Owl Medicine

Snowy Owl has been with me longer than I have consciously been aware of her presence.

I’ll start at the beginning. In second and third grade, I had the most amazing, nurturing, and compassionate teacher, Mrs. B. I loved her and was connected with her in a way that went beyond this present life. She helped foster in me my deep love for nature’s plant and animal kingdoms. We put on an Arctic play as a class, and each student picked an animal to be. I chose to be a Snowy Owl and created a white, feathery costume to wear.

I stayed in touch with Mrs. B through high school, but we lost touch when I left for college. Whenever I saw a photo of owls or heard a reference of them, I always thought about my time with Mrs. B. The summer before my senior year in college, Mrs. B kept coming into my thoughts. I could not stop thinking about her. Many synchronistic events happened that reminded me of her, and I intuitively knew that something was off and that I should reach out. I emailed her twice with no response, and after months of worrying about her, I finally wrote her a letter. The following week, I received an email from her that she wrote with help from her daughter saying that she’d been sick for the last 2 years and had been in the hospital or rehab settings for most of that time. I was able to visit her twice over the course of about a year, and expressed to her my love and appreciation. She was sick to the point of being almost unrecognizable and it was hard to see her like that to say the least.

The next summer, I was on vacation with my family on an island off the coast of Maine when I got the message from Mrs. B’s daughter that she had died. I was shocked (she had been doing better) and heartbroken. That evening as I watched the sunset, a beautiful white cloud formed itself into the perfect shape of a woman with wings and I knew without a doubt that it was a sign from Mrs. B telling me that she was okay and would always be with me. While admiring the cloud formation, I was walking along a rocky beach and each time I looked down, I saw heart shaped sea glass and stones. Yes, she was with me.

Fast forward to the following summer when I was out on that same island. I was having a hard time and decided to go into a shamanic journey to receive insight on a particular issue. As soon as I entered into the journey, a large white owl was at the center of my inner vision. She gave me a message which I wrote down along with the date. A few days later, I looked back at the journal entry and the date jumped out at me. I realized that it had been exactly a year to the day that Mrs. B had died. This gave me full body shivers.

Coming home after vacation, I began reading Love and Spirit Medicine by Shonagh Home, a shamanic practitioner in Vermont. As I sat in my bedroom reading, I turned the page to the start of a new chapter titled “Owl Medicine.” The moment I started that chapter, I heard an owl hooting outside of my window. That was the first time I had ever heard an owl there. The owl synchronicities were apparently starting to pile up.

The next day at work, my coworker showed up wearing a t-shirt with the graphic of a white owl, and driving home that evening I looked up into the sky to find two huge clouds in the shape of owl wings.

Shortly after, I moved into a new house, and to my absolute astonishment found that the tag attached to the house key said “The Owl House.” You can’t make this stuff up.

I ended up spending a few days in Vermont with Shonagh Home and there were images of Snowy Owls everywhere. She herself resembled a human version of the wise Snowy Owl. Since then, owls have surrounded me. Physically (I hear them outside almost every night), and spiritually. I know that Mrs. B is still with me and guiding me despite no longer having a physical form. I have had many wise woman, maternal figures in my life, and Mrs. B was one of them. One of the messages to me from Snowy Owl is that even though these figures will continue to come and go in my life, the same nurturing, compassionate, motherly, wise energy that Mrs. B embodied will always be here for me.

— Allie A.