The Beginning

I was born to White activist parents in a Black neighborhood in Chicago; until I was six I was the one White kid among my friends. Then, we moved to a White papermill town in rural Maine. My new friends had all sorts of choice words for my old friends in Chicago, and that’s how I came to understand the concept of race.

My parents were fully immersed in their work and their political activism, and my sister and I were left with babysitters for much of our childhood. Unbeknownst to my parents,I was sexually abused by one of my babysitters, and neglected by some of the others. We had sitters who ignored us as they spent hours on the phone with boyfriends, sitters who forgot to make us meals, sitters who smoked cigarettes in our faces and swore.

It would be decades before I realized that my experiences weren’t normal or appropriate.

Ignoring my Pain

I began to sense something was wrong my first year at my performing arts college. Moments of the sexual abuse I experienced flashed through my mind. These memories would crash through my sleep and keep me up at night, but I wasn’t even sure these memories were real.

My anxiety increased, and my response was to work harder. I juggled up to six part-time jobs at once– I figured my nightmares were getting worse anyway, so I may as well work more instead of sleep.

This was also around the time I took my first yoga class. , As I flowed from pose to pose, I noticed some space between my thoughts. A moment of quiet. A break from all the tears. That felt important.

So, I pursued yoga and pilates teaching certificates to generate income as I paved a path for myself in the New York City theater scene.

Then, in my late 20s, I learned that my sister Kati was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. For five years, I witnessed her heroic navigation of aggressive treatments.

Right before I started rehearsal for my first Broadway show, we got the news that Kati likely would not survive. A few months later, I left New York to be with her for the last five weeks of her life. Somehow, and I don’t know how, when Kati died I immediately knew that I needed to create a smudging ritual to mark her passing. After she died, my sleep was worse than ever, but I put the tools I had learned as a new yoga teacher into practice and found solace through meditation as I navigated this profound grief.

The Turning Point

Through my grief, life went on. I made theater. I had a baby. I taught yoga.

As books about trauma started to hit mainstream culture, I decided to read one because I figured it would help inform my work as a yoga teacher.

On the first page, the book described PTSD and my jaw dropped. It described me exactly: the insomnia, the intrusive images and thoughts, the relentless perfectionism, the sensitivity to lights and sounds, the constant crying. I realized then that these things weren’t my personality, they were trauma symptoms.

I began EMDR therapy and over time my nervous system relaxed. I slept through the night for the first time in years. My panic attacks became less frequent. I was softer with myself when I made mistakes. My body felt lighter.

I experienced joy, happiness and excitement for the first time that I could remember.

Several years into therapy, my therapist told me she was also a Shamanic practitioner. When she told me this, I felt a spark within me.

Finding the Right Path

Understanding that my therapist’s work went beyond conventional western therapy and into the realm of spirituality helped me connect the dots between all of the seemingly disparate silos in my life.

I’d always been highly creative, extremely sensitive, and a big dreamer. But my high-achiever, hustle mentality could only get me so far. To truly shine and make an impact, I needed to find my peace. Intuition had always been a big part of my life, but I never had words or practice for the things I was experiencing.

Yoga and Pilates were my gateway into somatic work and helped me calm my nervous system. The more I worked with my body, the more I could also sense beyond it. But western-american somatic practice didn’t have any language for that.

Theater and dance brought me such joy and passion as a young person, but as I became more professional it had become bogged down with the ups and downs of navigating the field.

Social Justice activism felt important to me, but it lacked an awareness of care for oneself and each other; the goals of the movement nearly always left people, myself included, burnt out.

As I worked with a therapist who offered a spiritual framework for healing, things started to make sense. What if I could access spiritual healing through embodied practice? What if I made theater in service of a better world? What if my social justice work was rooted in a connection to a higher power? What if building healthy relationships was in service to the divine?

Once I came to a spiritual understanding that all of the modalities I worked in could be done through a Shamanic understanding, my life changed forever.

The Results

I’ve now supported hundreds of sensitive people find stability in their lives so they can flourish.

When we step out of our trauma patterns and prioritize our well-being, a better world is possible. Calm, well-boundaried people bring peace to their relationships, families, communities, and the world. I am thrilled that I get to help folks discover this in their own lives.

I never imagined this life or this way of serving my community, and it’s a delight! Here’s to your success story, I hope I’m lucky enough to be a part of it. 🙂✨💫