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My mission, through a variety of services & offerings, is to engage people in active love practices to interrupt the many manifestations of interpersonal violence.
This purpose-driven work helps me co-create worlds that center care, reciprocity, justice and love.
My values empower me to create brave & supportive spaces where the catalyzing tools of empathy, love & kindness can be practiced.
My work shifts dynamics from siloed individualism toward interconnectedness, resources, support & collective care.
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I am a two-time micro-entrepreneur with significant values-based business and collaborative experience.
Additionally, I have over 30 years experience in a variety of traditional business roles, and in board & advisory committee roles.
As a writer I’ve taken uncountable projects from conceptualization to creation. Along the way I’ve gained skills in developmental guidance and copyediting. I’ve created everything from manuscripts to essays, reports to marketing materials and more (digital and analog).
I’ve long been a community-oriented solopreneur and non-digital influencer. Some of my superpowers are embodiment, intersectional trauma-informed healing, body based healing, and collective wellbeing
I passionately engage with & study (and have for 35+ years) spirituality, meditation and devotion, yoga and breathwork, somatic healing, embodiment, body-based healing, trauma healing, racial justice, social justice, communication skills, conscious language, human potential, personal growth, physical wellness, writing, ritual, dance and movement, folklore, symbolism, myth, archetypal wisdom, cooperatives and collectives, environmental healing, queer Femmes, queer communities and personal & collective liberation.
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Letters
CMT; CYT; RYT-200, E-RYT1000
Summary
As a disrupter, I have chosen to gain ongoing education and training outside of the academy.
Details
I was certified by the Minneapolis School of Massage and Bodywork in 1996 and by the Feel Your Best Yoga Teacher Training Program in 2006. I have completed hundreds of hours of continuing education in body-based and somatic healing modalities (see CV for more information). I continue to study somatic and neurophysiologic approaches.
Additionally, I partially completed a dual degree in Communications and Urban Planning at the University of Minnesota from 2002-2004.
In 2005, I opened and operated my first business, a social justice and trauma-informed wellness studio, which lived in community joy for 12 years.
Member: LGBTQ+ Editors Association (since 2022)
Member: Association of Writers & Writing Programs (since 2024)
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My skills & superpowers include:
healing centered & trauma-informed practices,
building community
working with conscious & inclusive language
embodiment
teaching and facilitating
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I am a gender-prismatic (trans-nonbinary) queer Femme who uses they/themme or Mx pronouns. I am a white person of primarily Scottish, Welsh & English ancestry living in the U.S. as a result of white settler colonialism. Though I live with the ongoing health impacts (mental and physical) of adverse childhood experiences and various adult traumas, I am a mostly (temporarily) non-diabled person.
I am living on unceded lands in the upper Midwest, U.S., known as Mni Sota Makoce. This place is still the ancestral and current homeland of Dakota people. -
I am continually grateful for those who have shared their teachings, wisdom, skills, knowledge, and magic with me so far, and those teachers yet to come.
Thank you to those I am learning from - my formal and informal teachers- and all of their teachers!
The partial list below includes people who have taught or mentored me directly:
Evolve Benton
BX Barclay
Naomi Cohn
Debra Hennesey
Karen Hering
Kitty Kuluvar
Thea Lee
Tommy Lee Woon
Susan Raffo
Erin Sharkey
Suzanne Sterling
Lovice Weller
Tracy WilliamsThis incomplete list includes those whose life work and publications continue to deeply influence my heart, thinking, practices, and frameworks:
Jacoby Ballard
adrienne maree brown
Pema Chodron
Eli Clare
Seane Corne
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Lilias Folan
Thich Nhat Hanh
Trisha Hersey
bell hooks
BKS Iyengar
Valarie Kaur
Judith Lasater
Carmen Maria Machado
Ricardo Levins Morales
Chani Nicholas
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha
Sonya Renee Taylor
Bessel van der Kolk
Selected Facilitation & Speaking Engagements
Dept. of Public Health & Environment
IT Department - HQ
Masters in Educational Leadership Students
Staff in the Department of Agronomy; College of Food, Agriculture & Natural Resources
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Recent Inspirations
Big old conifers in the north woods; sledding face-first downhill; deepening relationships with my dearest ones; my writing accountability buddy, my writer pals, the Loft writer’s studios, braided essays; Kao Kalia Yang; Naomi Cohn; Dralandra Larkins; Ebony Steward; Bill Holm; reading-writing-making art every chance I get; deepening ritual practices and presence.