I am a mother, wounded healer, devotee of the breath and a weaver of interbeing, a teaching I received through Thich Nhat Hanh. I root deep and expand wide to support the letting down from the pressured grip of dominant culture as it presents through our multidimensionality.
I live and work on the unceded homelands of the Tuscarora and Piscataway Nations commonly known today as Frederick, Md. The land is tended to as a pollinator sanctuary. She is supported in her wildness and co-facilitates my work. I believe that slowing into the womb of the relational is the healing: the being seen, felt and held so tenderly our tissues can unwind and rest into the larger web.
After 18 years as a licensed psychotherapist, I shifted away from psychotherapy to liberation work rooted in land based healing. I am committed to supporting a collective remembering that we are all connected, that when you suffer, I suffer and when you heal, we all heal. And we have not all been harmed the same way. Remembering our connection means reckoning with that too.
Working in the allopathic system of health led to frustration and burnout around the monied interests in our "sick care" system that are committed to the delusion and illusion of separation. The medicalization of the symptoms of a toxic culture into individual siloed diseases and disorders felt crazy making to me. As hard as I tried to subvert the system, I was still participating in it. Over time, the isolation and burnout became unsustainable.
We are seeing a deepening separation and excision of people from their context and ecosystems, reified by epidemic rates of diagnosing and pathologizing the individual for what are collective and systemic problems. It is my belief that the framework of diagnosis is in itself problematic because it separates us from each other and decontextualizes our symptoms into diseases unto themselves rather than expressions of a culture built on the story of separation.
I know that for many, a diagnosis brings relief, validation, access to care, and community. I honor that. And I long for a world where we know ourselves as expressions of our environment, where no one has to carry alone what belongs to all of us.
I move from the space that nothing is ever separate, that everything, EVERYTHING is connected: the pain in my back and the generations of orphaned tears; the inflammation in my gut and years of sterilizing industrial health care; the politics of division and polarization and if we were held as babies or left alone to figure it out. I don't see mental health as separate from physical and spiritual health. We don't have a body. We are a body, and embodiment is the liberatory path.
I use relationship as a container to renegotiate the misattunements, the cruel and the fraught experiences of our childhoods (and those of our ancestors); a space to unwind generations of colonizing beliefs; and a playground to explore new ways of being with ourselves and each other.
I intentionally use my relationships to grow, to play, to redo, repair and welcome home the parts of me that helped me survive. My work is to return to my true nature over and over again, each time with more compassion for what it is to be human.
I did not arrive here alone. I have been deeply impacted by the work of Bayo Akomolafe, Resmaa Menakem, Tyson Yunkaporta, Natureza Gabriel, bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Thich Nhat Hanh.
I was raised in Thailand, Taiwan, El Salvador and Honduras. While my parents worked, I was held by the women who kept our home. Maya women. Buddhist women. They were my first teachers of the body, of the rhythm of co-regulation, and of being held. I hold with some tension and deep care that I was a child and they were working for us. I carry both truths with humility.
I am also remembering my own ancestors. The Celtic people, Irish and Scottish, who were torn from their own land and tongues. I also carry that they crossed an ocean and became settlers here and the impacts of that to this day. I continue to learn from the people I've sat with, and from the land itself. I do my best to practice in relationship, not extraction. And I welcome and need feedback to grow as the settler mindset of extraction lives in me despite devoting my life to unwinding it from my tissues.
We are more biome than human. Bodies that move from this knowing move differently than bodies numbed and gripped by the story of separation. Embedded bodies know the weight and kindness of gravity and how to circumambulate depravity within the context of community. Enthreaded bodies feel the web in and around them and can rest into the reassurance that they are but a fleeting miracle in a pocket of space converging with time in the larger hammock. Co-created bodies are not bodies at all, but ecosystems within prismatic ecosystems reflecting our true nature through webbed relations.
The shock waves held in a larger container that undulates and softens as the waves move through, relieving our joints from the impact so that we can go beyond enduring the shock and ride the waves as we walk into the unknown together.
My training:
I have studied with a lot of people over my 30 years in the world of yoga, psychotherapy and somatics. My greatest teacher has been the breath.
I completed the SE training in 2015, trained with Kathy Kain and Steve Terrell in Somatic Practice and touch work, dabbled in Raja Selvam’s Integral Somatic Psychology, flirted with Hakomi for a stint, and dove into Alaine Duncan’s Tao of Trauma work - a year long training in 5 Element Chinese Medicine and somatic touch work.
I have studied with Tara Brach and worked with Parts work from the buddhist tradition for 30 years. I have training in Yin, Vinyasa, pranayama and meditation.
I have also done a lot of self study in Nonviolent Communication and attended multiple Family Heart Camps with my family over the years. I am also faculty and instructor with the Psychedelic Somatic Institute.
I use **she/we** pronouns to reflect a truth I live daily: that I am both an individual and a constellation. “She” honors my experience as a woman in this body, in this time. “We” acknowledges the ancestors who walk with me, the land that holds me, and the communities, human and more-than-human, that shape who I am becoming.
I believe identity is not a fixed destination but a sacred process of remembering, relation, and return. My work is rooted in the knowing that liberation is collective, that healing happens in kinship, and that language is a tool for opening portals.
“She/we” is not just how I ask to be addressed-it’s how I try to live: as part of a larger whole, listening for what’s shared even in what feels separate.
Photos by Amanda Lucia
I want to take a moment to acknowledge, with deep respect and gratitude, the therapists who work within the system. I see you and I deeply value you. We need you! Deep, deep bow for your service.
Deep bow to the incessant pain, the triumphant no’s, the fledging humming birds and soft pillows.
Deep bow to the pregnant emptiness gracing the in between setting the stage for the crackling sound of the cold, cold world.
Deep bows to the healers who mothered me home, who sat with me in the dark nowhere to go, just there, together, breathing the unknown.
Deep bows to the sisters along the way who listened to consternations, unsustainable grief and a chronic sense of isolation.
While I step out of the system that birthed me, I feel the solidity of the ground beneath me. The path is unclear when I look into the beyond, but for now, it’s right where I belong.
My ideal apprentice
I am calling in an apprentice (or two) to my work. This person is interested in Relational Somatics and Breathwork. Ideally, this person has done extensive work on themselves, has at least 3 years in somatic learnings, be that bodywork or Somatic Experiencing or other somatic practices. This person has worked with me for at least one year so we already have a relationship and trust or they have apprenticed to the Breathwork Practice for at least one year and have an established somatic healing practice supporting others for at least 2 years.
BARTERING
I am willing and interested in bartering my time, though I do have limitations with how much I can barter because I do need money to help me survive in the capitalist system. I am in need of:
pastured, organic raised and finished meat (non-GMO)
a steady supply of local beeswax candles
outdoor art installations
permaculture gardening
bodywork: massage, chiropractic, cranial sacral, accupuncture, restorative, gentle and yin yoga
prepared meals
tailor/seamstress skills
photography
psychedelic support
As I continue to organize my life away from the dependence on the big banks, I will only take cash, check, gold, silver and in some cases Venmo (though I plan to ween myself off there too). The Breathwork offerings will continue to use Paypal for now.