My Story
Act 1:
Befriend the Wild Earth
My ancestors are Earth-people. Their hands and feet were part of the soil as they produced, harvested, prepared, and preserved food from land they worked for their livelihood. Farm folk and native people. This is in my blood and bones.
As a wild child of the Earth, my best friends were pine, ant, stream, and dark night skies that lit up my imagination for hours on end. For this, I am grateful.
When I was fifteen, I foraged my first magic mushrooms from cow fields near my home in the deep rural south. That was nearly 30 years ago.
I was a precocious, curious, and rebellious adolescent. with a love for creating art and poetry, and reading up on ESP and the paranormal. This could all be practiced while hanging out with friends at “The Tree,” a giant ancient oak on Mobile Bay where we would commune together in psychedelic states.
Then things started to turn dark.
Difficulties at home, running with the wrong crowd, broken hearts, and engaging in risky behavior were a recipe for some bad trips. I left home for Austin, TX to pursue college and all the fun and freedom my rural upbringing didn’t provide..
After college, I became a successful career woman in technology and design.
I had a great time planning and attending lavish events, wining and dining with the big wigs, and finding myself immersed in the dirty secrets of sanctioned alcoholism and sexual impropriety that drives toxic corporate cultures.
I was making nearly 6-figures and managing a team at a design agency when I bottomed out one final time. I lost my job and was crushed by the wake of poor decisions I had been making.
The spirit that had a hold of me was quite unkind and unforgiving (much like myself at the time). I found myself in over my head on many occasions, and alcohol was the only immediate solution that was available everywhere I turned. It was insidious.
However I was highly skilled at what I did, so it didn’t take long to bring through some high-ticket consulting contracts and save enough money to save myself,
I knew things had to change significantly, and I answered the call to heal.
I took off for Bali, Indonesia to pursue my first healing training in yoga, energetics, and shamanism. That choice saved me, and forever changed the course of my life.
That was over 12 years ago.
Act 2:
Lady Boss Hits Bottom
Act 3:
Awaken Body & Spirit
Bali and yoga woke me up, unfroze my body and mind, and started to turn on my natural healing gifts. I was immersed in the ceremony of Balinese ritual culture, learned how to use my body, hands, and voice in service of healing, and connected with people of like minds and hearts — oceans away from “home.”
It was there that I returned to the mushroom after 15 years — this time with more respect and intention for healing, in a solo experience.
I traveled a few more times to Southeast Asia to teach yoga and study healing arts. I knew the path of healing and awakening was my new life commitment.
I moved to Boulder, Colorado to pursue a 3-year Somatic Psychology Master’s degree at the historically counter-cultural, Buddhist influenced Naropa University. This full-time immersion in experiential learning was crucial to the healing artist I was becoming, and continues to serve as my foundation.
In mid-2016, I emerged from the cocoon of transformation as a newborn somatic therapist. I completed additional training in trauma, as a massage therapist, and much more education. I left Colorado and returned again. I worked in spas and clinics, and in private practice to explore where I would best fit.
The somatic and spiritual awakening I’d undergone stripped me bare. This new identity was a self-initiated rite of passage into the way of the wise woman.
On the drive back to Austin from my one and only time at Burning Man, I heard a clear voice from the San Juan forest “Colorado is where you belong.”
I had come to feel kinship with the jagged mountains and the Ponderosa pines, and I wanted to establish myself within a community where my work would be received.
This time, I connected with groups that were organized around psychedelics. I put my skillsets into practice, supporting ceremonies and addressing hidden layers of my own healing. I also encountered unhealthy group dynamics just below the surface.
In 2019, I pursed a training externship in Ketamine and Cannabis-Assisted Psychotherapy, which led to a position as a part-time clinical therapist. I learned a lot, including how limited I felt in a clinic. A year later, I was complete with that role.
Simultaneously, I had a part-time private practice and continued to serve clients in-person during pandemonium times. Given that mushrooms had been decriminalized in Denver, clients began requesting information and guidance for their personal therapeutic use of mushrooms. I obliged these requests and another initiation emerged.
My personal and client work became richer as I actively engaged in the professional community through organizations like The Nowak Society and SPORE.
I also discovered a couple wonderful mentors and teachers who have helped me deepen into my work as a shamanic practitioner, while I while I shed my identity as a somatic psychotherapist.
In August 2021, I allowed my professional psychotherapy designation to lapse and found freedom in defining my own Wise Ways with the healing and growth through earth-based and intuitive practices. I also extended my knowledge and sharing through mentoring other practitioners.
In 2022, I created a new learning platform, The Luminous Guide. It’s a playground and spiritual temple for those seeking guidance, skills, and kinship inside a practice community that centers personal sovereignty, growth, and creativity.
This opened up more possibilities for an emerging paradigm to support clients from the comfort of their own home, and disrupt the status quo, while I search for my own place to root.
Act 4:
Welcome the Wise Woman
Act 5:
Come Home to Root
As I continue to listen and align — in body, mind, heart, spirit — clearer truth comes through, with more possibilities. Honest truths that I am willing to hear.
One undeniable truth is this: My Heart longs to root into Home.
The home of innocence found in the Wild Earth Child, dancing amongst trees. Where the Awakened One brings Heaven and Earth together on the land so the Wise Woman can plant her gifts in the fertile fecund soil of creation. Sweetly tended by the seasoned and soulful heart of the Eclectic Elder I am becoming.
This Homecoming is not yet a finished story, it beholds the next phase of my journey. On the ever-turning spiral of evolution, I hear another call to adventure. Just as I exit a grand cycle of completion, another fractal opens to expand me at the midpoint of my life.
My prayer, my knowing, is one of gratitude for my story — the mythopoetic tale I have lived out amidst the archetypes and characters that live inside me. The collective expression of Source dancing across all space and time, appearing in a vast number of shadows and light of the human drama.
Without a shadow of a doubt, I know that wherever I go and whatever I do, that Love is at the center of it all. I am here to lean in and live my FULL POTENTIAL.