What I love about my work:

I love recognizing what’s important out of all the noise, honing in, and getting to work with my clients. I love having the chance to hold the whole person in mind and heart. I love using my both my mind and heart in the service of healing and transformation. I love using my hard-won skills so my clients can more easily move through to more ease. I love holding clients’ goodness.

Body limits/mind freedom:

From infancy through early adulthood, I experienced severe asthma that limited my mobility and ability for portions of each year. Medicine wasn’t as advanced as it is now, and also my parents were not keen on using Western medicine.

This difference—looking out the window trying to stay absolutely still as others are walking and playing, chatting mindlessly—has created a certain space inside me to observe. To see. To know what it feels like to be concerned with physical survival and discomfort in one’s body. To feel alone with one’s experience.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve found many folks come to work with me who feel like they’re looking out the window as others are going about their business. Folks who are not cisgender. Folks with chronic illness. Folks with disabilities. Folks who are queer. Folks who are poly. Folks who are neurodivergent. And although I have many ways my identity intersects as a neurodivergent and trans non-binary person who practices consensus non-monogamy, I really thinks it’s all those early years of struggling within my body that lends itself the most to my deep ability to hold space for my beloved clients.

Mindfulness:

When I found myself attending Boulder’s Buddhist-inspired university Naropa, I was unbearably anxious at all I was being asked to deal with and face. Socializing with classmates, managing work relationships, and roommate situations had me crawling out of my skin.

Being asked—actually required as part of my undergrad psychology program—to practice observing my mind, coming back to my body, and cultivating a spirit of friendliness toward myself…that changed my life.

I was a terrible meditator, though! If I sat and paid attention to my breathing, I would become inevitably preoccupied with my breath and more tense! My kind instructors helped me find alternative ways to stick with myself: focusing on sound, on gravity’s impact on my body, and practicing mindfulness while enacting everyday tasks.

I highly recommend my first “bible,” Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart.

Grief:

Estrangement:

Disability and ableism:

Snapshot of identities:

Genderqueer, neurodivergent, white, working class, Northeastern, Californian, artist.