A little more about me...
Growing up between the gulf shores of Alabama, the farm lands of rural Ohio and the flint hills adjacent city of Wichita Kansas, I was introduced to a variety of landscapes, peoples and places early on. I attended Kalamazoo College in Michigan, not far from the sand dunes and great lake, and studied abroad in China's mountainous mainland for seven months. After graduation I moved to the Pacific Northwest and began to immerse myself more in the rhythms and languages of the natural world—a wild diversity of sights, smells, sounds, seeds, tracks and signs trailing along the earth, coasts and rivers, telling stories of regeneration, cooperation, life, death, collective nourishment and deep time.
Following a year long residential immersion course with the Wilderness Awareness School, I began living and working with a variety of communities connected culturally and collaboratively to their surrounding landscapes. I have spent time (herding sheep and chopping wood) on the Black Mesa Reservation in support of Dineh (Navajo) elders facing forced relocation from their ancestral lands by the US government's tradition of treaty violations, ongoing theft of land, water and animals, and partnerships with Peabody Coal.
I became a regular student of permaculture, organic gardening and ethnobotany during this time and traveled regularly between educational farms in the Pacific Northwest and the Ozarks. Through a community-centered, mythology and nature focused retreat center in Missouri I was introduced to working with groups and individuals using the tools of meditation, trance and embodied awareness, interwoven with a blend of mythological archetypes and the fields, forests and streams of the southern Ozark mountains. This led me to remain more permanently in Missouri and encouraged me towards the field of professional counseling and eco-therapy.
While pursuing my Masters at the University of Missouri I helped create and teach a variety of courses on Mindfulness, Eco-Psychology and Nature-based Awarenesses. I was also recruited during this time to co-create and teach a graduate level certificate program in Positive Psychology, including two courses on community relationships and mythologically based meaning. I received my Masters in Counseling Education from the University of Missouri in 2013 and continued teaching as adjunct faculty until 2015.
I have been practicing as a Licensed Professional Counselor in Columbia Missouri for the better part of a decade. During this time I have continued to explore and practice my work with an ever-widening pool of perspectives, integrating emerging research with social, global and cultural histories, as well as indigenous wisdom, world mythologies and stories from the land.
I continue to focus intently on recognizing, understanding and healing dynamics of inter-personal, cultural, and collective traumas, as well as deepening human relationships with the natural world. This includes years of study under the tutelage of Martín Prechtel in the belly of Bolad's Kitchen at his home in New Mexico, as well as numerous groups, gatherings, courses and workshops facilitated by Rooted Global Village, Education for Racial Equity and Ancestral Medicine.
