Together, we witness experiences that make peace feel far away, such as trauma, hurtful self-talk, inequity, and marginalization, all while steering toward a calm and balanced center.
How is this a gift? Can we witness the present moment, the strength we’ve received from our internal responses, and the pain we’ve endured? How can we transmute these into gifts?
Calm, compassionate, deeply present, heart-centered, reflective, gentle, a good listening, kind, honest and insightful.
Naming our emotions gives them space to breathe, all emotions are valid. We don’t need to act on them, we just name them and sit with them. We let all parts of ourselves exist and we respect them. Even anger, even rage. Sometimes we feel anger and rage, sometimes we are absolutely justified in feeling these ways. We give these emotions space to exist. We don’t go and act on our anger and rage, but we might write the anger into a character, we might make a rage painting. We might just listen to the part of us who is angry and see what they need. Perhaps there’s a very sad part of us hiding just behind that deeply justified rage.
Deep listening, precise and specific reflection, validation of emotions, insight into strengths you may not have noticed in yourself, and a client-led philosophy.
Helping them understand their parts. Sometimes we take a parts perspective and we get to know all the different characters at work in their internal family system. We let each of these characters say anything and everything they need to say, we let them know we have heard and we learn how these parts do or do not currently get along with one another. We learn what each of them needs, we dive into their strengths, and how they might learn to work with one another. This creates a feeling of wholeness and true productivity in the client’s internal family system. When all of our parts feel heard and understood, they can work with one another and make real changes.
Finding the peaceful center within in which we are experiencing a warm, felt experience of peace and self-love, and then mapping the terrain so that we can continually return to centered, peaceful, self-love, gratitude and radical acceptance regardless of external experiences.
My first degree is a Master’s in Fine Art. I am a writer, a painter, and a dancer. I believe deeply in the power of art to help us heal.
I am a long-time meditator, and I’ve done extensive spiritual work in the Clairvision school of anthroposophy and the Pranakriya School of Yoga and Healing Arts.
My therapeutic style can be described as finding the peaceful center in which we are experiencing a warm, felt experience of peace and self-love, and then mapping the terrain so that we can continually return to gratitude and radical acceptance regardless of external experiences.
I love to get to know your many inner selves. Sometimes we take a parts perspective and we get to know all the different characters at work in your internal family system. We let each of these characters say anything and everything they need to say, and we let them know we have heard and respect them. Then, we learn how these parts do or do not currently get along with one another. We learn what each of them needs, we dive into their strengths, and how they might learn to work with one another. This creates a feeling of wholeness and true productivity in your internal family system. When all of our parts feel heard and understood, they can work with one another and make powerful and easy changes in our lives.
I particularly love the idea of a spiritual/ tarot group for LGBTQIA2S+ folx and or/folx with trauma and/or folx with SUD.
Have experienced sexual trauma, which might include trafficking, torture, and abduction. Intimate partner abuse, which might consist of heteronormative abuse to those who later came out of the closet.
LGBTQIA2S+. Trauma Survivors. C-PTSD. Folx who came out of the closet later in life. Folx who have struggled with addiction.
Folx who have had a lot of invalidating experiences. Folx who are in grief. Folx who are healing from trauma. Folx who are spiritually inclined. Folx who have struggled with addiction.
“Though there is birth and death in every moment of this life of birth and death, the body after the final body is never known. Even though you do not know it, when you speak the word ‘enlightenment,’ you go forward on the way of enlightenment. The moment is already here. It is this moment, do not doubt it in the least. Even if you should doubt it, this is nothing but everyday mind.” – Zen Master Dogen, Moon in a Dewdrop
“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.” – Mary Oliver (“Evidence,” 2009)
I have a client who was trafficked, tortured, and abused by a satanic cult as a child. We have managed to validate her experiences, help her differentiate between ongoing external abusive relationships and internal-based reliving of trauma. We have managed to find her deep and calm center, and she can now return to that space at will, even when nightmares and visions feel as though they’re attacking her from all sides.
That the client has a well of strength, wisdom, self-knowledge, peace, and power already within the, and my job is to help unveil it.
Have some connection to spirit, or at least a desire to be connected. This can mean a sense of love, and the transcendent power of love. This can also mean a connection with animals, with children, with art making, or writing.
