An Embodied Education in Self-Liberation
Content note for mentions of sexual assault, abortion, isolation, mental health challenges, and substance use… but it gets better! 🦋
I Wish That I Knew What I know Now…
Somewhere along my path, I learned hyper-independence as my go-to coping strategy. The result was that I suffered through some really hard moments in self-inflicted isolation, including sexual harassment and assault, abortion, addiction, grief, and severe mental health challenges. As my world got smaller, I withdrew more from my loved ones, with shame being my most frequent companion. My heart aches thinking of this younger version of myself, and her reality is something I don’t want anyone to have to endure.
Cultivating self-trust, reclaiming agency in my body, opening to authentic connection, and asking for and receiving help have been integral to my healing process — and I’m still actively practicing and learning. Once I recovered a sense of safety in myself and learned to responsibly open to trust, I understood how deeply we need both internal attunement and external support to navigate challenging periods toward healing and growth.
Transformation requires support & structure liberates
My own story guides the work I do now, holding individuals within secure containers of authentic care, earned trust, and the wisdom of wholeness. From physiology to spirit, we are designed for connection. If we lived “the village,” as many of our ancestors did, we would be surrounded by the daily presence of family, friends, elders, youngers, and accountable acquaintances — but that’s not the social architecture of modern life. We still need dependable support, especially during significant transitions, but rarely is it built into the framework of our days. While we can call on our loved ones for occasional reinforcement, my work offers the reliable, attuned structural support that conscious change requires, bridging the gaps of a scattered social landscape. I am here to serve as a devoted companion through your transformative processes, turning my full attention, energy, and breadth of resources toward your journey.
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Trial by Fire
The past few years have danced me through an intense and all-encompassing journey of self-discovery, conscious transformation, and embodied liberation…
I freed myself from a harmful relationship with alcohol
I burst out of the closet publicly to my family, friends, and professional community, embracing my authentic identity as a queer non-binary woman
I undertook a process of disassembling and reconstructing my marriage, shedding unhelpful patterns that hindered our connection, and leveraging our enduring love as a foundation upon which to build anew
I shed my identity as a yoga teacher to innovate and co-create a new embodiment practice, Wild Care
I gave myself permission to distribute my time living in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, California — two of my favorite places in the world
I turned my 2+ feet of silver-streaked dark brown hair platinum blonde
Then I buzzed that blonde hair off… a few times
Following a period of rigorous soul-searching, I transformed my 10-year marriage into a profoundly rewarding friendship, embracing a path of self-partnership
I phased out of a thriving massage therapy career when my body signaled to me that something else was emerging — the messages not arriving as gentle intuitive whispers, but as anxiety attacks, awakening me to the urgency of this evolution
I embarked on multiple illuminating psychedelic journeys, with and without doula support
I released a handful of friendships with people who I love madly, yet do not nourish my spirit
I helped my canine companion and soulmate of 16 years, Ladybird, die in a way that celebrated her wisdom and values in life
I responded to my body's call for a cross-country move back to the East Coast, choosing to live in a place where she feels vibrant and nourished
I danced wildly and cried an entire ocean of tears
I felt myself grow more resilient, tender, courageous, and whole — more authentic in my work, selfhood, and relationships than ever before
A multitude of factors and resources helped me navigate this incredibly challenging period, including robust community support, all-femme dance parties, receiving bodywork, practicing somatic attunement and embodiment techniques, engaging in spiritual rituals, self-discovery inquiries, intentional care planning, financial budgeting strategies, refining my emotional intelligence, progressing from self-awareness to self-trust and self-advocacy, connecting with nature, surrendering into revelatory psychedelic journeys, exploring medication, pursuing collaborative creative projects, and prioritizing curiosity and rest. The key was following what ignited my inner spark with a willingness to pivot when something no longer served me, and giving myself permission to take breaks.
The selected and unexpected events of this chapter shattered me many times over.
The obliteration of the known self is both the gift and the challenge of transformative experiences such as heartbreak, grief, and personal evolution. The ego is blown into a million tiny pieces, experiencing something akin to death, and for a while all we can do is sit stunned amid the wreckage. Eventually, we gather up the fragments, now with an opportunity to assemble them differently. Harnessing the power of attunement to our authentic needs and desires, the clarity that accompanies massive upheaval, along with comprehensive community support, periods of great loss and uncertainty contain the potential for us to reconstruct a more harmonized version of ourselves. Within nourishing conditions, we can emerge on the other side of adversity reborn, revealing a spectacular mosaic that reflects the beauty, wisdom, and wholeness of our unique experience.
The key questions that have illuminated my own path toward greater authenticity and fulfillment are
“What do I sense in my body?”
“What am I turning toward?”
and “What is possible here?”
Now that I’ve shared a bit about myself, I’d like to get curious about you.
Particularly, what came up for you while reading about my journey?
What sensations and emotions did you notice arising in your body?
Did you sense the tightness of fear and resistance, the heat of envy or irritation, the queasiness of overwhelm, or the sinking quality of sadness?
Did you experience the expansive sensation of enlivenment, resonance, and validation, or the quickening pulse of inspiration and excitement around what might be possible for you?
The dull ache of boredom?
I honor your self-awareness and celebrate whatever energy flowed through you.
Our bodies deliver us precious information through the languages of sensation, emotion, and intuition. Your attraction, apprehension, or aversion to my story could be a clue that you are ripe for personal transformation.
Consider what you are turning toward in this chapter of your life.
Do you feel prepared to meet it wholeheartedly, equipped to courageously embrace the fullness of life and its unexpected twists? How might you benefit from the support of a devoted confidant, a doula to shepherd you through the crossroads? Sharing the hard-won fruits of my individual journey — empowering insights, embodied wisdom, novel perspective, and practical resources — for the benefit of the many is one of my core motivations in life.
Living from the intelligence of the body represents a radical departure from Western culture’s worship of reason. By embracing the body's relational wisdom instead of relying solely on the rationality of the mind, we can alchemize challenging experiences into fuel for realizing the deepest desires of our hearts. As part of my sacred role as your full-spectrum transformation doula, I will teach you how to listen to your body — because I believe that when you listen to your body, it will teach you how to set yourself free. 🦋
