Traveler Between Worlds by Jo Patti Munisteri
What's It About?
From describing her participation in the VETS program, where she explores the healing power of plant medicine in Mexico, to being a Sundancer on the Lakota and Menominee reservations; this memoir is an awe-inspiring odyssey that transcends the boundaries of time, culture, and the human spirit.“There is a threshold which most do not see nor cross during their life on Earth … We are able to travel between portals of space and time. Between worlds.”
When Jo Patti Munisteri is offered a paper “with colored spots like dot candy” by her friend Meg in college, Jo takes the drug and experiences her first trip, something that is “both exhilarating and terrifying.” In the clarity of the unfamiliar experience, her mind opens up to truths about her life and realizes the complicated path her future will take. That future and the journey she took to get there is documented in her eye-opening, heartbreaking, inspiring and well-researched memoir, Traveler Between Worlds.
Going Above and Beyond Her Past
After a childhood scarred by abuse — physical, emotional and sexual — Jo Patti Munisteri suffered from “post trauma”. She was accustomed to a life of dissociating by mentally distancing herself from her body to cope with her mother’s violent outbursts. “As a child enduring trauma and abuse, I had already experienced a thrust into other worlds.” Soon, she turned toward practices that would allow her to lean into that ability to transport her consciousness beyond herself and treat her mind, body and spirit — from Traditional Chinese Medicine, to acupuncture, to medicinal plants, to spiritual and physical healing.
It’s a wonder Jo Patti Munisteri can contain so much of her life story in just shy of 400 pages, but she manages the incredible feat. With an abstract structure that jumps between different locations and times, Munisteri covers many of the crucial and revelatory points in her life. Readers are granted an intimate glimpse into her thoughts, feelings and experiences during some of her most challenging moments — from various careers across the globe, studying with and learning from experienced guides and mentors, to the tragic loss of her husband and son, to significant global changes in recent years.
Seeking wisdom, lessons and skills to hone her consciousness and work towards healing, Munisteri travels across the world. Readers witness years of dedication that culminated in her involvement with the Native American Sun Dance ceremony, the eye-opening VETS program in Mexico that showed her the possibilities of plant and animal healing, rigorous martial arts training in China to heal after an injury, and her adventures in teaching, military assignments, healing practices, imprisonment, dance, and more education. Munisteri seems to have done it all.
She paints a portrait with her words of each location that becomes her home, describing the people she connects with, the places she is housed, the cultural and political factors, and the ways in which she is propelled along her own path toward healing, even in the face of unfathomable hardship and loss.
Fascinating and Detailed Memoir
Aside from detailed accounts of her own experiences, Munisteri turns towards discussion of global issues that she has encountered in her travels. One such issue is the preservation of the natural world and the medicines and plants that are part of it. “It is a complex issue concerning the purity of medicines and the concurrent need to sustain the flora and fauna populations which possess these properties needed to hallucinate, anaesthetize and propel a human spirit and body to other dimensions.”
A particularly fascinating chapter touches on the historical mistreatment of Native and Aboriginal people on their respective continents — the ongoing crisis of Stolen Children, forced assimilation, and the political mandates that limit spiritual practices, among other equally vital issues facing Indigenous groups. In other parts, she discusses the effects of war on citizens in various countries, general access to resources, political turmoil, religious customs, and explores the differences and commonalities between the cultures in which she has been immersed.
With such vast experiences, Munisteri has seen the range of human existence firsthand and is able to grant readers a fascinating, tangible account of it all. Through the recounting of her own travels, she gives readers a respectful and informative glimpse into both the sacred and the traditional.
Jo Patti Munisteri’s journey, ability to overcome hardships and adapt, and determination to seek truths about herself and the world around her is inspiring. This book, Traveler Between Worlds, is like a salve to soothe the human spirit, which encourages readers to look deeper into their pasts and exist in a world beyond themselves.
About Jo Patti Munisteri:
Intrepid Explorer of inner and outer worlds, Jo is an educator, a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner, was a Sundancer, a certified combat analyst, a student of martial arts, and an avid hiker, dancer and swimmer.
Jo is a mother of a son and a daughter- Denali and Sequoia Schmidt, and former wife of the late USAF PJ, mountain guide and climber Martin W. Schmidt.
Jo’s non-fiction, technical writing and research is published in New Zealand, Australia, the USA, Pakistan, Russia, India, and Iraq (in English). Jo publishes her poetry and creative fiction under Jo Patti.
She is a graduate of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Massey University, and has her diploma from New Zealand School of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine. In addition, Jo has a Third Class Radio Engineering License (NYC) and completed more than 20 Professional Development courses in a number of countries.
