Inspiration & Teachers

Annie Browning and Ann Marie Early are some of my ongoing teachers. Their book is ​Energetic Awakening: Living a Guided Life, and their practice is Common Awakening.

My indigenous way of knowing has been sparked by an ongoing, mentored training in Druidry. These practices are deepened by scholar and shamanic practitioner, Sharon Paice MacLeod and her book, Celtic Myth and Religion.  

Tom Cowan and his books are a foundation for my Celtic shamanic practice.  

Soul Journeys: Christian Spirituality and Shamanism as Pathways for Wholeness and Understanding 
by Daniel L. Prechtel, John R. Mabry and Katrina Leathers ties my Christian and indigenous practices together. 

Plants That Speak, Souls That Sing: Transform Your Life with the Spirit of Plants by Fay Johnstone. Her work supports many aspects of my path - nature-based, energetic, Celtic, and core shamanic practices. 

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem and his work on Somatic Abolitionism has changed my life. I don't teach it but continue to practice it.  Racism lives in our histories and bodies and can't be deconstructed in our minds or conversations. We have to identify it in our lineage and move it out of our bodies. 

Peter Levine and Staci Haines help me develop somatic awareness, opening and practices in my own life.  

Tema Okun and all with whom she collaborates in the work on White Supremacy Culture push me to dismantle the white supremacy that lives in me. 

How to Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram Kendi is another book I return to again and again as I break down the racism in myself. 

John O'Donohue. All of his work is balm for the soul. Pure and simple.

To Speak for the Trees: My Life's Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroeger. It seems like she speaks to me in a language I'd forgotten I had. 

John Philip Newell is the one who opened my eyes and heart to Celtic Christianity which lives beyond Rome, original sin and a denouncement of nature. I've been in numerous in-person workshops with him and love him to pieces.  

Wounded into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. I've attended Tirzah's ancestral healing workshop in person and am grateful for her healing presence in my life. 

Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing​​ by Daniel Foor. This book was my companion on one ancestral pilgrimage. Since then, my processes have shifted, but I'm grateful for Daniel's good work on this important subject. 

Thoreau and the Language of Trees by Richard Higgins and Robert D. Richardson. The Transcendentalists like Thoreau are my Unitarian Universalist spiritual ancestors.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer was a game changer for me that led me deeper and deeper into the wild.