Women: Walk with Peace exists because of the exact opposite of peace. In 2016, my life was chaos: confusing, discordant, lurching, filled with bottomless despair and blistering hot anger. Newly divorced with a six year old kiddo, I felt like I was underwater most of the time without a way back to the surface. On the outside, I tried to project wholeness, but inside I was a chaotic wreck.
Despite having a deeply explored, twenty-year yoga practice that had cultivated my breath, mindfulness, inner listening, and connection to myself and my body, it could not prepare me for the soul shift that was happening at this moment in my life. Over the nine years of my disorienting marriage, however, I often found solace in walking, and in this moment, I found that walking in the woods quieted the chaos and left me feeling whole, peaceful, and full again. Nature healed, and the more I was in it, the more I reconnected to my most healthy, happy, centered self.
Over the next seven years, I spent a considerable amount of time in nature, and my best friend (also freshly divorced) became my partner in this exploration. We joined forces, and in response to the chaos of the time, we walked in the woods together. Then we started climbing the rocks, then climbing the mountains, then climbing the ice, and then skiing in the snow. We embarked on a journey that involved many tears, much laughter, and many, many incredible adventures. We pushed ourselves and grew stronger, and we healed. We started hearing strength in our own voices again, and we started creating our lives the way we wanted. We began to own our power in ways we never knew we could.
As life will do, we slowly found ourselves moving in different directions, finding different fulfillments, taking on different challenges and accomplishing different successes. She has become a world-class outrigger canoe paddler traveling the world for competitions. I became drawn to my spiritual practice as a healer and delved deeper into earth, sound, and energetic healing practices. We both owe so much to the journey we shared that started simply by walking in the woods together.
Women: Walk with Peace is my way of giving back, with gratitude and love, to nature and to all it taught me about healing. I didn’t realize I had cultivated a way of being in nature until I recently took a couple of friends on a walk, and the experience was transformational for all of us. After being asked to take other women into the woods, I decided to make this a thing, and now I offer walks in the woods to any woman who resonates with the need to be in nature’s presence. Even if they do not know what healing they need, most sense a shift after spending time in nature with the intent to receive nature’s nourishment that feeds the soul. Nature always provides.
Women: Walk with Peace allows me to draw from my experiences and wisdom to help others reconnect and remember who they are. We all have our authentic voice, our deepest natural self, but we often don’t get time to practice being that person as much as we would like. Nature opens up time and space and has no expectations of us except that we listen and honor that intuitive, wise part of ourselves. With wonder, joy, attentive listening and looking, appreciative absorbing, and honest accepting, we experience our original being, our oldest memories, and our most Source-filled existence.
Women: Walk with Peace is a practice of trusting that all that we need is in us and around us at all times if we get quiet enough to let it into our hearts. With my heart open, I invite you to experience a walk in the woods with me.
