The Longer Story 

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How did my work come to be? 

 

I come from a Northwestern European forest-dwelling heritage in pre-colonial Ireland and England. My matrilineal freedom-seeking and colonizing ancestors arrived on the Mayflower and my patrilineal line were metallurgists who partook in the earth-stripping copper mines of Chile. I grew up around poverty and was not poor. I grew up in five countries surrounded by cultures different than my own. That made me a curious, connecting, and question-asking girl. I wanted to learn about other people and also sat in existential confusion about my privilege and the world from a very early age. I creative journaled my way through elementary school to college into young adulthood in many geographies. After moving to New York City in my mid-20s, I began to take myself seriously as a writer for the first time. A very focused writer's group scooped me up and that was that. Soon after I stood at a professional cross-roads, deciding whether to make a go as a writer/teacher (which felt impossible, unsustainable and unlikely), become a Naturopathic Doctor or attend conflict resolution school. Years later, they braided anyway. ​

 

I started hosting craft-based storytelling workshops. It became immediately clear that people felt transformed by sharing and being heard. Of course. A few years into it, I started to incorporate body-based exercises because that’s how I write: out loud riffing in the car, dances in the kitchen, walks in the woods, never staring at a blank screen or page for longer than 5 minutes. I was a child who lived for climbing trees or running up the stairs while my family took the escalator at the airport. Movement was my balm. However, motherhood initiated a series of challenging healing crises/awakenings in me and in my body. Some slow. Some fast and furious. It humbled me, and at times, almost broke me. I knew from my own experience, and from witnessing people in my workshops, that transforming our cognitive and mythic story can take us very far, but only so far. I wanted more body in story and more story in body. They need each other. I sought more training and completed three years of trauma resolution (resilience building) through Somatic Experiencing International. Nervous system work became an equal partner in my workshops. My own embodiment deepened. *It's important to note here that "Somatics"isn't a new field. It has been practiced by indigenous people everywhere since the dawn of time. The Western world has researched and packaged somatics as a teaching and living tool, but it was not discovered by anyone.   

 

Meanwhile, the world somersaulted into the pace of a runaway train. As a Gen-Xer (1979), I had grown up with fold-out driving maps, shared computer labs, and hours spent day-dreaming or doing literally nothing. I side-eyed smart phones the second they landed on the scene. I pre-anticipated what would happen and told everyone. Many people rolled their eyes. It would be fine, they said, You are being too sensitive. Well, my body is a very good canary in the coal mine and I can now say, without apprehension or shame, that I've always pre-seen events. Despite my low-tech life and many attempts to slow the information onslaught or the speed of doing, my life-stage (as entrepreneur and mother of young children) plus the collective shift towards 'more' and faster became a turbulent river. Like me, others were speaking to overwhelm. What was happening to all of us? Was anyone else concerned? It seemed there was no way out—until my body hit a tipping point and refused to over-ride or follow along. It said "No" to the pace, volume, saturation, brain take-over, faces down and constant pinging. I ended up in the emergency room for a blood transfusion and everything unfolded from there.

 

My embodiment has not been a glossy ad of yoga poses on a beach. It is stretchy and earned and not purist: triathlons, disordered eating, fruit-picking as seasonal labor, bleeding rituals onto the grass under a new moon, solo 24-mile day hikes through rugged mountain terrain, two epic births, trance states, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, dance classes, sea kayaking, severe sleep deprivation, cyclical living, working on vegetable and seaweed farms, choosing a major surgery I avoided for years, and yes, lots of yoga too. After years of going on and off Instagram, I left for good good in 2023. Ahead of the wave. My colleagues were surprised and curious; not everyone was ready to leave yet. Were there consequences for my work? Absolutely. I was willing to bear them instead of consenting to the way modernity was harming me and, it seemed, everyone else. I had long been initiated into a profound renegotiation with my own attention. I couldn't unsee or un-feel it. At that point, though the conversation about attention wasn't alive in the zeitgeist yet, I was on fire about it.  

 

The Modern Mammal framework is born of all the above—I have lived it and continue to live it from the inside out. 

 

That young woman in New York City thought she had to choose between story, body, and community as her job. Now I live my dream of working at the intersection of all three with the added spice of what I call The Attention Opportunity. No, I'm not anti-technology (I know you were wondering). I'm here for device discernment and mammal-forward living. I am here to support others in finding their truest them. Teaching is where I flow and shine and sometimes swear. I never tire of group-work because the only way through is "alongside."

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