About

Soulskin Journeys emerged to support us in recognizing, encouraging, and heeding the unique voice that calls us to our wild, True Home. It blossomed as a potent antidote to the toxicity of the overculture that separates, uproots, and prescribes us a life of over-doing and overstaying our existence on the surface of life, which drains us of our vital life force and deprives us of our essential connection to our wild nature. 

The personal birth story of Soulskin Journeys:

One day I woke up as a new mama, in a new town, in a stressed out partnership, and, though the surface of my life was comfortable, I was bone dry, exhausted, lonely, irritable and struck by a chilling amnesia: Who am I? Where did I go? What are my dreams? What is my true purpose here? What brings me a sense of purpose and aliveness?  

This wasn’t a search for remembering who I was before giving so much as a mother, what the dreams of my youth were, or a grasping for an old identity. This was an opportunity to rekindle a new relationship with myself, my family, my community, the land, soul and spirituality. It was an alarm calling me immediately Home. 

Though I had been attempting self care through carving the time for solo hikes, my spiritual practices, dates with friends, catching up on sleep, etc., I realized that I wasn’t fully returning to my soul home. Sometimes I was simply going through the motions, or it was like an escape, and once I returned, there were no gifts to integrate back to my day to day existence. 

I wasn’t deepening my connection with the life force that would nourish my mundane life. I felt lost. All the practices and methods that, historically, brought me into wild aliveness and in touch with something greater than me, I couldn’t grasp. The methodologies didn’t produce the soul medicine I was desperate for. I recognized I needed to go deeper, that it wasn’t about “what” I was doing, it was about accessing an energy below the surface that would immerse my being in the waters that would sustainably fill my well. But where to start?

This was no small task and I did not know what kind of guidance to follow. I did not have the support of mentors or a traditional, cultural, or spiritual framework in my life at the time. What I did know and have connection to was that I trusted the map of nature. Our/Nature’s life cycle, the seasonal year, the lunar cycle, and the diurnal cycle, align with cardinal directions- each containing an archetypal/primordial/elemental nature in its design. With this cyclical map of wholeness, and a trust in following soul’s compass, I crossed the threshold into an initiatory journey…

My journey began as I was desperate to find anyone who might name or shed some wisdom on this call I was heeding, and though this proved to not be a journey of the head, I encountered a couple books that dropped me deeply into the current of soul, and true home: Bill Plotkin beginning with his book “Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche” and Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype”. It was specifically Dr. Estes' story about the Seilke, titled “Sealskin, Soulskin”, that broke me wide open and resonated with my living story down to the core. 

Unlocking my trusted pathway home took a profound turn when I set the intention to find communal support since I intuitively knew that connection would be essential. I took a vulnerable chance and said yes to a women’s circle. When I walked into that sacred space of women sharing their magic, truth telling, and authentic support of one another, I cried in celebration of a homecoming to an ancient belonging in my bones. 

Further unlocking occurred while facilitating one of my family nature club outings. As an advocate for outdoor, unstructured free play, and creating a childhood steeped in curiosity and wonder, I invited parents to follow their children’s lead and to get lost in the same state of awe. On this particular outing, I had the revelation that I too needed to nurture myself back through the wheel of my own life—-to rebirth, to foster a robust childhood and healthy emergence into my adult self.

My rite of rebirth started in the East with sunrise. Over and over, I greeted the dawning day and my life. The babe of me integrated the gifts of receiving, presence, spirit, attentiveness, and quietude. Then, I nurtured that young one of me to follow her curiosities, engage with the world fresh and new, unnamed and undefined, all senses wide open. She began to experience and learn about herself in a new way. She learned to listen to and trust her innate self, and she deepened her inextricable belonging to the wild world. 

Later, I faced South, the ripe fullness of the day and myself. I gave the blossoming one of myself permission to play, unabashed, and unconforming, to let me follow my longings and impulses of the present moment and be guided into wild aliveness. The gifts of passion, risk, arousal, and a recognition of my own uniqueness and the fruits of my being emerged. 

Eventually, I felt called to face the West, the setting sun, and the calling of my true adulthood and purpose. Here, I got curious about what was lying below the surface, in the unseen darkness where the sun disappeared. I enacted little deaths of the ways of being that no longer fit, I gave myself permission to grieve, and I placed my faithful hand into Mystery's, surrendering to a bewildering underworld soul journey that found me enacting self designed ceremonies, vision fasts, vigils, and courting my own medicine. One morning while I was deeply immersed in this journey, I woke up from a disembodied voice dream with instructions to hold a “Soulskin Circle,” like this one I was traveling on. I had no idea what that meant at the time, but everything in me knew there was a truth in this sacred directive. Part of the journey for me was trusting those mysterious orders, and ultimately risking my significance to be in service of this great calling, this givaway- the Soulskin Journeys.

My purpose and service would not be possible without the support of elders, mentors, teachers, and guides, who dwell in the spirit of the North. They directed me to my own North Star- to the knowing, Wise Woman of my own self whose wisdom always navigates my path to True Home. I am forever grateful to these human and more-than-human, seen and unseen ones for their guidance.

The journey is a spiral path, around and around this Wheel I travel, deepenig into the dream of my ancestors, ever becoming the shape of my original design, and listening devotedly to who I am sung here to serve…always devout to living my own Soulskin Journey.