I work with voice, sound, ceremony, and nature, and with individuals, couples, families, and groups.
My work comes from deep study and practice with earth-based ancestral traditions. I am someone who loves science, art, and who has found great healing in Western, Eastern, and Indigenous modalities. This is the practice where I bring it all together— to offer what I do in an intuitive way, for you.
My artistic work, my professional work, and my research is shared through a relational lens, often associated with the feminine.
My journey began with a desire to understand interpersonal relationships— especially romantic ones. I didn't have a framework of what a healthy relationship was, so I set out to go figure it out.
As a young person, my path led me first to activism, combatting teenage dating violence, and relating to what was happening culturally up-stream. From activism, my path led to marketing and operations management— the nuts and bolts of business and the dominant machine of global society. I wanted to understand how behavior change happened at scale. From there, I turned to research, where I pursued an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies from the University of Cambridge— I wanted to understand the deeper science of how we relate from an ancient and biological perspective. In the journey, I also began an art practice as a way to understand truthfully and be in better relationship with myself.
But somewhere along the way I began to notice something else. It was not just interpersonal relationships that seemed unhealthy, but how dominant culture relates to many things— to ourselves, to each other, to nature, our work, our environment, differences in culture, our ancestry. The more I tuned towards a relational lens, the more I began to see connections between nodes.
As I widened my perspective, one particular relationship stood out as in need of critical attention— and that is our relationship with nature.
Around that time, I was introduced to the word "curandera." I loved it first for the beauty of how the word sounds— cour-an-der-a. A curandera is a traditional healer— often blending Indigenous modalities with European traditions. They bridge levels of healing work— spiritual, environmental, interpersonal. Curious, I attended some workshops.
"I help heal people's relationship with nature. I help to awaken parts of our consciousness that have lain dormant."
Those are the words I remember hearing when I had to sit upright. There is a linage that stands in this tradition? I remember thinking.
"Girl, you have no idea," were words I heard later from a friend, further along on this path.
And it was true.
There are ways to come into right relationship again with nature, and the process of coming into right relationship with Her, is coming into right relationship with ourselves, with each other. It is a relational intelligence, and it can be developed. We are nature. We are inseparable from Her.
I wouldn't call myself a curandera as it is not in my lineage to claim. I suppose I am still looking for the right word from my ancestral traditions— Celtic, Norse, Armenian, that encapsulates what I do. In the meantime, I'd rather leave it to do the doing than the telling. What I know is that the more I walk down this path— coming into right relationship with nature, growing the capacity of my heart, sharing my voice, deepening my artistic practice, somatic awareness, spirituality, and connection to ancestors, the more in love I feel with my life— and the greater joy, peace, freedom, and comfort I seem to bring others.
My art and practice is based in this perspective. Traditionally, across many cultures, the artist was inseparable from their community. They might have been healers, spiritual guides, ceremony holders. My work places itself firmly in these ancestral traditions that we all share, to which I am an apprentice.
I give thanks to the Indigenous wisdom keepers who have, against great adversity, kept their traditions alive so we all may benefit. I give thanks to the wisdom keepers who share their knowledge so that we all may remember, so that we all may learn.
