Support for a Flourishing Life.

I am here to support your self integration and alignment of your goals with your life context, your communities, our world.

Your life can be flourishing. No hurdle is too large. I can help you with working through fear, moving out of stagnation, living with grief, building fulfilling relationships, and existing in your present moment.

As a trauma- and somatically-informed life coach I bring powerful skills to scaffold your changes. As a Daoist priest I bring additional potent skills and am also myself the medicine that will give you the energy and space you may need to begin a process of self-transformation.

Read more below on each of these areas and to see specific situations where I might have particularly helpful insights above and beyond my skill sets and energy.

Simply put, we spend too little time intentionally shaping our lives. There is no need to wait until we are faced with a crisis.

Change is best made in small and easy steps: "Take on difficulties while they are still easy, do great things while they are still small." (Chapter 63, Dao De Jing, Tr: Jonathan Star). Whether you are in a good place and therefore free to focus on small adjustments or have had a crisis that resets your life to a clean slate, I firmly believe that energy underlying this world fundamentally supports growth. Let me help you find your connection to that energy.

BUILDING FULFILLING RELATIONSHIPS

We are relationships.  We relate to ourselves.  We relate to our physical and spiritual worlds.  We relate to our families, birth and created. We relate to our communities.  We relate to our friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.  We relate to our lovers.  We exist as the nexus of all of these relationships.

I offer multiple forms of relating that can help you with your other relationships.

I find that my coaching, spiritual guidance, and education relationships are usually the meaningfully helpful ones here.  I have no relative expertise on your relationships to use to advise you and I cannot advocate for you in your relationships.

As a coach, I can, however, help you think through and intentionally build your relationships.

As a Daoist priest, I can provide you with various religious healing services, help you improve your energy with yourself and others, and guide your cultivation of the relationships that matter to you.

As an educator, I can help you develop and follow a curriculum around various aspects of relating, including parenting, better romantic relationships, sex, sexuality, and bodies.  I can also help you build your relationship to your own body through various somatic modalities.

WORKING THROUGH FEAR

Together we can conquer anything.

Fear can hold us back in many ways. Sometimes fear is obvious. Some of my fears certainly are obvious: fear of heights, fear of public speaking, fear of sharks, fear of dropping things, and fear of flying. But that is not the only fear we need to work on. There are deeper and more impactful fears.

Fear, including fear of shame and even fear of desire, is surprisingly pervasive in U.S. culture. We live in a culture of precarity - many of us go to work in the morning for fear that we will be homeless, unable to eat, and without healthcare. This is the sort of fear that truly constrains us and clouds our decision-making. Worse yet, it often limits what we see. We feel so afraid to look away from that which keeps us safe that we rarely look up to see how big and awesome and welcoming the world, and human community, can be.

Fear need not hold us back. We can recognize fear for what it is - a welcome messenger of danger - and let it be only that. Let it not cloud or unwittingly shape our better judgment.

Here I am public speaking and of rappelling. Worse yet, I am taking a picture of the person who went before me while fumbling my phone over the edge. And this tiger shark? I got this photo while I swam right towards it because it was too cool.

While I needed a licensed therapist (which I am not) to stop having panic attacks when flying, my other fears I worked with on my own. I'd be honored to be there with you while you learn to work with your fears.

MOVING OUT OF STAGNATION

Life moves. It does not stop. But sometimes we (try to) stop. Because the flow of life does not stop, this means that sometimes we get in our own way. Often this results from frustration and from a conscious or subconscious disconnect from our deepest self.

The energy flowing from our core self has described in various ways. One of the most provocative, was Audre Lorde, who described the erotic as: "a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.”

She further noted “in touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept the powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.” Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Make no mistake - this energy might not be what you would call sexual; it is merely that which breathes life into us. This energy is often impeded, interrupted, and distorted by various forms of anger - anger at others (a desire to push others away), shame (anger ourselves and a desire to push ourselves away from others), and arrogance/entitlement (a desire to push others beneath us).

Connection to a greater whole helps cure stagnation. I personally find the most beneficial and sustainable method of connection is compassion for ourselves and others. Let's find your way out of stagnation together.

LIVING WITH GRIEF

Life is change.  If we’re paying attention, there is always something to grieve and let go.  Every breath is gone once we exhale.

Specific losses can sting much more than others. 

I can support you in living with the loss of a loved one, divorce, estrangement, and other major life transitions. 

The key here is living with grief.  Grief, which marks our love, does not (and maybe should not) go away.  Grief replaces and stands in for what was lost. 

Some ritualized practices of grief expected people to actively grieve for years or for the rest of their lives! In many contemporary U.S. cultures, we complicate the grieving process when by trying to quickly move past or overcome grief. 

I can help you welcome grief, breathe with it, and keep your life moving with it.

PARTICULAR LIVED EXPERIENCES AND EXPERTISE:

I can be especially helpful and, where appropriate and desired, offer advice in each of the following areas:

  • Feeling like you are not doing enough for your community or the world;

  • Divorce;

  • Polyamory;

  • Coming out;

  • Parenting queer and trans kids;

  • Work-life "balance";

  • Finding or building a community as an adult;

  • Parsing your desires from those imposed on you by your environment and conditioning;

  • Making those desires and fantasies come to life;

  • Adding more adventure to your life.

Support for a Flourishing Life. Advice, guidance, education, and coaching for shaping your career and personal life to match your values and meet your goals.

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