one of these evenings I work with Eliza and her childhood. One effective way to heal a traumatic childhood with unmet mother and father needs is to help the traveler “tune” themselves into the “Cosmic Mother and Father.” The Universe contains all archetypes, and in the Cosmic Ocean the Cosmic Mother and Father are always present and ready to give care, support, and love.

With the help of “Active Imagination,” positive self-affirmations, visualization and follow-up experiential psychotherapy sessions, it is possible to “re-create a positive childhood,” so that the traveler regains their lost childhood and thereby restores trust in the Universe. After having worked through the various feelings and memories that carried charge, and the session is at an advanced stage, I ask if she is up for a “game”/an experiment. She answers: “yes,” and I ask her to visualize how she would have liked her childhood to be. I ask her to tell, as if it is happening here and now, how her mother and father take care of her, and how she feels nourished and supported as a small child. After retelling this scenario several times, she shines more and more. I ask her to paint this whole scenario when she comes home and hang it on her wall to consolidate the new state of being a Cosmic Child, nourished and supported by the Universe’s Cosmic Mother and Father.

If Eliza`s story touches something within you — if you feel the call to heal, awaken, or rediscover your creative essence — we warmly invite you to explore our retreats at The Magic Garden.

Each retreat offers a sacred space for self-understanding, emotional release, and personal growth, supported by plant medicine, intuitive live music, and a loving community.

You can also experience our Full Moon Concerts, where music and ceremony unite in a field of transformation. It’s a beautiful way to feel the energy of The Magic Garden and connect with us in person.

For those who wish to join us from afar, our Online Temple – The Magic Garden Tribe offers access to our concerts and ceremonies streamed live, allowing you to journey with us from anywhere in the world.

We look forward to meeting you and supporting you on your journey.