My lineage:
I was born into a time and place that has afforded me great privilege and opportunity and to that I bow. I currently reside on the stolen lands of the Onondaga Nation, the Haudenosaunee, in Syracuse NY. It is my desire that my work – the healing I may facilitate through my own connection to spirit – may benefit the memory and lives of those who have suffered at the hands of my ancestors while simultaneously holding space for those who have not personally caused direct harm.
I am descended from the peoples of Sweden, Ireland, Poland, England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. At this time, I feel most connected to my matrilineal Irish line and my patrilineal Swedish line through my study of ancient runes, folklore, songs and researching the lands as they are now.
My values:
I value intention – the power of our consciousness to affect our physical reality is profound.
I value curiosity. I value intuition. I value silliness and play. I value radical honesty. I value the desire to do better. I value listening. I value patience. I value self care. I value love. All of these values are things that I am constantly striving to bring more closely into every moment of every day. This is part of the work we all must do all of the time. It is never finished.
The universe will always bring us larger versions of the lessons we have already learned and it will only ever bring us what we are able to handle.
My recent past:
For seven years, I was an active musician in the local music and festival scene here in Upstate New York. The knowledge gained and relationships formed through that community had a direct impact on the path I have followed since. Often when playing music on stage, I would experience altered states and frequently see waves of energy pulsing between the crowd and the band and reverberating among the trees. After deciding to leave the band in 2018, I was unsure what other experiences might be able to compare to that of playing on stage until I found Reiki.
I had always believed that supernatural experiences like astral travel, energetic healing, and channeling were possible, but my personal first hand experiences had not yet been enough to make me a full blown believer. Upon receiving my first Reiki attunement, I experienced profound shifts and changes in my physical body as well as my mental and emotional self. My second Reiki attunement brought more of my gifts to the surface and deepened my resolve to find a way to be of service. In two years of practicing Reiki, I have seen and felt things that I had only dreamed of experiencing before. Now, as a Reiki Master, I am excited to continue to facilitate healing as a practitioner as well as a teacher.
My Human Design:
Human Design was brought to me by my friend and teacher Therese in the summer of 2019 and I have been passionate about sharing this amazing information with as many people as I can. I am what is known as a 5/1 Emotional Manifesting Generator. The “emotional” part of my design is where I learned the source of my lifelong distrust in the “go with your gut” decision making process that my family had always pressed upon me. In my experience, “going with my gut” only worked some of the time. Discovering that my “emotional authority” meant that i cannot always trust my gut in the moment and need to ask for more time before making any big life decisions gave me so much relief, understanding and validation. Finally i felt like my true nature was seen and that i now had the tools to move through life with more confidence. There are many more facets to my Design that have shifted the way I move through the world and I hope to share this incredible modality with you as well.
My Soul Tarot Practice:
My tarot story begins when I was a little girl of about six or seven years old. Every Sunday after attending church, my family would go to my grandmother’s house for lunch. Quite often, she would be sitting at her dining room table with my grandfather playing cards. They would play every card game that could be played and they would teach me. I quickly learned to play games like rummie, sevens and double solitaire. But what i remember most is being able to shuffle and deal the cards with as much precision and speed as any of the adults. I have this very distinct memory of someone calling me a “card shark”.
Fast forward to when I was about 19 years old. I don’t even remember how the deck of crystal tarot cards came into my possession, but I had them. I often looked at them, shuffled them and laid them out before me but I admittedly had no clue what to do with them. My studies in college took up all the brain power I had in me at the time and I had little energy left to try to study the meanings of these cards. I kept them tucked away for a few years and in one of my house cleaning purges I found them and decided to give them to a friend who might put them to better use.
Fast forward again to 2019 when I received a brand new tarot deck as a birthday present from my partner. I was delighted with this gift and immediately set myself to learning the history and meanings of the cards and ways to read using spreads. I had already been following the work of my teacher Lindsay for several months so it was an easy and smooth transition to begin applying the concepts of self awareness, psychology and sociology that she teaches to my readings.
I read for myself every day and am constantly adding to and evolving with the meanings in the cards. Every reading I do for someone else is also a reading for me. The themes, archetypes and medicine the tarot offers can be found in every moment of life.
My awakening:
If I try to trace back as far as I can remember to the one event or thing that triggered my awakening, I find that I can’t pinpoint any one thing. It has been this unfolding throughout my entire life.
I remember always being skeptical of the teachings in church as a small girl. I remember my first bout of activism protesting against the evils of eating veal when I was fourteen and then later becoming an ill-informed vegetarian at sixteen. I have been to many protests both large and small. I went to college and studied international politics because I was passionate and wanted to make a difference in the world. But after studying politics for four years, I went running to the woods.
For another three years I traveled, worked and lived all over the western US working in environmental conservation and education with various organizations.
Everywhere I went, everything I saw, everything I experienced… it was all leading me to the next moment of discovery and deepening.
