I found my way 
to this specific path in 2002 when I lost a pregnancy. I was thirty-one, had been married five years, and it was a blindside to life as I’d known it- to my marriage, to all of my relationships. Thankfully, the bright light of Spirit came on and refused to go off. I spent my days in deeper reflection and sought teachers who could help me heal from that which we humans commonly suffer.
They say that once your way is illuminated, you can never go back. We cannot go back to sleep. Trauma is sometimes that catalyst which wakes up our spiritual essence and points us back to our original selves. Those walking the path of the wounded healer can recall the moment when turning back was no longer an option.
There are many for whom the lights have not come on. For others, the lights have flashed, but they are still alternating between various states of consciousness, wondering if they are up to the task, sleepy in creature comforts and not yet asking the hard questions. For others still, there is confusion about how to navigate the new dimension — how to be and also do — in the modern world. A higher level of accountability is required, and it goes beyond ancestral and indigenous integrity, though there is much to be learned by implementing their principles.
In the past two decades,
my life has consisted of many physical moves — to the city, to the remote mountains, to another city, to the outskirts. What I find is that I’m most comfortable mediating the spaces between civilization and the natural world. It is the responsibility of the magician and the mystic to observe from a distance, communing with the animate world for insights, experiencing the Earth as a living, breathing Mother, and holding the medicine with open hands for those living inside of, and caught in the sleepy machine.
I see that there are many on this path who are finding their way with purposeful courage. It’s challenging in a fast and mechanized world to honor the ambiguity and creativity of the feminine aspect. It is also a task to navigate the fear and shadows which are inherent to being human, and which are inevitably present.
During the process of honoring my grief, I was blessed to be surrounded by a pack of elder women who made a healing space around me with their love, knowing and compassion. They had the life experience to know that my transition required the care of other women. I am blessed with innumerable teachers who are still with me today, guiding me along this sometimes dark path. Learning to see in the dark takes us back many generations and beyond, into the cosmos and the core of existence itself. I was able to experience rites of passage which are non-existent in western culture today.
My online classes were born
because it was time for me to give back what I was given, broadly and expansively, with the far technological reach that my elder clan hadn’t been able to. They entrusted me, and outfitted me for the job. I was guided by their love to gather people who are in a place of honoring what is mysterious in us. Rites of passage are critical for boys, girls, women and men, and the people were lacking in leaders to facilitate them. Living within the unbalanced patriarchy, people are gathering to restore the Divine Feminine to our collective consciousness and to bring home our gifts of healing wisdom for the children, our families and the Earth. This harmony is essential to wholeness.
Wholeness is what the people are asking for.
Where we’ve come from — and how we came to be here — is a foreshadow into where we are going. It is of great importance that we use what we have available to us to do our part in restoring balance to the current patriarchal model for being in the world.
My specialty today
is channeling writing to create broader applications for internal healing. Because I experience the Earth as a living, breathing, and divine Mother entity, this is a natural gesture for me to explore at depth level. I value and love to build relationship with plant spirits, animals, stone helpers, tree elders, fire and water spirits. The way I view life and it’s processes is through the animate lens of the Earth herself. Today I teach practical living skills- boundaries, activating the sacred voice (truth-telling), overcoming fear, goldmining the shadows, nurturing the mother wound-all through the context of Earth.
I see an overwhelming need to connect humanity to the disappearing natural world, and to appease the animate and spirit world with offerings and promises that people are willing to take notice, and do their part to return harmony to a system which is out of balance. At my best, I can interpret human emotion, offer compassion, empathy, understanding and a little nudge forward.
{Image by Heaven McArthur}