My Roots

The journey I have walked was an internal tug of war for most of my life.

I was torn between my heart calling me in one direction — while my mind firmly pointed me the other way.

I was at the mercy of my ‘Civilized Mind’ — which repressed how I was feeling.

I worked to “fit in” and succeed at all costs — especially my own health.

Reconnecting to the Earth and the natural cycles of life helped me find my center again.

I am a deeply curious person by nature.

I wonder about everything.

I am a seeker of wisdom and collector of stories - looking to make sense of myself and the world.

Growing up, most people, things, and systems around me did not make sense - or feel right to me.

My instinct to observe gifted me with an awkward talent for asking pointed questions when I noticed something did not make sense.

I did notice that Mother Nature and the stars always made sense and felt right to me.

My Roots as a Soulful Culture Catalyst

As a kid, I spent a lot of time wandering the countryside of Indiana, exploring the farms of my cousins and friends, or fishing with my great uncle.

These years gifted me plenty of practice observing, taking risks, and reveling in the sheer delights of being a kid free of my suburban home. It gave me a taste of the joy and responsibility that comes with freedom.

But, moving to urban Florida (and public elementary school) taught me one lesson almost overnight: being me was NOT ok. Being different and asking questions was not ok.

To avoid being bullied, I scrambled to learn how to participate in life while also anticipating the parts of me others found offensive and needed silencing. It was bewildering and I experienced my first taste of depression.

Most of the time I was the “perfect student”: always helpful, attentive, and quiet. Until the teenage years kicked in and my spirit thrashed wildly inside trying to get free while I pasted a smile on the outside. Sometimes my spirit won with some truly dramatic explosions of anger to release the pent up pressure.

I found a socially acceptable outlet for my fire by being of service and pouring my passion into wanting to “Save the Earth”.

Nature was the only place that ever welcomed me exactly as I was and I wanted to fight to protect it.

My self-repression continued for another 20 years, following me through work as a graduate student, researcher, educator, conservation policy advocate, and Park Ranger. Through it all, my repressed intuition and instincts roared “please listen to us!”.

I danced with burnout, depression, and major gut-issues as I pushed myself to work harder and better to “save the world.” Underneath it, mainstream nutrition/medicine expertise was failing to support my body to keep up with my hectic life.

Eventually, a life-threatening miscarriage in my early 30’s was the wake up call from my body that I could not ignore.

I needed to change how I related to myself and my work if I wanted to survive.

It became crystal clear to me that all the laws and market policies in the world wouldn’t do much to change the way people treated nature if we couldn’t communicate with their hearts to find a place of connection and respect.

Most of my life, my skill of listening to understand others made me good at my work — until I realized it meant I had lost my relationship with my self. I had no idea what the f*ck I actually wanted to do with my life.

And the roaring inside quieted, relieved at being finally heard — I had a deep knowing I was meant to be of service to the world in a way that connected with people rather than policies.

This kicked off a deep dive into myself to figure out what I was good at, what I actually liked, and I allowed myself to admit the things I hated doing.

I dug back into my garden and built a flourishing urban permaculture homestead and I launched a consulting practice I loved: helping organizations understand why their diversity and policy programs weren’t working and how to better support their people.

Then I had my kids and everything changed.

They opened a door to deep ancestral, karmic, and soul wounds that demanded my attention. My very bright children mirrored back to me my own wounded behavior and I scrambled to reorient myself to keep my head above water.

Their arrivals also shined a light on how much conventional parenting culture was about control rather than connecting with or understanding my kids’ needs. I found myself adrift at sea with no parenting culture or skills to guide me as I bushwhacked a new heart-centered path.

Suddenly, I had to genuinely slow down to tune into to my body and instincts - and my kids’ - because we were all were exhausted or upset, a lot. And it all just felt like my fault because I couldn’t be the “perfect happy mother.”

It became impossible to ignore the gnawing, gaping wound in the center of myself I had been unable to look at for most of my life: I do not belong and I am not good enough.

Left to its own devices, my ‘Civilized Mind’ did the best it could to survive after decades of being cut off from my heart, body, and spirit: distract from the pain with work, things, and scrolling, but they were like putting a bandaid on a bullet hole wound.

I couldn’t remember what joy felt like or how to find it, but I sure could describe what hitting bottom felt like.

Mother Nature was my saving grace — she was always there to catch me when I fell.

I pushed myself to fit in as a wife, mother, employee, and friend… until another round of depression and burnout gave me no other choice but to open my mind to new ways of being.

I was driven to find a better way for me and my kids to live and care for ourselves.

Conventional mainstream food, medicine, and parenting cultural guidance offered me nothing that worked for me or my kids.

The tiny whisper inside me grew louder, reminding me of the things my Elders shared when I was little: “trust the land, there is wisdom in indigenous ways, and don’t take “No” for an answer when your heart feels the truth".

So, my heart led me to learning all I could about energetic Western herbalism, holistic Food as Medicine, Earth-based spirituality, indigenous kinship wisdom, Traditional Chinese Medicine, somatic energy healing, dreamwork, nervous system regulation, sound and art therapies, and tropical astrology.

I jokingly called this phase my “second round of graduate school” as I steeped myself in professional courses, hands-on clinics, conferences, intensives, and books.

Learning each one of these wisdoms felt like coming home to myself.

It was a deep soul remembering of something that was always meant to be part of me. I savored each book and class, as they felt like breaking the surface of the water after nearly drowning.

They also gave me new tools for understanding the patterns I was seeing in my own life… it was like connecting the stars to see the greater constellation of life at work.

These old traditional methods of holistic medicine, self-care, self-expression, and deep connection to Self and nature, opened a portal into understanding how to build a life and work that is deeply authentic to who I am. A life that embraces all of me - my body, mind, heart, and spirit.

This portal also opened me up to going deep within my own inner wisdom, instincts, and intuition to find the answers I needed - finally breaking the spell of desperately seeking answers outside of myself.