Welcome traveler,
wanderer, quester,
liminal space holder, future emergence, sacred reader, inspired confusion,
here, now,
whole, you!
I’m Erin,
& I am emerging from hibernation, it’s so good to meet you here!
I write what comes, in forms that shift.
I am taking a little peek out from the cave and creating a place to convene on the gentle curve of a river meander. There is water, earth, air, the fire of our centers, and spaces to encounter supports for our aliveness. I wholly welcome you here, to this place where we can pause and have a listen or a chat, where movement and stillness both abide, where we can absorb the natural world and take field notes with our soma, art supplies and notebooks through the shifting landscapes of our lives. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that we need witness. What might it be like to connect with the sacredness of our everyday lives? How might we do this? And what do we empower inside of ourselves to co-liberate beneficial change? What is healing if not reverence for the whole. I’m here to explore this alongside you.
I have long been an art-maker, poet, storyteller, improvisational mover and earth lover. I have enjoyed some public roles which held these themes as a field scientist and researcher, art director, performer, healing arts practitioner, designer. Maybe you’ve heard about how salmon bring nutrients back to riparian forests and help trees grow, or if you’re one of the 51 folks who’ve cited the results of my fieldwork on rivers, death and salmon nutrients, perhaps you are illuminating this more. Recently I quietly shared my first published poem on my website, which came out last November in the Los Angeles Press. In the world of professional art making I had the amazing fortune to combine my passion for meandering, seeking and improvising, to thrift, find and create little vignettes for photo shoots, that before the times of social media would simply be dismantled and possibly never seen again except in my growing curation of weird found objects (unless they liked it, then magazines, ads, cards, which I of course loved seeing). But as I grew into the themes of my working and being life I found discontent in the systems which framed them, and something shifted towards an inner ecology. I found meditation, yoga, somatic and healing work, expressive arts and organizational and systems changework. I became a caregiver, and had my own caregiven story. I continued to write, always writing. A throughline of my own creative and sane self. Possibly you feel this pull, to write into and create into your life regardless of outer changes, perhaps just because of them. The transformative work of art making, practice, and writing into our Selves is a deep mysterious human need.
I’ve led workshops, held 1:1’s and tended the end-of-life questions in my healing arts practice, Unfurl, but the majority of my training has come behind the scenes through my own spiritual life, writing and rooting into my daily experiences as I endeavored to liberate the unlived parts of my withheld, late blooming self (see: emerging!). I share a lot from my habit of don’t know mind, of open heart, of connected hands. I have found this open space of unknowing to be a profound support in some of life’s most disruptive, and beautiful transformations. You can read my journey of becoming as an artist in grief in my first succesful grant application, where I offer mourning as a portal for art and joy.
I often wonder where I fit in and this frequently brings me to new places, work, languages/patterns for seeing the world, and people. While I will introduce myself as Erin, I’ve long felt strange saying this outloud, floating away as if someone else was in my shoes. Asking me what I do for work flashes in front of me like a foreign orb, and I’d probably love to just offer you an interpretive dance, or impromptu poem to go along with its pulses. My friends will tell you, it was a feat of fearless self re-clamation to name myself as author to this news. I’m still wondering what’s in a name. When I’m in the holy weird, I find my most creative magic. Living in the shadow of a beloved, heart won, late blossoming asked me rich questions through surreal experiences. It has led me to belong to more of my own inner knowing, and ultimately has helped me feel freer in this world. I have a deep sense I knew this before, and perhaps merely forgot. I sense this might be true for you too. Meditation and the invitation to feel my body were thresholds of empowerment, but also complex.
We are kaleidoscopic beings - gently pulling our deepest threads forward.
in the fields of becoming
we are free to express our wholeness in all its forms. Everything is welcome, waking up, blossoming, decaying and seeding itself anew. We keep expanding, changing. Creativity, questions and turning towards ourselves and our inter and intra related relationship with life and the natural world. A practice of free flowing, a morphology of letting go into life and finding new shapes.
My newslsetter
is an ode to the liminal, in-between, transformational arcs of growth, cycles and change. It maps and contours like a free flowing river. I’d love for you to join me in this meandering place, and invite you to stay awhile and feel the flux.
