My Philosophy

This page is a reflection of how I see the world and how I think it works. My philosophy informs the materials I create and the relationships that I tend. If this resonates with you, then you might like to follow me on social media (IG, Substack, or YouTube) and/or we might be a good fit for working together.

People devoted to a "better world"

I work with people who are trying to hold their own in an increasingly fragmented and polarized world.

They are folks who value care, connection, and community, but find it difficult to find where they belong.
They are heartbroken at the pain in the world that is callous and lacks empathy.
And most of all they want a world that feels healthier and gentler for all living beings, like a Mr. Rogers world.
The only problem is, how to build toward that world when there is so much chaos.

My core beliefs about these devoted folks

I fundamentally believe that:

We can create a gentle Inner Mother who can care for the Inner Child
When we can find compassion and empathy for the exiled parts of our Inner Child, we can become more fully ourselves.
Our inner work can ripple out into our families and communities (and even back into our ancestral lineage)
We don't have to be perfect, but we do have to show up
There are many ways to grow ourselves, heal ourselves and our lineages, and show up to community. There is not one right way.

The core foundations of my programs are:

Tending to Stress and Capacity

The basis for everything about how our lives feel is our nervous system. Being able to recenter to find our good ground and our capacity is crucial, but we're often taught to just try harder and do more, which just overwhelms the system further.

Unhooking from Old Cultural and Familial Patterns

Sometimes we have to let go to create the room to create. This is easiest to do when we have a clear sense of what we want. For most of our lives others tell us what we should want and what we are allowed to have. In order to grow our Inner Mother we replace the old patterns with new ones that are more in alignment with what we want.

Forming Healthy Boundaries

The word "boundaries" often invokes the idea of learning to say no, but a more inclusive way to think about boundaries might be as expectation management. We gain skills to communicate more clearly about our wants and needs.

Tuning in to Inner Guidance

Getting in touch with what we want is often just the beginning. The drive within to create a different kind of world; for your children, friends, family, community... it's already there. Being able to hear the guidance of your Inner Mother as you move through the unknown is a beacon when you need one.

Cultivating Presence

Presence is how we convey safety, security, and attachment to our family and community. The ability to listen, go after understanding, and be with what is, allows others to co-regulate with us. Ultimately, this is what we are after.

Organization and Purpose

Orienting toward a clear vision of the way you want to move in the world, with the help of our inner guidance system (the Inner Mother), keeps us moving through life with a sense of purpose and clarity.

Belonging, Relationships, and Repair

Many of our wounds have come from poor experiences in relationship, regulation, and communication. We often need to add to our toolbox in order to minimize painful interactions. We did not get this training in our family of origin, so it's often missing in our relationships as adults. This is a fundamental reason that we haven't been able to get the results we really want.

Spirituality and Context

We need a sense of something bigger to help us through the difficult times. It can be a sense of spirituality, belonging to nature, a cosmology about life, or a religious practice. This "something bigger" can be self-determined, but holds both what we do and don't know about ourselves, about ways of being, and an orientation toward a big picture of "what's important".

Here's what I believe about being a human in difficult times

We can tend to our Inner Child through Growing our Inner Mother any time in our lives
Perfection is the enemy of good enough
The job of the Inner Mother is to gather and tend to the child parts that felt unlovable and rejected
The natural world is an ally in both releasing old patterns and getting clarity on what we really want
Small steps, done over and over, is the most powerful and transformative strategy we can employ for our own healing
Putting our energy on determining our next step is infinitely more powerful (and honoring of ourselves and others) than trying to get others to do what we want. That is the hard, if not impossible, way and tends to bring out relationship power dynamics that ultimately undermine the relationship.

My call to you:

Taking good care of yourself in these chaotic times is a crucial part of resistance.
When we grow our Inner Mother we are more than taking care of the Inner Child, we are growing an inner companion that has the skills to help us show up in the world in the way that we want to.
Your ancestors and your descendants are rooting for you (and so am I!)
You can feel the future inside of you, the one where people take good care of themselves and each other, where all of us rise together, even if you don't know yet how it will come to be.
Reimagining your relationships with family and community is easier to do together than it is to do it alone. Devoted humans unite!