“I believe that every person has a purpose and innate gifts to share as well as the courage to face their own challenges and find their own solutions.”
I was born in a small community in Northern Alberta, Canada and raised in a cabin on a remote piece of land. I spent my early years living off-grid surrounded by and in awe of the wilderness and seasons of nature. I worked on the Light family farm, with animals and in my family’s organic vegetable growing and sale operation: Northern Light Produce Network. At the age of 14, I fell gravely ill, which though I did not know it at the time, would mark my entrance to a life long path of experiential growth and learning on the healing journey.
In 2004, I moved from Alberta to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where I met a master healer working in the Five Elements acupuncture tradition. He became a long term teacher, friend and mentor up until his death in 2021. His treatments initiated some of the earliest lifting of the layers of illness and blockage from my life. Through that transformation and the relationship formed around it, I came into my first understanding of soul level healing and what it felt like to start walking the necessary path back to wholeness. Throughout that time, I worked as a tree planter and in other capacities in the forestry industry, and was certified as a Community Support Worker. Subsequently, I worked for a number of years supporting people with physical, mental and cognitive health challenges.
In 2014, I sat in ceremony with Ayahuasca for the first time. That first ceremonial experience brought me immediate further healing. Very soon afterward, I started dieting with master plants in the Shipibo tradition, both in Canada and Peru. Dieting the master plants opened many further gateways to transformation and growth. Physical pains and problems ongoing from early life illness also continued to fall away. In 2018, I began facilitating ceremonies in a Shipibo healing center near Iquitos Peru, where I worked off and on until 2022. I came to Soltara to work as a facilitator in October of 2023. Over that time period, in addition to facilitating ceremonies in Peru, I studied at Pacific Rim College in Victoria, British Columbia, where I graduated with a diploma of acupuncture in 2023.
In my work as a plant medicine facilitator, I draw on my life experiences being in deep relationship with nature from an early age, from time spent with my five elements healer and teacher, from my dietas, and from working with guests and clients both in and out of the Ayahuasca medicine space. My ongoing personal medicine journey of returning to wholeness after illness also informs my work, adding sensitivity and compassion to my offering. I believe that every person has a purpose and innate gifts to share as well as the courage to face their own challenges and find their own solutions. I feel honored to be present to the healing journeys of others as a facilitator: to witness; to coach; to companion. I continue to stand in awe of nature and the plants. Of their ability to heal both bodies and souls, and to help us more joyfully be within the continually unfolding, interconnected web of life’s becoming.
When not at work, I can often be found rock climbing, going for walks and meditating in nature, or on the river bank with friends. From 2010-2014, I skated as a Pivot, Blocker, and Jammer with the Nanaimo Nemesis and Brass Knuckle Derby Dames roller derby teams.