All my loved ones are the ones who have brought me into this work. I’ve learned so much from those who I’ve gotten to organize with and create life alongside, about dreaming, creating, loving, failing, grieving, and dreaming and loving again. I’m indebted in the best way to the communities and ecosystems I have been lucky enough to find myself in, including the courageous animal and plant companions who have been my first and longest teachers of being with death, grief, joy, and care.

I began my death care studies over 10 years ago with Aleia O’Reilly through volunteering with Further Shore in Flagstaff, AZ, and have since completed my End of Life Doula Training with Alua Arthur of Going with Grace, received my proficiency badge with National End of Life Doula Alliance, and am a Death Companioning Initiate with the American School of Thanatology.

I studied herbal medicine with Mike Masek at the Forager’s Path in Flagstaff, Arizona & apprenticed with Adele Mee at Moonbow Botanicals in Durango, Colorado. I have a trauma-informed herbalism certificate through the American Herbalists Guild. I’ve also studied with Rebecca Beyer of Blood and Spicebush.

I received M.A.s in Sustainable Communities and Political Science from Northern Arizona University, where my research focused on community based education (in particular creative, liberatory, decolonial, and critical pedagogies), as well as practices of prefigurative politics, community care, radical imagination, and joy in social movements. I studies with Dr. Kim Curtis, Dr. Janine Schipper, Dr. Sean Parson, and Dr. Jessi Quizar, who gave me the incredible gift of their mentorship.

I’ve been trained as a creative community facilitator through my Masters in Sustainable Communities. Since then, I have spent over a decade facilitating various groups in visioning, organizing, and creative work. I most recently completed the Jewish Studio Project’s 2 year Creative Facilitator Training.

While I am not a somatic therapist, the practices of somatics, embodiment, recognizing the incredible intelligence of our bodies, and sinking into pleasure inform all of my work. I have learned so much from the work of somatic educators Steve Hoskinson, Marika Heinrichs, Camille Barton, Margeaux Feldman, and my somatic and organic intelligence coaches Robin Craig + Lee Datura.

My study of European and Jewish folklore, myth, and magic is deeply inspired by writers and thinkers like Amanda Yates Garcia, Danica Boyce, Sophie Strand, Rebecca Beyer, and Dori Midnight’s calls to “re-enchant ancestral practices” with the understanding that our disenchantment from the cosmos is a project of colonialism, and all of us at one point had ancestors who were indigenous.

There are many more who, while I may not know them personally, have greatly influenced me and are a constant source of inspiration. Here are a few:

adrienne maree brown, Aurora Levins Morales, Dori midnight, Michelle Tea, Octavia Butler, Jessica Fern, Bayo Akomolafe, Silvia Federici, Donna Haraway, Joan Halifax, Cindy Milstein, Jenny Odell, Robin Kelley, Mary Oliver, Brontë Velez, Trisha Hersey, Ruth Gilmore, Fred Moten, Clyde Woods, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Ruth Ozeki, Aleah Black, Margeaux Feldman, Sophie Strand, David Abram, gabi abrão, Danica Boyce, Amanda Yates Garcia, Josh Shrei, Peia Luzzi, Tom Hirons…

…and all those who have woven, held, and passed the threads of creative + visionary traditions, movements, and stories rooted in dreams for collective care + freedom: story-tellers, artists, tricksters, heretics, poets, meme-makers, tarot readers, keepers of traditional indigenous knowledge, Afrofuturists, blues musicians, abolitionists, surrealists, critical geographers, queer death workers, queer Jewish witches, scholar-organizer-healer-poets of disability studies, queer theory, transformative justice, and reproductive justice.