Meditation & Mindfulness
I have been meditating formally for almost a decade and Mindfulness has been a slow and tenderly growing presence in my life for almost ten years now. It started with an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course in Boulder, Colorado in 2016. At the time I was drowning, and it was a Hail Mary attempt to find some way out of the depths of disconnection and loneliness that I found myself in. An unbearable ache in my soul brought me to my knees and I knew there was something more, I just didn’t know what or how to get there.
In tandem with my evolving path into Mindfulness, Meditation, Yoga, and Buddhism, I threw myself into intensive trauma recovery therapy rooted in somatic and attachment-based modalities: Emotionally focused, compassion-centered, embodied healing.
The same unbearable ache in my soul that brought me to my knees in 2016 brought me to each of these practices and they started to blend beautifully together — like a symphony growing into a cohesive sound.
After a few years of continued study, practice, and therapy, my life started to change shape and my understanding of reality shifted. Something was happening to me as I woke up again and again, tiny glimmers of the next step and lights being shone in dark corners lit the way.
Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful, but it was also grueling and arduous. A life of trauma set me up for an early failure at the healing I was trying so desperately to force into myself and my body. Before anything could happen I had to learn to soothe my nervous system and untangle the mess of my life. My mind and body had been caught in a loop for twenty years and it was almost impossible to make sense of it all.
Complex PTSD left me in a space where I had no control, space, or understanding. No compassion, no kindness, and nothing but shame and hatred toward myself. It was this darkness that I needed to navigate through, and I thought I had to do it alone for it to be real. I was caught in the trap of capitalism — alone and afraid.
Mindfulness invited me back to myself and the embodied knowing that I was always enough.
It took time for the repetitive small practices to sink into my daily life and even longer for them to sink into my bones. Moments of Mindfulness here and there, Yoga classes, and short Meditations gradually turned into Yoga teacher trainings, silent meditation retreats, and a regular practice in Zen Buddhism. Connection with community transformed into the visceral knowing of my entire being that healing happens in community and relationship with others. I didn’t have to do it alone. No one does.
In my many years of therapy and learning how to intentionally return to myself, I have come to understand Mindfulness as an act of remembering. Remembering that every moment has the potential to show me that I am always linked to connection, intention, and belonging no matter how separate I might feel. Remembering that I am enough all the time, we all are.
Part of Mindfulness is seeing things exactly as they are, not how we wish they were. We so often turn away from the hard and painful moments of this life and we ignore the parts and pieces that don’t align with how we want life to be. When we do that, we are left in a position of willful ignorance with no space or awareness to make choices that tend not only to ourselves but to others with care and compassion.
Silent Retreats & Trainings
2016: 8 weeks - Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
2018: 6 days - Insight with Heather Martin
2020: 10 days - Vipassana S.N. Goenka
2023: 8 weeks - Mindful Self-Compassion
2024: 7 days - Bramaviharas with Tina Rasmussen