MY STORY

I grew up isolated in the suburbs.

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My white, well-educated, middle-class family lived in an isolated suburb of Los Angeles. My brother is eight years older than me, my two half-sisters are 20 years old than me, and all my cousins live across the country. I was lonely at home, wasn't popular or athletic at school, and learned to mostly keep to myself. I rarely spoke up and internalized a "nice" personality.

 

In high school, I started questioning the norms of my family and peers, also mostly By the time I was a teenager, I recognized that my pain was not just my own. Why was feeling a secure sense of belonging to a community where we could truly be ourselves so rare?

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So in college I pursued a self-designed Bachelor's Degree in Cooperative Economics, blending psychology, sociology, and economics. My dream was to help develop life-sustaining, relationship-building economic systems for people to exchange within that rewarded activity that enhanced, rather than exploited, people and planet. On the ground I joined consumer co-ops, co-directed a sustainable living demonstration home, helped start a co-operatively owned food truck, and lived in co-operative housing. If it had "co-" in the name, I was in!

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My heart was broken open with radical empathy.

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My trajectory changed course after my heart was broken open during a Theatre of the Oppressed class, a form of community-based education that uses theater as a tool for social change.

 

We were doing an exercise called "Victory and Defeat." Arranged in two concentric circles facing each other, the inner circle held poses that embodied the experience of defeat and the outer circle, which I was a part of, held poses of victory. For a whole minute we looked into each other's eyes, holding our poses, before moving to the next person. It. felt. like. e. tern. i. ty.

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My whole body was flooded with emotion. Sorrow, compassion, anger, fear, guilt, regret. I connected with the suffering of the being kneeling before me so whole-heartedly, and emotionally connected with my ability to do harm like never before. 

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I committed to uprooting violence within so to stop violence without.

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I suddenly understood, with my whole being, that systems of domination and violence aren't just out there — they are also within. Well-intentioned people recreate oppressive systems of power, privilege, and oppression, starting with ourselves and our closest relationships. I realized that lasting social change wasn't possible without radical personal change. 

 

So instead of helping develop life-sustaining economic systems for people to exchange within, I was called to help people develop life-affirming internal systems to operate from.

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I dove heart-first into experiential practices for self and community healing and development. I fell in love with modalities like Mindfulness Meditation, Non-Violent Communication, the Work that Reconnects, Psychodrama, Playback Theater, and Dances of Universal Peace.

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Now my home and work is in the heartland. 

 

In the midst of my graduate training in Drama Therapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies, I withdrew to move to Kansas to pursue a love. The plan was to move back to California after a major transition was over for my then-partner, but after we broke up and I finished my Master's Degree in Drama Therapy at Kansas State University, I realized that I had found beloved community in Lawrence, Kansas. 

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I also found the love of my life in a small-town Kansas man and birthed a baby with him. We live with our dog and cat in a co-housing community of 20-ish units in East Lawrence. Our family loves singing, dancing, and snuggling with our Universal Sufi friends; taking walks, riding bikes, and chatting with our neighbors; and joining potlucks, playing outside, and getting into shenanigans with our community of young families. We'll see what more fun our child brings as she grows (born February, 2018!)