My personal journey through the shadows and the light.

As a child of a high-functioning alcoholic, despite the ways my father was very loving, I often felt lost, abandoned, and confused. My childhood environment was both full of life and very connected to the nourishment of nature, community, and creativity, while also split—split between two worlds. The physical and psychological realms of father and mother, divorced and living in two homes from age 7, shuffled me back and forth weekly until my mid-teens. Twinship with my mother and with early childhood friendships became a strategy to creatively adjust to the feeling of being lost, small, and not-belonging as well as to soothe the desire to be seen as most beautiful, most intelligent, most talented, most athletic, most creative. Exceptional became the standard I felt I must achieve, otherwise the family would not be happy or I would not be worthy of the love and attention I so desperately longed for. This longing fueled my creativity. I was the one always playing and making skits, dances, characters. A child full of upbeat and joyful energy. A child finding her medicine for the family depression, fears, and instabilities, I kept the spirits high for others while at times pushing away my needs, feelings, or opinions. I got lost in others. I cast aside wounded parts in order to soothe and stabilize that which was beyond my reach, my power. This left fragments of my self unseen and forgotten until much later in my adolescence and young adulthood.   

Later in my early adulthood, my creativity became a space for personal healing work to take place. In my MFA research I created a choreographic durational experiment to see if I could generate belonging for myself and the dancers (an intergenerational community of professional dancers and untrained enthusiasts) based on the concepts and writing from humanistic geography and environmental psychology involving Place-Identity. Place-identity speaks to how we can understand ourselves as a reflection of and interdependent part within place (the natural and built environment interwoven with community).

For over a decade, I experienced the ambiguous loss of my father, who slowly killed himself with alcohol and cigarettes. Later, I dealt with his death in my mid 30s. Complex grief of a loved one is something I have processed in various ways. Affording me with the lived experience I cultivated a multi-modal approach to processing grief. I This is my unique medicine I offer my clients. Along with the intergenerational trauma and mental illness on my maternal lineage, I was inspired to embark in ancestral and energetic healing work, and continue to evolve through.  

Bringing both my personal and ancestral shadow into the light, into consciousness, and then loving them and accepting them, I becoming integrated. Befriending these disowned fragments, I assimilate into the wholeness of who I am. I share my wholeness, my authentic quirky self, in the world around me as medicine for both my inner child, my severed parts, and also, for my community and clients.

This equips me to journey with clients into the shadows of trauma and adverse childhood experiences, such as divorce and relationships with family members or intimate partners who live with substance abuse, addiction, differently abled-learning, or personality disorders. To help you find new ways to love, accept, and tend to the castaways inside you who feel stuck in codependency patterns, false belonging, lethargy, or disconnection. I long to guide you in unpacking these patterns that leave you feeling unworthy, driven to perfectionism, lost, lonely, and blocked from expressing your unapologetic authentic self so you can feel whole, empowered, and inspired by life.