In 2014, after a lengthy conversation about life, the universe and everything, a friend gave me a book called “Conversations With God” by Neale Donald Walsch. After many years of rejecting my Christian upbringing, I was a bit skeptical of this book that had the word “God” on the cover but I decided to give it a chance at the behest of my friend. The wisdom and life changing perspective I found in its pages was like a long drink of water after a hot day in the sun. It was this book that sparked my interest in intention and its influence. I began thinking and speaking differently, now aware of the power of every thought and word. Reading that book awoke in me a deeper understanding of my own personal power in the world that I experience and I recommend it to anyone wanting to get started on their spiritual journey.
I began seeking others in my musical community who would engage in conversation with me around things like intention, plant medicine, crystals, energy healing and the vibrational nature of the universe. Again, everything building upon the moment before and leading me to the next. Eventually, I had my first experience receiving Reiki and two years later I became a practitioner myself.
My childhood:
I wish to name and offer immense gratitude to the fact that I never had to withstand any severe physical or emotional abuse or trauma as a small child. I am so eternally grateful to have been brought up in the loving home that I was.
In recent years however, I often found myself really searching for the “horrible thing” from my past that could help me piece together why I always felt out of place and alone. We all have been through trauma in our lives… some are big and tragic events and others seem like insignificant occurrences.
I realized recently that the trauma of my family moving from my childhood home on Long Island, to a small town in Upstate New York when I was eleven years old had a much bigger impact on me than I had ever thought. For most of my 20’s and early 30’s I had a difficult time rooting down and staying in one place for any significant amount of time. I was always moving apartments, moving across the country, living out of a van, and serially dating but rarely committing. I felt like I was always searching for my true home, a place where I really belonged.
When I started playing music was the first time I had ever been welcomed into a community with such open arms regardless of where I came from, what I looked like, or how much money I had. Playing in that band was the longest I had ever committed myself to any one thing. Now I find myself living in a small house in the city of Syracuse surrounded by music, plants, spirit, my dogs and my loving partner as we build our life together.
My struggles:
Content warning…if you are sensitive to topics focused around female reproduction and pregnancy release, you may wish to skip this section.
When I was 16 my mother brought me to an endocrinologist due to my menstrual cycles being somewhat “irregular”, I had cystic acne all over my back and I was beginning to lose the hair on my head. I was quickly diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). I was told that I would not be able to conceive, that there was no cure for PCOS and that I would have to be on birth control if I wanted to have “normal” periods. Of course, I believed the doctor for many years. But as I have discovered through my adulthood, most of what I was told about my diagnosis was a big old lie.
I was in college finishing up my junior year when I discovered that I was pregnant despite being on the pill. My boyfriend and I had just broken up, classes were over for the semester and I still had another year of schooling left so the choice I had to make was quite clear albeit painful and difficult. For years I had been living under the pretense that I would never conceive yet here I was having to decide to terminate so that I could continue with life as planned for an average, middle class, white female in America. Making that choice was by far one of the most painful events of my life and I did so alone and in secret without the support of my friends or family.
I am now beginning to discover the beauty and strength in that experience.
It is my desire to be a space holder for any woman who finds themselves faced with a similar circumstance. If you are in the process of choosing whether or not to release a pregnancy, no matter which way you think you may go, I want you to know that I am here to listen and lift you up no matter what, without judgement. Any of the modalities I practice and offer can help you find clarity as you navigate this path. I see you and I love you.
When you are ready, please send me a message so we can find a way that I can be of service.
Now at age 37, I have begun to tear down the long held beliefs around my reproductive cycle being unmanageable and hopeless. I am practicing cyclical eating to support my hormonal waves, tracking my temperature so that I know precisely when I am ovulating, and engaging in more loving body-centered practices in order to regain my own power and knowledge of my physical self so that I can be in closer alignment with my soul.
I still have not given birth to any children and I leave that path up to spirit but I know that my path in this life has so much more that has not yet been revealed and I am here for it.
Another facet of my life-long struggle with hormonal imbalance has been the steady loss of my hair. In a world where a woman’s worth and beauty is often measured by the health and length of her hair, I have found myself at the proverbial short-end-of-the-stick.
By the time I graduated college, my hair had thinned so much that it was a constant source of low self-esteem and self-confidence. In 2006 when I decided to travel West and work in environmental conservation, I started wearing hats purely for sun protection but soon discovered how much I loved wearing them! I wore cowboy hats, fedoras, crocheted beanies and everything in between. The renewed sense of empowerment and confidence that wearing a hat gave me was unsurpassed. Upon reflection, it is clear that my thin hair and reliance on wearing hats has played an enormous role in the relationship and career choices I have made since. If I couldn’t wear a hat at a job then it wasn’t for me. My career path has taken many turns and evolutions over the years until I came to understand that the best route to take was self-employment.
These are just two examples of the ways that you too can transform your life challenges and struggles into your mission and ways you can be of service to the world. Nothing is too small. Nothing is too great. We just have to learn how to lean into our struggles so they can be transformed into our greatest gifts.