You are the reason I write.

This site began in 2015 as an invitation for others to share with me what felt like my very personal journey, but what I soon discovered is a journey being taken by anyone on the planet who’s really paying attention right now. The way I’d been living my life wasn’t working anymore – or perhaps I was losing my capacity to pretend that it ever did. I’d gone as far as I could in the marriage and career I’d nurtured and sacrificed for, my health was trashed, and I was headed for another bout of addictive self-destruction (but unfortunately not the worst I would encounter).

My posts – coming at least monthly for nearly seven years – provide an intimate exploration of chronic health issues, addiction, muddled relationships, and the search for meaningful work and community. These are the outward life tasks of every human that has ever existed, approached sincerely – if not always artfully or heroically – by a single, child-free, fairly educated and privileged woman nearing middle age during an era on our planet in which trauma is the norm and everything that humans have relied on for survival is unraveling.

But the reason I write for myself and the reason I have been compelled to write for you through all these chaotic, exhausting, and heart-rending years is that when I write, I contact a voice deep within and beyond me that infuses all this grief and bewilderment and meanness with goodness and grace. I’m not talking about joy, light, transcendence, or often even acceptance. I’m talking about an experience of kindness and compassion at the center of the storm and the capacity to begin to discern and surrender to its subtle rhythms and wider movements that is necessary for my survival. And that I somehow sense exists in the core of each of us and every living things, and is necessary for the survival of us all.

Some of my posts are poetic musings on nature and existence. Some are articles about insights and ideas I’ve come across in my studies and tested in my life. There are plenty of practices for you to try and resources for you to check out if you feel a resonance with my writing. I’ve done my best to document and share everything that’s helped me cope, adapt, and occasionally thrive as one example of what is possible at this point in our history – living in an awkward urban landscape with a somewhat stifled, yet still very vital, wild heart that refuses to forget how beautiful it is to be human on a living planet.

I hope my words move something in you that you had forgotten was there. I hope they awaken a sense of awe in the living world that you hadn’t noticed before. I hope they open a window of possibility for a part of you that is longing for air and space. I hope they soothe a place in you that has felt outcast and awkward.

And I hope most of all that you reach out and let me know how my words touch you because I need yours too. I love the conversation that arises around ideas that inspire us and how they can change the way we live and grow. No one can have a conversation alone. Every word we write and speak we receive from somewhere.

When we tend what is most inward and sacred, and share it with the world for healing and wholing, we become InnerWoven.

My Vision

I seek to offer connection and inspiration by reviving the dialogue with nature found both within and around us, unearthing patterns and insights, and creating sanctuary for authentic self-expression and exploring deeper meaning.

I live to listen to ancient things – myths, landscapes, and night skies – to speak the sorrow and beauty of our soul’s struggle to live in our world, and to feel our words shift something in the heart of a friend as they remember who they are and how they belong.

I envision a world where all people think, speak, and act from a place of interconnected, life-affirming truth, honoring the inherent wisdom, dignity, beauty, and interdependence of all things.

I believe that the more we live from our souls, the more our world will sustainably thrive; and that because there is an interconnection and consciousness in all life, forces beyond our understanding are supporting our journey.  We need courage and resourcefulness to navigate our practical challenges, we need faith in and surrender to our unique and valuable purpose, and we need a tribe of allies – tangible and imaginal, living and beyond-living, human and more-than-human – to inspire us and hold us accountable to being decent humans on a living Earth.

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My Story

My imagination and curiosity have always leaned toward the existential: Who am I? Why did I choose to come here? How does everything fit together and what is the point of it all? My longing to live large, face my fears, and find where I belonged led me to visit over 15 countries and live abroad three times before I was 22. When my mother died suddenly of a brain aneurysm at age 55 during a yoga class, I was in my final year of studying Anthropology at UC Berkeley and I experienced a dramatic shift from exploring existential theories to living the reality of life and death.

The year that followed was my first experience of being completely out of control and at the mercy of a flood of grief, rage, and self-destruction that had accumulated over a lifetime of feeling outcast and misunderstood, being bullied, and trying to fit into a racially tense LA suburb. I realized how much I needed other people, and dedicated my life to practicing relational skills and providing direct social services and managing volunteer programs for adults with disabilities, at-risk youth, domestic violence survivors, elders with chronic health issues, and people recovering from addiction and incarceration.

I was also fully committed to healing through spiritual practice. I engaged in both cognitive behavioral therapy and process work. I participated in intensive studies of mindfulness, eastern meditation, astral projection, ritual magic, and the esoteric teachings of world religions including Hindu, Buddhist, Egyptian, Sufi, Kabbalah, and Mayan traditions.

At the age of 35, after 10 years of nurturing a marriage, home, and career, I found my world disintegrating around me. I reconnected with my own authentic spiritual voice through dreams, time in nature, creating collage, and performing Spoken Word. But the stress of facing some of my deepest fears about navigating an uncertain world alone fueled several previously unacknowledged addictions and sparked several chronic health issues. I began to sense a profound connection between the health of my body and the health of my community and the entire natural world.

I decided to quit my job to visit the landscapes in the world that had most inspired me while working on organic farms and studying permaculture and ecopsychology. Two months into my trip, I chose to stay on at a spiritual community and farm outside of Portland, where I lived for 1 1/2 years designing and teaching workshops on meditation, nature connection, and the hero’s journey. I experienced a profound energetic opening while on pilgrimage to the Himalayas, which led to spontaneous experiences of embodying trees, animals, and landscapes.

Living in this community also acquainted me with deeper layers of my progressive addiction and the dangers of spiritual bypassing. Inspired by discovering the teachings of Derrick Jensen and Bill Plotkin on the necessary and transformative relationship with nature, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to complete a wilderness rites of passage apprenticeship in the tradition of the School of Lost Borders. I also found healing and resonance through a lineage of teachers inspired by Carl Jung and James Hillman, including Robert Masters on shadow work, Michael Meade on living myth, and Francis Weller on an apprenticeship to grief.

Depth psychology and somatic work became the previously missing elements in my personal development and spiritual work. I studied with a mentor trained by Bill Plotkin’s Animas Valley Institute, participated in grief rituals, embraced 5 Rhythms dance, and engaged in 12-step programs around food and relationship addiction. Through my new career in alternative health and wellness, I was also diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder and completely restructured my diet and lifestyle while supporting others with chronic health conditions.

When we all went underground during the COVID-19 pandemic, I began to study shamanic healing and facilitated online workshops on mythology and nature connection, including the 9-month Wild Recovery group. I also offered individual sessions focused on the body and deep imagination while engaging in my own trauma recovery through Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, and the work of Stephen Porges, Gabor Mate, Sarah Peyton, and Resmaa Menakem.

I am currently managing a small alternative health clinic while working with an osteopath / energy worker on clearing several chronic viral infections. I am active in two 12-step fellowships and enjoy dabbling in cellular anatomy and historical atlases. My daily practice includes yoga, meditation, creative writing, trying to pick out songs I hear in my dreams on my guitar, and talking with the moon, trees, red-tailed hawks, turkeys, coyotes, and humans I encounter in the hills of Marin County, CA.

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