Your path in life, love and career may be certain, or it may consist of confusing turns and twists and it may appear ever misty. I’ve been there–unsure of what I’m supposed to be doing or what to focus on. I think that while we have a certain amount of will in the process, there’s an energy pushing us forward, too. The Path itself seeks out our feet, calling us to tread upon it. 

Herbal Serendipity

For instance, I was a Willing Worker on Organic Farms (WOOFER) in Ireland in my early 20s and I stayed with a family in the countryside near Dublin.

Understanding that I loved history, my WOOFER family took me to a remote spot they thought would interest me but I didn’t realize where we were going until we pulled into a small dusty parking lot and I found myself being escorted toward the 5,000-year-old pre-historic monument of Newgrange. 

This was 1996, long before the modern visitor center building was erected. We drove the family’s tiny Irish car into a dusty gravel parking lot, which was nearly empty. My host family waited at the car (they'd been there plenty of times) while I paid a few pounds for my ticket at the tiny, concession-stand sized booth. The grounds were quiet. I walked across the field to the entrance of the massive round monument, surrounded by five thousand year-old carved stones, where a lone guide met me. “The last tour of the day just left and we’re closing soon,” she told me, “but you can go in and look around.”

She left and allowed me to enter the monument’s imposing stone doorway, and to wander by myself down the long cool central passageway, past giant ancient vertical stone slabs. The smooth dirt floor rose ever-so-slightly toward a center room that opened under the massive circular mound, and I was baffled by how the ceiling stones were placed—apparently without anything holding them up.

This mound is a world-renowned Irish archeological site, a possible burial mound or religious center, and a Solstice passageway where, today, thousands of people line up to get a glimpse of the rocky outside and the spirals carved in the rock by ancient hands. Quite alone in the quiet depths of this astonishing structure, I touched the extraordinary stones, listened in the peaceful stillness, and eventually (wait, do I really have to leave?) followed the path back out.

Finding Your Career Path: Shifts and Turns

I didn’t know it at the time, but wandering the dark passageway of Newgrange would be pivotal in my decision to shift from being a garden herbalist to a medicinal herbalist; heritage is a driving force behind my work. This path later brought me to the decision to launch a documentary project where I would interview 31 women from 20 countries and publish Women Healers of the World, and also to launch my herbal medicine school. My path also led me toward entrepreneurship and my current natural products consultation business. We all change and grow over time, and isn't change and growth the true purpose of life? Allow yourself to explore a new job with different responsibilities where you can gain new skills. Work for someone else. Work for yourself. Get a cat.

That mystical evening in Ireland touched me deeply and inspired me to infuse a profound sense of wonder into my all work.

I encourage you not to insist on finding your path quickly (it will come when the time is right), but to do whatever you do with wonder, and awe, and imagination. Appreciate the mistiness and the fog and the uncertainty. Let it wrap you in green and silver questions that rise up so that your soul answers its calling—clearly—when it’s ready.