Trauma survivors, LGBTQIA2S+ folx (especially those who came out of the closet later in life), those who struggle with addiction, those who have left or are contemplating abusive relationships, and those who are not sure if they’re being abused or not. Those who have been the victim of psychic attack, brainwashing, and techniques used in religious or sex cults.
Is that of self-discovery, by which I mean, the unveiling of internal strengths, talents, and superpowers. This process leads to a blossoming of the client’s potential in their spiritual lives, their professional lives, their sexual lives, and in their creative endeavors. This process leads clients to feel deeply aligned with their internal source of purpose, passion, self-determination, life-path, self love and the feeling that their lives have meaning. In other words, my clients realize that they incarnated with a purpose, and that they are taking steps daily to fulfill that purpose.
The infusion of mindfulness and spirituality in conjunction with evidence-based practices. This can look like validating your internal experiences, helping you to question cognitive dissonances, and exploring (only if the client is open and willing) past lives, ancestral influences, dream work, magical intention setting, and the unraveling of pain carried over from the space between lives.
My profound connection to the natural world. I was saved when a child by the kindly growl of a mother bear. I was running from a trafficker and hid in her cave. She growled and the trafficker ran from her. I stayed, and as soon as the trafficker was gone, she stopped growling. I say thank you to the mother bear every day in my prayers after meditation.
I host tea ceremony and group tarot readings locally every week. The tarot readings were becoming more and more like a group therapy session and I knew I needed professional training in order to hold the space with integrity and trauma-informed practice.
I am inspired to be part of the wave of contemporary therapists ethically stewarding ancestral practices. I recently created a research design to substantiate Cha Dao (Tea Ceremony) as an evidence-based practice.
It is a combination of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Internal Family System work, and Past Life Regression Internal Sourcing Technique (from the Clairvision School), and the ancestral family system work which comes from Zulu Shamanism (but is more commonly known as Hellinger Constellation work). All of these systems view the body, mind, and spirit as an interwoven entity full of complexity and tangles. I work to help my clients focus on these tangles and gently unknot them. In doing this, we may witness trauma together, we may dialogue with different parts of the self, we may set goals and watch what resistance arises in that process. We walk together through the interwoven systems of the client’s self, and we work towards clarity, peace, balance, passion, confidence, and purpose.
This is such an important question. When performing tea ceremony, I bow to every person as I hadn them their bowl of tea. This isn’t a traditional aspect of the ceremony, however, given my identity as a white woman, I may be bowing to a person of historically marginalized identities and that heart felt bow is important. I hold each of my clients in a space of reverence. I am not “helping” them, I see myself as someone reflecting and revealing their own strengths to them. I see myself as a clarifying mirror for their own wholeness, for their own innate knowing, for their own wisdom.
I’m in an East West Psychology PHD program. I’m also taking Internal Family System courses.
As a social worker, I prioritize cultural humility. I will speak to my privileges as a white woman and my layered margenalized identities as a queer woman with a history of having been trafficked and abused in a heteronormative relationship. I will admit when I am unfamiliar with cultural practices, and I will educate myself. I will ask questions and I will listen. I will do my utmost to see the world through my clients’ intersecting identities.
My profound connection to the natural world. I was saved when a child by the kindly growl of a mother bear. I was running from a trafficker and hid in her cave. She growled and the trafficker ran from her. I stayed, and as soon as the trafficker was gone, she stopped growling. I say thank you to the mother bear every day in my prayers after meditation.
Is that of self-discovery, by which I mean, the unveiling of internal strengths, talents, and superpowers. This process leads to a blossoming of the client’s potential in their spiritual lives, their professional lives, their sexual lives, and in their creative endeavors. This process leads clients to feel deeply aligned with their internal source of purpose, passion, self-determination, life-path, self love and the feeling that their lives have meaning. In other words, my clients realize that they incarnated with a purpose, and that they are taking steps daily to fulfill that purpose.
Queer communities and artist communities as well as recovery communities.
Complex trauma leads to layered triggers and reactions which can include triggers in relationships, triggers in everyday objects, dream reenactments of trauma, memories that intrude on everyday experiences, sexual pain and fear. . . the list goes on and on. I help my clients normalize their experiences my sharing them in a deeply compassionate space of understanding. We work on emotional regulation and crisis intervention. We work on creating safety inside the person and in their interpersonal relationships. We work toward a sense of peace within which feels stronger than what can feel like a barrage of triggering circumstances both within and from outside the client. The path of healing from C-PTSD is a long one. I sometimes think of my own C-PTSD as a chronic illness that sometimes flares and then goes back into remission. The process is one of regulating, normalizing, accepting the reality of the symptoms, and having patience and self-love as we navigate. We also focus on supportive communities, friends and loved ones who understand the complexity of C-PTSD.