As an artist, writer and researcher I am constantly diving into a variety mediums. It comes in the form of essay, artwork, poem, lyric, sound, image, movement, as projects: creative, embodied and nature based practices, and micro-inquiry journeys, paired with on the spot ways of knowing and unknowing. It is an art project in an of itself, so it will keep changing, and that’s all I can ask. If this appeals, it would be so great to meet you here and learn together.
It is also about how a practice evolves as we do it. My practice of writing a newsletter will surely inform how often I write, what feels most natural to send and how often I send it. This is new territory for me! I’m really glad you’re here, reading my words, and inviting your own curiosity, as I bring my own.
Monthly to your Inbox
essays, notes, creative practice, ritual, travelogues & other ephemera from me, from my center. I won’t send something that doesn’t feel resonant and in turn I would like to pass along this gift of resonance to you. I am actively working in the spaces of ritualist, author, caregiver and as a returning to school middle age student so likely these themes will show up this year.
Centered on that beautiful arc of return, where aliveness and possibilities meet in the vast while loving the minutia happening now, my work fields emergence, presence and curiosity. Tiny furn unfurling. Sweet spring emerging from rock. Quiet thunder in the cave. Lessons learned along the way and re-released for growth. Making art, a practice, play, rest, work, craft, connection with selves, the relational field, space. I think you’ll find something here that might inspire or open you up to keep changing and remembering possibilities as well. I continue to be amazed at the potency of approaching changes and cycles with reverence, regard and my attention.
I send my newsletter at least once a moon a month for all subscribers, and so far on other seasonally and naturally occuring cycles in the forms of projects and notes throughout the year. Projects will come and go. Some will be part of my free newsletter subscription, some will be included with a paid subscription. I’m leaning into how this might look as I create and learn about my practice.
Currently the notes on my site are free for everyone, browse, email to a friend, leave a comment or like, this helps my little newsletter gain readers. I’m not on the socials, but if it’s a space you communicate from, by all means share there too. Paid subscriptions are $5 mo // $45 yr. It’s a great bouy along the river to recieve payment for my work and keep the threads going if you are able or so inpsired. As I engage more of my skills with this practice I envision adding spaces for a more private community of interested folks with paid options. It’s a given I need to make a living from my labor and offerings while considering how to navigate access and building momentum. Sliding scale and volunteer work filled my schedule the past 15 years and I come from this ehtos. I can’t think of a better way to have this clear and generative exchange flow and keep my values intact while also letting you know, your financial contributions help, thank you! Your presence is such a gift to me, either way. Truly.
keep finding your ebbs and flows…
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Newsletter projects transmitting healing ideas through lyrical essays, art projects, nature conversations and poetic inspiration alongside embodied and collaborative practices for everyday life. Plus some pretty photos of lichen on rocks.
a note on Place…
I live on old land, homesteaded treaty land. So many people offer land acknowledgements, and this I think is absolutely momentum into the territory of shifts I want to see in my lifetime, but I actually don’t know if it’s useful. I was introduced to Dan Nanamkin’s work through a mutual friend, he is a tribal member of the Confederated Colville Tribes and I will point you in his direction for a personal take on what us non-tribal folks can do. There are many people doing active work, connected to many others in my community and this feels really pertinant. I turn to them, because in the realm of doing I find the complexity of acknowledgements without money, time, effort, holding our hearts fast and doing work to improve the situation iffy in terms of the real shift we need as humans. My experience has shown me true healing is always present when we feel our connection to self, each other and place. My voice is one of many and I am learning as I go how to hold my values, and also know my understanding can only go as far as my own lived experiences thus far. As a white female bodied human I have my stories to share. I don’t have the answers, only questions and space. Giving voice to the ways in which our world has caused damage, and understanding how we each fit in the complex story of it all are worthy, life giving endeavors we can each participate in and learn more about. I love this place and feel honored to have my own personal connection to the shifting landscapes, humans, plants and animals, rocks and rivers that live here. May this (among so many things) all become held enough to heal.
Learn More About Where you Stand
Native Land Map - “Native Land Digital strives to create and foster conversations about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and settler-Indigenous relations, through educational resources such as our map and Territory Acknowledgement Guide. We strive to go beyond old ways of talking about Indigenous people and to develop a platform where Indigenous communities can represent themselves and their histories on their own terms.”
