About Me

I was giving hands-on healings and ceremonies in early childhood. I was 5 when I when I began vocally questioning what I was being taught about “God” and spirit. My Sunday-school teachers could never answer my inquires. My mother’s father, my Papaw, was a benevolent and devoted Baptist minister and my fathers family who immigrated from Ukraine and Romania, founded an Eastern Orthodox Church outside of Chicago. This way of convoluted thinking and existing was always confusing to me as a young child, and then began to enrage me as I woke up.

The Wheel of the Year found me at age 11 and so began my apprenticeship with the seasonal rhythms . Around the same time, I started sneaking ( at the time my mother thought yoga was very different then she does now) off to the Lotus Garden, a very traditional, Eastern Indian Meditation Center where I first learned how to meditate, yoga as a way of life, Vedic science, pranayama, chanting, how to cultivate my spirit and participate in kirtan and devotional service. Long before it was trendy. I spent years as the only youth alongside classes of elders. Side note: when I was in college, I was dumbfounded when I went to a Power Yoga class; it was my first true experience of seeing this ancient science being appropriated. Between the Earth magic rooted in my lineage that I had been working with and the ancient wisdom techniques and philosophies I was practicing under the guidance of my teachers, my spirit was remembering my true origins.

When I was 13, I was in a terrible car accident. That became a karmic theme in my life for far too many years. In high school, my life took a radical hit with illness, extreme trauma, abuse. If you would like to read more about my healing journey, click here. In reflection, for every hardship, there has been an enormous lesson and subsequently, a conscious upgrade. All of these life experiences led to me completing a B.A. in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Cultural Anthropology and Eastern Studies as well as becoming certified as a Massage Therapist (LMT) and Energy Worker. Those paths led me to spending many months in South East Asia before coming back to the States to earn a Teacher’s Certificate specializing in Holistic Child Development, then many years serving in the classroom as a lead teacher and parent educator. Years later, I pulled myself out of a venomous relationship, and moved across the country to escape. I was navigating chronic pain and illness, unaware that I had lyme and Epstein-Barr at the time.

When I least desired or expected it, the most marvelous miracle happened by way of a kind, highly evolved, badass human named Drew, whom I am now blissfully married to. We had severely life-threating complications with our first child while in utero which led to developmental trauma/complications which has proven to continually direct every aspect of our lives. My son, Zavier Maverick was a catalyst for me becoming an Innate Traditions, traditional Postpartum Care Provider, first serving survivors of human trafficking. I combined decades in the healing arts with a decade in child development, and birthed a company called Raising Our Rootz. While striving to survive and navigate the complications from Zavier’s biography, we found out we were pregnant again when “ZZ” was barely 11 months. Shocked and scared, we held ceremony, prayed and trusted. Zeo Santo was born healthy and became (still is) the medicine our family needed.

Jumping forward, of all the many modalities that I have received and provided, it was not until I started addressing the underlying emotional issues, and later finding Theta Healing, that I felt myself to truly and fully begin to heal physically, emotionally, mentally. We can address trauma in countless ways, but until we acknowledge, pull, clear and then repair the root memories and beliefs on the subconscious field, they will remain and hold us hostage in a perpetual spiral.

I think it is important for me to state that I have always been counter-culture. As a student of Mama Gaia, using our physiologic design as a road map to thriving health, I look to nature to source my primary medicine. I bow to the many international spiritual leaders, traditional medicine keepers, phenomenal healers, wise elders, mentors and plant kin and creature teachers that have been encouraging and inspiring me since the age of 11. My sense of "self", that represents my passions and purpose, is because of these revered beings and the supreme love of my life and best friend, Drew, my darling mother, my children and the chosen family we have created. Thank you for reading, I love you.