I have a lot of experience working with artists, writers, and entrepreneurs.
I host tea and tarot several times a week. Tea Ceremony is a perfect elemental art. Silently, we drink tea from ancient trees grown in reverence. In this special space we give the water, fire and tea leaves a chance to communicate with us in their subtle and silent tongue. Old growth trees have been taking in sunlight, rainwater and starlight for hundreds of years. Drinking tea from their leaves in a ceremonial space allows us access parts of our heart which we usually cannot reach. This practice pairs perfectly with tarot. Tarot card reading is like looking at oneself through the clarifying reflection of an intuitive friend. In this private session, you will participate as Jade interprets the tarot cards you draw from her deck. Tarot is not about reading the future or divining destiny. The cards are a set of elemental archetypes so ancient and true that we find ourselves magnetized to those that speak to our present situation. You will leave this session feeling honored and held in reverence. A practice of tea ceremony and tarot can allow you to feel reconnected to your intuition. The elemental realm is already working on your behalf to create what your higher self desires. When we listen to the heart’s wisdom, we open to following the water course way toward what is in our highest potential. I have been a student of tarot for over twenty years. I’ve written three books on the subject. I have been teaching meditation since I was eighteen and I’ve found tea ceremony to be one of the most profound and yet easy-to-enter methods of meditation. The tea leaves allow us to quickly drop into a deep heart space of openness and radical truth.
I’m a massive Tolkien fan.
I have a four-year-old son, and we love to dance.
I got a Master’s in Social Work through the Denver University program. I have a Masters in Fine Art. I am a PHD candidate for a Doctorate in East-West Psychology. I am trained as a Pranakriya yoga teacher, a meditation teacher, a breathwork teacher and a Constellation Ancestral Family Systems guide.
I earned a Masters of Fine Art in my mid-twenties. After graduation, I found the Clairvision School of Meditation and Regression Therapy. The personal trauma recall work I undertook over the course of several years in this school changed my life dramatically. I left my abusive marriage and moved to a new state. I began to unwind the trauma I’d experienced as a child. I also started to see clients and perform regression therapy with them to great effect. This modality uses mindful body awareness to help the client enter into a state similar to hypnosis. In this state we follow feelings to their source which is usually a traumatic event. We re-experience the trauma in a safe and held space with life-changing results.
In college I volunteered as an equine therapy assistant where I helped autistic and developmentally delayed children to ride horses. I found this enriching and satisfying as it brought so much joy to the children. At age 22 I started leading meditation retreats. I was one of two retreat facilitators which meant that I worked with participants as a trauma, grief and life experience coach, a meditation and yoga teacher and I instructed them in both painting and writing (which we used as a way to further the inner work of healing).
In my late twenties, I taught art in a school for children living in poverty. During that time, I learned to let go of many of the classist biases I was unconsciously carrying. During those years several fires swept through our community. Half of our teachers lost their houses as well as many of our K-8th graders. My role shifted dramatically as we went into crisis-relief mode. The children and I made artwork to process the pain of having lost so many of their personal possessions, their animals and much of the natural beauty around us. I moved into a role of head teacher at a preschool the following year. In this position I found my time primarily taken up with mediating the trauma responses of a few children in the classroom. I found this a deeply moving experience, it lead me to study childhood trauma on my own.
Among other titles, I read the book “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel A. van der Kolk and was profoundly effected by his methods and conclusions.
A few years before getting a Social Work Degree, I worked with clients at a distance through a method of Art Therapy which I developed after earning my MFA. The method consists of painting a portrait of family members or pets who have recently passed away. I assist the relatives to process their grief via phone. The portrait serves as a visual link through which their relatives stay in a heart to heart connection with the deceased. I have worked successfully with over 150 people this way. I volunteer as regression therapy practitioner according to the training I received at the Clairvision School. As described above, the school uses methods similar to hypnotherapy to source trauma through the body’s memory.
