Vision Quest has been a part of my life since 2003, when I first quested during a time of profound personal crisis, spiritual emergence, and unquenchable deep longing to merge with the sacred. I was growing more and more disoriented within the new inner landscape of grief and contrasts I found myself in, and Quest provided a kind of guiding conversation with my heart’s compass and life’s higher order.
Around this time I was given the humble honour to assist others through their quests, though back then they were the sunrise to sunset version, then the 24-hour. Seeing how powerful a mere day-long ceremony in Nature can be, I continued to strengthen my commitment to serve in this way. A long time coming, in 2013 I finally was able to train with Malcolm Ringwalt in America at Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School Primitive Camp.
In the years since then, a primary path and calling has been to bring others through their 4-day/night quests. Personally, I have continued to return to this profound ceremony at key junctures in my own life over the years. Each time, there is a feeling of needing to heed the calling, to discover what awaits me in the belly of nature, and of my own ‘underworld’ of hidden knowing. I discovered a raw, formidable presence in Quest. No where to hide and free from all that I’ve been defined by in life at each stage, the Vision Quest has showed itself to me as a sacred portal to the heart of Creation and into myself.
Each time I’ve quested, I’ve found myself surrendering into the cycle of death and rebirth for the next chapter of my life, calibrating once again to my own potential for sanctuary and ‘sanity,’ and readiness to house the power to make manifest my heart’s dreaming. Along this deeply personal path of inner transformation, I have had the joy of guiding over 30 groups. I owe much to the vision quest, am grateful to receive these wisdom teaching from our ancients, and to be of service in this way.
A bit more about me on a professional level, if that helps you to know me as your guide:
Outside of the Vision Quest space, I’ve worn a few hats over the last 25 years, hats of counselling, coaching, adult education/training, retreat facilitation, and psychology. The thread that runs though all of it is that I am, where possible and relevant, tracking and “mid-wiving” the underworld journey of the soul. I see our raw life experience as a gateway into the mythic, or underlying soul journey in its evolution, in its truth, it’s longing, and it’s contribution.
“Who is this soul before me, at their core?,” I muse, and work in such a way that the remembrance of whom one truly in origin, as a unique, free and whole being, may be felt. That hidden truths, qualities, visionary experiences, purpose & life callings of the deeper Self may be illuminated…that an intimate clarity and understanding of what is most important can be shaken free from the shafts of a smaller assumption.
All of this is not for the personal development nor navel-gazing side of spiritual seeking, but for giving our planet and future generations a chance, through being in love with the natural world and bringing the best of our gifts to the whole living web.
When in private practice, my focus is to bring articulate awareness and re-enchantment to the archetypal story you are living, and to midwife the quest towards visionary, purposeful, authentic, soul-based, nature-based living. I understand the challenge that navigating this in our culture can pose. With this in mind, I bring sincere compassion and confidential deep listening sanctuary towards your tender inner work, including what is timely to change, let heal, explore, develop, move beyond, or perhaps take action with.
My approach in session offers people a fine-tuned, sensitive, therapeutic alliance that aims to offer a high relational safety and understanding. It is a depth-work approach that invites exploration and integration inner shadow, potential, gifts, personal narrative and transformational journey.
I share a sense of resonance with the work of Animus Valley Institute founded by Bill Plotkin. I was briefly on staff for Ikon Institute’s Bachelor in Integrative Psychotherapy before another round of motherhood claimed much of my time. Previous engagements have included lecturing for nine years Nature Care College’s Diploma in Transpersonal Coaching (Sydney, NSW), and holding Professional Certification (PCC status) with the International Coach Federation (ICF), and guiding nature based, soul based retreats and workshops over the years. Still mothering a little one, my focus is currently on an annual (or so) in-person lineage quest, year-round mentorships & groupwork, and training mentors in this artform.