Personal quest. Belonging. The “work”we do here.
When asked, what are your “credentials” in the “the work” you do? I follow a thread that runs through my sense of belonging.
As a child, I witnessed stories of what home was like “there”. Longings expressed through stories of the fragrance of spices and trees, warmth of family gatherings, connecting through prayer with community, swirling bodies to the sound of string instruments, undulating hips to the beat of drums.
A piece of my quest to “belonging” is one passed down to me through generations of shifts in my ancestry. I remember the silence of my Moroccan grandmother shattered with her shriek of ululation and wide smile as she placed my little cousin on the living room table to practice belly dancing. There was a similar quality to my Hungarian grandmother as she closed her eyes, smiling and lightly biting her upper lip, turning opera music all the way up in the kitchen, infusing food with magic and flooding her home with sounds and scents sacred to her.
For a long time, I was not consciously aware of how these longings and longing from long before them, were seeded within me. An unknown pull, to root into a sense of place, born through generations of forced migration woven into my DNA. Not having a solid sense of physical place, sparked a personal quest of belonging, one that propelled me into the world with a quality of openness. As I traveled and lived with communities and teachings at times wondering, where is home - I landed into a felt sense of home: home within myself. It’s not perfect, it shifts within, and sometimes I still need reminders of where home is, but I seem to find my way back to it again and again.
Within the felt ups and downs of searching, a big gift appeared:
An amplification of reverence for all beings in the world - my personal freedom is interlocked with the freedom of all. Finding my way to be present when systems and humans submit to fear, internally oppressing and oppressing others for power, is one I am deeply devoted to.
In this life, I continually commit to being a forever student. I hold massive gratitude for the simultaneous grounding and expansion found in my deepest deep through teachings, mentors, and guides. They accompany me as I move my physical body from place to place. Through my body, mind, energy, spirit I nourish myself, my lineage, and the collective while receiving transmissions. Practicing a range of somatic embodiment, sacred plant medicine, meditative states, intuitive art making, activating the sacred feminine through dance and ritual, entering first through Vajrayana Tantric Buddhism and Tibetan Bon Dzogchen traditions leading me back into continually reconnecting to my ancestral lineage, practices, and their wisdom.
When I arrived at the offering of private sessions, ritual, and workshops with somatic embodiment and intuitive expression at the core, it was with rich experiences in classrooms, clinics, galleries, and with the creative crews behind movie sets. My varied eclectic “resume” as a working artist, professor, art psychotherapist, and roles in complex structured businesses and institutions in the art, higher education, health care, and the feature film industry surprised some. So for some time, I held these experiences at a distance from the journey that felt like came thereafter. I shared that common feeling we humans tend to encounter when we feel a big shift and get a taste of what seems to be clarity of inner truth - “Ah so this is where it all begins”.
I now honor all that has brought me to each present moment. An integration of all inquiry and studies originating in creation. Our nature as creative beings in mind, energy, eros, spirit, and heart.
The foundations continued…from a BFA in Fine Arts & Developmental Psychology, MA in Art Therapy & Clinical Psychology/Mental Health Counseling, Birth doula, Intimacy educator/practitioner, Reiki practitioner, Theta healing practitioner specifically through vibration of voice, to a facilitator in an intuitive visual arts technique named SoulCollage. And following this list remembering that…
Most importantly: I learned to also forget, all I learned, and to simply just - listen deeper - while holding love and integrity at the core.
Our sense of belonging is one that is multifaceted and shared across humanity. Follow each thread in the weavings, just as I have done here, a reminder of the beauty found in integrating all we meet in this lifetime and beyond.