Lineages + My Story

i am a storyteller, a Buddhist practitioner, a relational being, a deep lover, and a human dedicated to the liberation of all beings everywhere without exception.

“i dedicate the merits of my practice to the liberation of all beings without exception” is how i have closed my meditation practice for 20 years.

i grew up Buddhist in the Theravada tradition. i started going on retreats when i was around 9/10 years old. my practice has been and continues to be held in deep love and metta. metta is the pali word for loving-kindness. as a child love felt hard in the world but abundant in Buddhist spaces. there are some memories that root me in this practice of love. i remember the day my godfather taught me walking meditation. i remember his warm loving presence as my godmother taught in the background. there’s something about a space steeped in practice that holds your heart in a way that nothing can. i was lucky to grow up this way, with elders who move in the world with a deep practice of metta.

for the last 7/8 years, unknowingly, i had been in deep study, transforming my practice into an offering for others. it started with a confluence of a few things. i was given Radical Dharma and Pleasure Activism by my Buddhist meditation teachers and mentors at the time. one teacher reminded me about how joy is one of the seven factors of awakening in Buddhism when telling me about Pleasure activism, and a mentor gave me Radical Dharma knowing that it would connect what was already in my heart. i also grew up in social justice, always an active member, facilitator, and organizer in my community. i had even more elders who were organizers and were working to better our world. but even though i was in both of these worlds, it felt like i was leaving a part of myself behind whenever id enter into either of these spaces. even though there was overlap, it felt like everyone was missing each other.

then i started taking classes with Dr. Rima Vesley-Flad and practicing with Lama Rod Owens. and I finally understood what my heart had known. Buddhism & Black Radical Liberation are both wisdom traditions that we need in the world we live today. we cannot remove the context in which we live and the Buddha knew that our relationality was how we got free. he even said to his best friend, Ananda, friendship is the whole path. we have to be in relationship with each other, with our world as it is, as we would like to see it, and most importantly with the earth. the Buddha got free by being in deep relationship with the earth. and if we are going to get free, more of us need to remember that we are held and cared for by the earth, by our ancestors.

simultaneously, i started to develop a visioning practice. my biggest teacher and companion has been fear and anxiety. “i see you Mara!” i say it all the time. i had read that anxiety can come from a lack of orientation to your future. so i started to time travel in my writing. visioning futures of freedom, of deep care and love for one another. a world where we are deeply supported as we get free together. i meditated with these visions and felt them in my body. as i did, i tapped into my expansiveness unlocking more of my radical imagination. i felt divinely guided building my relationship with the ancestors and my ancestral line. i come from the same land as the Buddha. the earth is my closest ancestor, but the Buddha feels like a close second.

my practice became a portal, taking a whole life of its own. i was invited to step into the role of a facilitator, studying and training in relational facilitating. i was also producing meditations for the public collaborating with teachers around the world. the universe started to ask me to teach. something i had a lot of resistance toward because i never liked the hierarchy of teaching. being a facilitator made sense, because we are in spaces together, co-creating in doing the work of liberation. because that’s the work. this work we do together. the magic is palpable when we are together. we are all universes as Rumi says. we are figuring it out together.

thank you for being here and reading a bit about my story. if you’d like to know more or keep in touch, you can check out more info on my substack. my work is of service for the liberation of all beings everywhere. without exception. (an update: i will be taking the Boddhisattva vows officially sometime this year!)