Formal Degrees, Licenses, and Credentials
Trainings and Apprenticeships
Finishing a series of creative books intended as initiation experiences and writing a dissertation which dissects the methodologies employed. I plan to conduct a qualitative study after book one to assess its efficacy as an initiatory experience and adjust the novels accordingly. I also wish to study ancestral practices in this program to infuse these creative works with their wisdom
In the books, I intend to enact psychological insights, trauma healing, fundamental world-view changes, and enlightenment experiences in the readers. It has been my observation that artistic works, by virtue of their enjoyable and immersive nature, can gently open our hearts and minds, such that at the end of a good novel, we have changed. My books fall into what Tolkien called, mythopoeic work, indicating a kind of visionary archeology.
I have written about 6000 pages of world-building, along with a solid draft of book one. Our queer heroine is saved from a suicide attempt by a dangerous, philosophical cat, who speaks to her in what the cat calls, silent tongue, enacting animism. The series explores climate change from the point of view of elemental beings, trauma from the lens of an empowered and magical survivor, gender from the point of view of flowers, and death from the point of view of a cat who can remember her past lives. In the current political climate, queer kids need more than ever LGBTQIA2S+ creation myths.
My professional vision includes mapping reality and designing systems to improve the realities I see. I am passionate about listening to my clients, mirroring their strengths, and helping them shine a light on their innate healing abilities. I am a recently Licensed Social Worker and am in the process of starting a non-profit collective with a group of like-minded therapists and healers. I also intend to serve as a systems healer; one whose art stewards spiritual awakening in therapeutic clients and in casual readers
I am currently working on two systems-design projects. The first intends to be a replicable system that provides co-operative housing and a place of work for therapists who serve in both contemporary and ancestral healing modalities. The second is the series of books I plan to finish as the creative part of an arts-based dissertation. I recently created a research design to substantiate Cha Dao (Tea Ceremony) as an evidence-based practice.
I intend to serve not just as a therapist, but as a scholar-healer in the ancient sense: one who stewards spiritual awakening in clients and readers, who supports the spiritual wellbeing of fellow therapists, and who simultaneously improves the health of the land upon which we all live. I wish to live as a drop of radical love in the great pool of humanity
The 501c3 I started (the Sanctuary Collective) intends provide funding for land, for cooperative housing, and for places of for stewards of the total health of the ecosystem (mind, body, spirit and land). Humans and the earth need visionaries who want to dedicate their lives to be of service. We want to empower people who are called to be of service. We wish to support in their healing and health, enable their teaching and learning, and sustainably house them. The human body needs a sacred community and safe housing in order to feel calm and secure enough to tend to the needs of the ecological community. Housed stewards can act as true stewards of the overall health of the ecological community.
Listen to your story as you want to tell it. You will share as much or as little as you want to. We will not being diving into all your trauma in the first session. I believe that a strong therapeutic alliance takes time, and you get to move at your pace. You get to decide when you are ready to share whatever you want to share. And you get to decide that you don’t want to share things.
I am client-led, so, I will listen to what you want and need. Most of my clients prefer to meet every week until we both feel they’ve met their therepuetic goals. It’s incredibly individual.
Every session is trauma-informed. I do not go through lists of triggering questions and insist you answer them. I sometimes ask questions which bring us back to the focus of the session. But, I will do so with gentle care. Your story is your own, and you get to choose the pace at which it becomes available to others. I will help you see your strengths, your resilience and your super powers. I will help you figure out your boundaries, your needs and your life’s mission, if that is what you want help with. The way I will do that is by listening to you and reflecting back what I’ve heard. I will help you to figure out what ‘interjects’ (ideas that others planted in your head) are secretly running the show. For example, “I’m the problem,” “Something is wrong with me.” These interjects can rule our lives until we notice them and question them and learn to change our relationship with them.
Usually, I meet with my clients for one hour each week. Usually, we meet for at least 8 sessions. With complex PTSD, the work takes time and trust. Trust is something people have to earn. I will need to prove that I am a safe and supportive space for you, and you get to decide whether or not you want to keep coming back. That is your freedom. You design your healing and you get to decide what you need, who is good for you and who is not.
“Jade brings compassion, curiosity, tenderness, and healing energy to her work assisting clients in moving forward from the pain of past traumas. Her dedication and authenticity are unparalleled.” -Cynthia Pike Besteman
