What Deeply Roots me
My first and deepest teacher is the Earth herself and the infinite living, loving, and dying beings that weave her into existence of which I am one.
The landscapes in which I am deeply intertwined and in relationship with are the creeks, forests, and rockbeds of the ancestral homelands of the Lenni Lenape in the Blue Mountain valley of Northeast Pennsylvania as well as the forests, rivers, flowers, and fields of Eno, Occennechi, Saponi, Shakori, Lumbee, Catawba, and Sisspahaw homelands of the North Central North Carolina Piedmont. Both of these places I call home and call me into deeper presence and reciprocity. They are my sources of all that I am and infinite tributaries of knowledge and wisdom. It is these lands and rich ecosystems of human and more than human beings that I honor and hold sacred in every breath and step of my work and life.
I have studied grief work and am a certified Holding Space Consultant through the Institute for the Study of Birth Breath and Death. This training largely emphasizes the framework of Dr. Alan Wolfelt, Director of the Center for Life & Loss Transition, and offers me skills in deep listening, honoring the natural and messy processes of grief and mourning and how they may impact all facets of our life differently. It also teaches me discernment when something is beyond my scope of practice and when to widen the circle of support to others with different skills and services like professional psychotherapists, mental health providers, or other practitioners.
I am certified in Trauma Informed Yoga through Soulwork Passion Yoga School and Collective Resilience. This lens rooted in both modern neuroscience and ancient yogic philosophy shows me the ways complex personal experiences and systemic inequalities impact the wellbeing of individuals and communities and offers me the tools to show up in authentic empowered relationships that can provide co-regulation. It also highlights the importance of personal agency and choice in a person’s pace and process of healing and moving towards emotional awareness and regulation. This work anchors me in somatic techniques and practices to honor the presence of grief and trauma, pleasure and healing in the physical, emotional, and energetic bodies.
I have completed continuing education training in Ecotherapy with Jessica Wallner of The Earthbody Institute and Trauma Sensitive Yoga through the Center for Trauma and Embodiment.
I draw upon the wisdom, support, guidance, and love of my ancestors known and unknown who have lived and died before me, especially my paternal grandfather- Poppy- who ushered me into death and grief work through the gift of companioning his own passage to the far shore and who taught me through his own process that death can be healing. It is from that experience that I feel called to companion others through the literal and figurative thresholds of our lives and to know them, in time, as fertile grounds of transformation.
I also honor the paternal grandmother of my paternal grandmother- Leila- who teaches me the wisdom and power of softness.
As well, my mother’s maternal grandmother Martha, whose tenacity and resilience lives in my veins and inspires and humbles me always.
I have deep reverence for stories of our loved ones and ourselves and know the profound importance and healing possibility in being witnessed, held, and heard in our stories and in our grief. I feel it is part of my role to use the wisdom and love from my own experiences to hold space for the homecoming of the full spectrum of human expression in others by way of ritual, remembrance and loving presence.
I am inspired by the life, wisdom, and work of adrianne maree brown, Toko-pa Turner, Katie Gordon, Valarie Kaur, Amy Wright Glenn, Mia Birdsong, David Abram, Michelle Cassandra Johnson, Meggan Waterson, Louise Hay, Tricia Hersey, Enfleshed, Roots of Lore, and all those who do the rich and messy work of loving me through this life.
I live by the deep value of radical and radicle community as embodied by the vast, diverse, and interwoven mycelial networks that form Earth as well as in the vision of author and activist Mia Birdsong who says, “We cannot be free by ourselves. The most liberated self requires us to be in relationship with others who support our liberation.” This vision of folks, human and more than human, collaborating to create a more just, connected, liberated, and rich landscape outside of binary thinking and relational hierarchy is what underlies my work through Deeply Rooted. It is my heartfelt desire that the relationships and dynamics we enter together are both co created and multifaceted and that we may show up as expressions of the full spectrum of humanness and learn and heal from each other.
