My Story....

​

My journey of uncovering the hidden gifts of my Soul began in my early 20s—a time in which I entered into profound state of crisis in my life. My relationships had become difficult and confining. My time and sense of freedom were being compromised by my addictions and destructive relationship patterns. My awareness of the state of our world and the suffering taking place on a planetary scale became too immense to suppress, numb out, or ignore. My body and mental state had become painful and depleted, and my overall health truly began to suffer. I could no longer walk along the life path to becoming an “adult” that Western society had laid out for me. It all seemed to lead to insanity and was clearly moving me towards a life that felt contrary to my true nature. I knew I had been contorting myself since childhood to fit into a mold that was going against my natural rhythm and I couldn’t bear it anymore.

 

The people closest to me in my life were confounded with my state of grief and lostness, as was I. My life became a riddle to me—I was becoming more and more a stranger to myself. The identity and world-view that I had been crafting my entire life up to that point, and which held my world together, began to fail me…they no longer felt authentic, meaningful, or worthy of upholding. Nor did I even capable of upholding them. 

 

I went to conventional doctors and councilors to address my physical and mental health. They diagnosed me without really knowing anything about me or my life, gave me toxic prescriptions, and sent me on my way. With bottles full of antidepressants and pills to treat acid reflux sitting in front of me, something inside screamed “NO! There has got to be another way!"

 

This was all taking place during a time when I was being asked to decide what career path to embark on—what role I would play within the context of our society. I had been procrastinating on this through out my coursework as an undergraduate, because there seemed to be far too much I didn’t know or understand about myself and the world—far too much yet to explore to be capable of making such a decision. I could feel unidentifiable powers, longings, and capacities stirring somewhere in the depths of my being that had yet to reveal themselves. Who am I really? And how do I choose a path to base the rest of my life on before I know the truth of who I am?  And why do all the culturally acceptable options seem to lead me into illness and disease? 

 

The only role or “career” that made any sense to me whatsoever at that time was that of a Mystic Poet. The natural world and the poets who pointed to the Mysteries of nature and the human experience were threads that led me over and over again into territory that felt real in the midst of my deep state of confusion. But how could I survive in the world as a mystic poet; a nature poet? Who in my life would possibly understand or condone such a thing?

 

While I had no answers, it was clear that I simply could not take another step along the conventional road crafted by modern society and laid before me. I followed my indescribable longing to radically step away from the beaten path. I quit my job, slipped my moorings and began to wander, both psycho-spiritually and physically, into unknown territory—beyond the confines of consensus reality that no longer held any meaning for me—without a sense of what my destination would be. With no maps, sign posts, or guides, I followed closely on that haunches of my longings and the wild impulses of my being. 

 

In my wandering, by grace or destiny it seems, a map landed in my hands. One that was drawn up by a Cosmic Cartographer and Visionary Artisan by the name of Bill Plotkin. This was a life-altering moment that gifted me with a new lens through which to see my experience. His words and his maps helped me locate myself within my own psycho-spiritual journey. From this new perspective, I could see that my crisis was indicative of my successful development as a human being, despite the ways that Western culture had suppressed this development. Like a flower growing through the cracks of the sidewalk, my original instructions for this lifetime were holding true. My experience was not one of pathology after all, but rather an experience of my deep soul nature breaking through in a soul-thirsty culture. 

 

People in my life thought, oh good, she’ll get it out of her system, come to her senses, grow up and join us in the “real world”. But it never seemed to happen. Every time I tried to “come back” the crisis would deepen. 

 

Rather than attempting to revive a withering way of being, I went deeper into the unravelling, with the newfound understanding that to lay my old way to rest was the most compassionate and loving thing that I could do for myself and for the world. I spent the next 10 years undamming my grief, unleashing my wildness, cultivating capacities for healing myself, and unlocking my true calling, which I came to find out could not be defined in terms of a cultural role. As a result of my own journey, I recognized myself as a visionary and a guide, and devoted myself to the craft of soul guiding--learning how to help others find their way to healing and the embodiment of their visionary capacities. I have spent many years apprenticing as a ceremonialist and soul-initation guide with Bill Plotkin and his institute--the very man who crafted the maps that helped me uncover my soul-self. 

 

The truth is, we who have been raised and acculturated within the Western worldview are all in need of profound medicine. We have inherited a disease of the mind that has simultaneously brought about stunning abilities to manipulate the world around us while also separating us from the truth of ourselves and the nature of the Universe we are embedded in. The time has come to return to that truth. To return to our true belonging within the earth community and the cosmos and begin to enhance all the life that surrounds us. 

 

We are not separate from Nature and we cannot live without our deep connection to all of those we as humans share this planet with, including the great Goddess that is Gaia, our beloved Earth.

 

It’s my deep conviction that we humans must learn to converse once again with the others—both the others within and the others that surround us. Yes, we must learn to Con-Verse once again. Verse with. Sing with. Join the ongoing verse…the Uni-verse…the ONE SONG of the cosmos. We must go into the suppressed, taboo, scary, shameful, and uncomfortable territory of our being to rediscover what it means to be human within this vast Universe, with all that we have discovered over the course of our collective individuation. 

 

We are in need of a new and bigger story, for ourselves and how we inhabit the cosmos/Universe. I am here as a guide for individuals and for the collective to access this new story--this new and emerging cosmology. This story is our collective song to sing in the larger symphony of the Universe—the One Verse of creation. We each have a unique and vital part to play. Are you ready to take the journey of a lifetime and uncover the part that only you, in all the Universe, are capable of playing? Let me point the way...