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About the Founder
Hiya! I'm Gari
with an 👁
I am fascinated by the 'unwanted' things in life.
The discomfort, the chaos, the conflict, the big feelings like rage and grief, the socially marginalized, the incarcerated...
the Shadows of humanity if you will.
There is something very powerful within the things we avoid.
I am a big feeler.
As a child, and through most of my young adult life,
I had many emotional experiences where I thought my deep feelings would, in all honesty, kill me. My parents didn't know how to help me develop this gift of sensitivity.
They, like many adults in our lives, had been conditioned
as children to distance themselves from big feelings.
The emotional response I felt the to world around me was overwhelming.
I was convinced something was wrong with me.
I decided to dedicate myself to uncovering the source of what exactly was wrong with me.
In 2010, I began to unpack my trauma. To acknowledge all the ways I had been wounded, abandoned, neglected, harmed.
I met with therapists, healers, and coaches. I read countless literature on positive psychology and personal development. I did the affirmations. I cried. I took cold showers. I crafted routines. I dragged myself through cycle after cycle of depression, existential crisis, and spiritual awakening. I was determined to fix my brokenness.
Over the past 11 years of digging deep, I've come to one simple realization:
Nothing is wrong with me...
I had just never been taught how to face my feelings.
Healing isn't just about the unearthing and the processing of painful memories. It is also about learning how to embody emotional safety within yourself to be able to feel your feelings, learn from your feelings, and then choose differently when confronted with similar situations.
So, it didn't matter how much I tried to 'improve' myself or make myself 'better'... If I couldn't learn how to hold space for and appreciate the full range of all my emotions, I would be perpetually stuck in a cycle of self-improvement.
"No amount of self-improvement
can make up for any lack of self-acceptance"
- Robert Holden
What had been wrong with me this whole time is that I was taught that something that humans naturally do - feeling, especially feeling bad - was wrong!
This is when I discovered Shadow Work.
I learned how to recognize the disowned parts of my psyche - the parts I was (taught to be) disgusted by, fearful of, uncomfortable with. I learned how to get close to those those seemingly scary, dark parts. I learned how to hold them and integrate them into my being. I learned how to feel deeply, and most importantly, I learned that within my deep, big feelings are actually the keys to helping me unlock and achieve all of my greatest dreams.
I have since made it my life's mission to feel fully and deeply everyday, to make decisions that honor my feelings and my sovereignty - and to teach those tools to others.
Let us learn to embrace the wholeness of who we are.
In order to become the gifts we were born into this world to be.
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