I am a naturalist for the inner landscapes of the body.

I am also a death doula and psychopomp.

Eight years into a successful software career, I started to wonder what was next. I loved the intellectual challenges and stability, but I felt under-nourished and stagnant.

When I began receiving massages from the right person, something clicked into place. I was suffering from unrelenting back pain at the time, which I attributed to desk work and long drives. But the massages opened me up in an unexpected way — the right combination of skill, presence, and loving touch created the conditions for my emotional and energetic floodgates to burst open.

I got curious about how physical symptoms can point to something entirely different — mysterious, emotional, and spiritual — in the body. And a whole world of what’s possible with bodywork and somatics opened up to me.

My full-time job for the next couple years, 2021 and 2022, was navigating these new waters — exploring my internal world, developing emotional and relational skills, seeking out resonant teachers and mentors, relentlessly processing emotion, and constantly re-orienting around the question of what I deeply care about in life. It was also in this time that I left my software job and went to massage school.

Every direction I explored led me back to “energy” and subtle realms. My bodywork eventually morphed into energy work… though I think I was actually doing energy work the whole time. Energy work is my most natural way of relating with others.

And while in massage school I heard about death doulas for the first time, and knew instinctively that I was one. I have a natural affinity for supporting people through intense grief, and for being a reservoir of calm in the potentially chaotic moments surrounding death.

Over time, my seemingly disparate paths of healing work and death care began to converge… because healing work is death care and death care is healing work.

My training is a mix of formal education and hard-won life experience. While I think there’s value in formal lineage and credentialing, I also want to emphasize that the majority of my wisdom comes from the experience life serves me, and learning how to honestly integrate it. Truthfully, I can’t not do this work, and every day of my life is the training ground.

With that said, here are some of my formal credentials:

Body / energy work:

• I am a licensed massage therapist (North Carolina LMBT #20587)

• I have about 30 hours of training in Craniosacral Therapy through the Upledger Institute. Craniosacral can bring about profound realignment and healing, through the power of subtle sensitivity and slight manipulation.

• I also have some training in Reflexology from Keith Bouchard in Raleigh, NC. Reflexology is an ancient modality that aims to heal the whole body by treating only the hands and/or feet. I love it as a way of getting energy moving, in combination with other modalities.

• I am currently training in Reiki, with Tricia Pickren. When I started receiving Reiki sessions from Tricia, I found there was a potent momentum to the Reiki that Tricia offered, combined with an extremely subtle precision — and I knew it was an important piece for my offering.

Death Care:

• I’m trained as an end-of-life doula through the International End-of-Life Doula Association

• I regularly supported folks in hospice, including their caregivers, while living in coastal North Carolina

• I have professional experience as in-home caregiver for elders with dementia. (I wrote this piece to describe the artform of dementia conversation that I honed in that work.)