ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Background

I serve my communities as an educator, decolonial facilitator, healing artist, moondancer, song-keeper, and pipe-carrier, transformative justice practitioner, certified trauma-informed yoga and meditation instructor, somatic practitioner, certified life and leadership coach, certified personal trainer, astrology student, and budding herbalist. A thread that weaves its way through the many hats I wear in community is my commitment to movements for liberation in Turtle Island and Abya Yala (so-called US & Central and South America) as well as my commitment to the holistic health and well-being of Indigenous, Black, and people of color AND of our lands.

As someone whose childhood was shaped by political conflict (Colombia, War on Drugs), I have spent nearly two decades now exploring the question: what qualities, ways of being, and systems are needed in order to create worlds that cultivate healing, collaboration, equity, and reciprocity with each other and the land?

These questions have brought me to be a devoted student to two fundamental truths of living: change and relationship. There is profound freedom, intimacy, and depth of feeling that I find coalescing at the intersection of these two truths: that 1) the nature of nature is change (shoutout Octavia Butler and Buddhist teachings on impermanence), and 2) we are always in relationship. They point me towards really honoring what is with me in the here and now with deep presence, deep accountability, and deep gratitude for all that I have the privilege of experiencing.

Honoring that relationships are the very essence of life, and that we are all deserving of relationships that are life-affirming, love-filled, and healing-centered, I am a forever student of what it means to be in right-relationship. Inspired by emergent strategy principles, and the teachings of the land, I look towards the wisdom of the elements, the fin, feathered, and furred, the mycelium, and all of the natural world to learn and explore how we cultivate resilient, adaptable, sustainable, reciprocal ways of relating with each other.

I hold onto the deep belief that our bodies (and lands) are our compasses for alignment with our wiser selves. The more I access practices that support me in developing this sense of intimacy with self, land, and ancestors, the more I know liberation to be possible. And with my whole heart, I know liberation to be possible— I have broken bread with her and sang songs to her around the fire, and it is both my own experience for liberation and deep longing that we all experience the dignity of our belonging to each other and this sweet Earth that roots me with joy, pleasure, and passion in this work.