About

Hello! My name is Emma, and I write about personal growth and spirituality from my 20 years of experience walking my path. I have some training (see below), but mostly I’m just sharing what has worked for me. I write about everything from state shifting and spiritual self-delusion to self-validation and healing from childhood trauma, including attachment and complex PTSD.

This page has some background about me personally so you can get to know me better. I’m not a guru and I don’t want to be. I want to be happy and free, and share my passion for growth and self-liberation with others, because I enjoy it. ?

I live my life by following what Robert Johnson called the “slender threads”—following an invisible path of intuition, growth, exploration, and discovery. This is central to who I am and how I approach life and healing.

My background & education

I have studied a lot of different methodologies and frameworks of mental and emotional healing and personal growth, but I don’t have any kind of certification and I don’t work with clients directly. I create content around things that have worked for me and in the past, I have considered myself a personal growth educator, rather than a therapist or coach.

But lately, I’ve come to consider myself more of an artist whose medium is writing and whose subject matter is the inner-work journey. (More on that over on my newsletter, Sparkly Dark, a new project where I’m exploring this intersection of personal growth and creativity more directly).

I have completed professional trainings in Hakomi (a mindfulness-based therapy method), attachment styles, trauma, life coaching, group dynamics, and I studied and helped teach Nonviolent Communication (NVC) for several years, including in prison (but I’m not a certified trainer). I have also casually studied Internal Family Systems (parts work), and have spent many years unravelling my personal history, patterns, wounding, and learning what I need to thrive.

I have been following my own spiritual path for about 20 years that mostly consists of direct inner awareness of Spirit (mysticism). I’ve gotten value out of various teachings including Wicca, Buddhism, New Thought, Evolutionary Astrology, A Course in Miracles, the Akashic Records, and Neville Goddard. I have also read a lot of NDE accounts (near-death experiences) and past life and between-life regression accounts.

My approach to spirituality is not about belief as much as utility. Any framework that creates more internal freedom, compassion, connection, and love is a good thing as far as I am concerned. I do generally believe that we have immortal Souls that plan our lifetimes before we are incarnated, to have certain experiences. On the Soul level, we are whole and complete, even if we don’t feel that way on a human level. Accessing this idea of the Soul has helped me immensely to transcend the conditioned trauma identities I developed as a child. (This is not a substitute for doing painful emotional work).

I also love the Myers-Briggs type system. Recognizing myself as an ENFP has been foundational for self-acceptance and understanding what my mind needs to be happy.

My personal life

I live in Oregon, which is on the West coast of the US. I grew up in Southern Oregon, on a farm in the woods.

I’m a semi-retired web designer and developer.

I’m constantly interested in new ideas and making connections between ideas, especially ones that don’t seem related to most people. I seek novelty, which can look like “shiny object syndrome”, but it’s a deep need for me to absorb novel stimuli and make sense of them. The result is that I have a broad and eclectic history of minor and major obsessions with different philosophies, systems, frameworks, hobbies, etc. I post random stuff that interests me on my ideation blog.

In 2014, I married someone who was in prison, and was a prison wife for 7 years. It was an overwhelming, painful, and transformative experience that shattered my understanding of “America” by exposing me to the most dysfunctional and trauma-inducing institution we have. After he got out and our marriage fell apart, I had to finally face my fearful-avoidant attachment wounding.

As isolating as it has been however, it has also been good for my “inner hermit”—the part of me that loves to dive deeply into spiritual experience. Sometimes isolation can be like a healing cocoon.

I have always been sensitive to suffering, especially feelings of alienation and loneliness and disconnection. I am drawn to the shadows within the mind and within the world. I know I can’t “save” the world, as it has to evolve and grow at its own pace, just like individual humans do. But I do care, and want to contribute to more happiness and healing where I can.