28. Fiona Kirwan: Giving Birth Was The Most Powerful Spiritual Initiation - Behind Our Eyes | Lyssna här

From a successful career in PR in the UK, to moving her whole family to the rainforests of Costa Rica, Fiona's mystical initiations kept unfolding.

In this episode of Behind Our Eyes, host Liane Grimshaw sits down with an old friend - someone who knew her back in her party days in Manchester, and whose life has also taken one of the most extraordinary turns imaginable.

Fiona Kirwan is now a plant medicine facilitator living in the rainforest on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. She and her husband Neil co-founded Sowa Soma, a trauma-informed ayahuasca retreat centre, after Fiona walked away from the PR agency she'd spent years building.

What brought her here wasn't one moment — it was three initiations, each one more undeniable than the last.

The first was ayahuasca, which found her on a year-long sabbatical 14 years ago when she was finally honest enough to ask: is this it?

The second was becoming a mother — an experience she describes as the most mystical portal of her entire life, more profound than any ceremony.

And the third was the pandemic, the moment the double life she'd been quietly maintaining for years became impossible to sustain.

This is a conversation of rare honesty about what it actually costs to walk away from an identity built over two decades.

It's also a conversation about what it means to be a woman moving through the thresholds of her life: the biological, emotional, and spiritual passages that don't come with a manual.

ABOUT FIONA:

Fiona is a plant medicine facilitator, working with Ayahuasca, Cacao and other non-psychedelic plant allies. Originally from the UK, she runs a trauma-informed plant medicine retreat centre in Costa Rica, alongside her husband Neil. She also continues to expand her work with women, helping to create more alignment with the feminine. She provides support with cycles, conscious conception and advocates birthing sovereignty.