About Damaris

It’s taken 70 years and long, mysterious ways to be woven into the person I am now. I once moved through life as a rational materialist; a teacher, artist and business manager until the age of 40 at which time I attempted suicide and had an astonishing spirit-based intervention which reconfigured how I experience and understand the dynamics of life and what is “real” on this planet. This was a deep awakening for which I had no concepts, language or elders. Through long years of questioning, experimentation, skepticism, applying and tracking the consequences of new understandings and experiences that the dominant culture mostly dismisses as fantasy or even mental disease, I grew into my practice which is often called shamanic but that I view more intimately as a tending of Earth and Spirit in grounded, practical ways to enhance the well-being  of all life, human and other than  human. In other words I work in loving tandem relationship with spirits of the land, Ancestral spirits and various other compassionate tutelary beings to shift, when possible and receptive, the consequences of rampant genocide, colonization, enslavement, loss of place, concomitant eco-destruction, patriarchal poisons and imperialism and all the influences that separate people from their original nature and from the divine, living  intelligence of the Earth and also mentor others in this work, both in therapeutic and illuminating ways on behalf of people, animals, the land and spirit essences, the dying and the dead.

Consequently I’m mostly appreciative of my crone years and the sense of freedom and relational intimacy I experience inhabiting a wild, remote area of the Appalachian mountains. Some of those who also welcome you here are my Ancestors and other spirit companions woven deeply within me or else often dancing along side. My primary human ancestral lineages to whom I offer great gratitude along with an occasional cocked eyebrow, snort or Bean Sidhe wail are Finnish Saami, Mongolian, Hungarian Roma, Sicilian Mafioso, and assorted British Isles. I began my life sundered from my birth family and adopted into a bad and strange fit; lived in Manhattan to Washington, D.C. then on to North Carolina and now, for over 25 years I’ve lived remotely and high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia Virginia on timeless, wholesome, amazingly welcoming land I hope to die and become food on that was once loved and sanely tended as mostly hunting grounds by the Cherokee, Tutelo and Monacan confederacies peoples.

Eventually in my practice I explored and learned from various diverse people in the consciousness/healing fields. I began a master’s degree in counseling psychology, which felt like it was missing the mark in countless ways and, just prior to graduation experienced another profound and disruptive call from Spirit to shift my attention fully to the energetic and spirit-based perspectives of transformation and awareness. As a result I have incorporated into my understanding and work what I’ve learned from studying Authentic Movement, sound healing, elemental balance, grief yoga, conscious dying, invocation and ceremony, intuitive and psychic development, and certain forms of core shamanism. Thirty years ago I opened InnerLight Institute, a holistic healing center in North Carolina that remained active for 28 years, invited other practitioners to participate and worked with clients using many of the above-mentioned modalities until I sold it some years after moving to Virginia.

Although many people embark upon their path through their own desire and will, mine pretty much laid hold of me by the scruff of the neck--like a mother lioness with a wayward cub-- shaking me and and not letting go. As part of this I eventually spent many long years becoming somewhat feral and vision-struck in deep solitude on wild, remote and wholesome land, seemingly grief-stricken from lack of any cohesive relationship to my center, yet still listening intently to the creeks, trees, stones and birds; to the flowers and winds and to all the other various residents as well as to my awakening heart and greatly to the spirits who had already been working with/through/as me but who powerfully unveiled themselves in their more discrete and wondrous particularities. These were my primary, best teachers as well as healers.

And it’s a very different story when seen from the present with all the now fairly common understandings of alternative spirit practices and perspectives but thirty years ago when this happened to me, I had absolutely no idea what was going on; no concepts, words/terms, no elders to guide me and help me place my attention or craft discernment, no community circles and not even books or podcasts to learn from that are now everywhere. I had only direct experience which I experimented with and tested relentlessly. Ultimately at the beginning of this the only thing I knew to do was to go get very simple on some wild land, pare down everything I had ever known and begin again for this was a new world. I knew I needed that basic grounding, outward simplicity and sanity.

Once there I devoted myself to listening and observing and then communicating if I was being approached by a tree spirit or the water or a bobcat, or flower, or an ancestor of the land....etc. This was slow going, with much inner debate and often skepticism and decades in its evolution to where I felt I could truly trust what was coming to me or share what I’d been learning, although on a very personal level there were some spirits who I very quickly attuned to and trusted and who I came to love deeply as great kin. And….. I still consider myself a novice, as I do most all people in Western culture who haven’t been raised in an earth honoring relational dynamic where all beings are perceived in their innate sacredness.

Although I've had some stellar human guides and mentors, some who I honor below, they did not lead me to this path or to my companion spirits. Rather, these spirits led me to those teachers who would best guide and expand at any particular time how I understood, integrated and worked with what was coming from them.

And they are, first and last, my most relevant, faithful and powerful influence. They continually surprise me with their enormous flexibility and adaptability and with their incisive guidance. They are unfailingly generous in their absolute commitment to be of service and to hold the image and frequency of each person’s original nature available to them no matter what. Although their orientation comes from what our culture tends to call non-ordinary reality, their ability to continually affect great and beneficial changes within different cultures, belief systems and spiritual perspectives in this physical, everyday yet still sublime reality is a testament to their relevance, needfulness and undeniable presence.

Some of the human teachers I did eventually work with in person or learned from in some extensive digital way and have gratitude for in one way or another, either via positiva or via negativa, include the following:  Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Sobonfu Some, Tom Kenyon, Malidoma Patrice Some, Elliot Cowan, Betsy Bergstrom, Lorenzo Cree, Pema Chodron, Robert Moss, Sandra Ingerman, Julie Davis, and Cara Coad. Although I've approached animistic practice from different angles over the many years, my most recent(2011-2015),long term renewed focus of exploration of relating to and working formally with specific spirits under the tutelage of a human guide was a one year personal immersion followed by an intensely rigorous 3-year in-depth internship with the exquisitely gifted healer and teacher Julie M. Kramer of Boulder, CO. (Deepest bow, Julie). Although our paths and ways differ in many respects I gained a refreshing breath of grounded discipline and commitment and more solid tracking and responsibility from the relentless practice and her solid and respectful entrainment.

This masterful, inspired exploration for those who have been called to this path also gave greater depth, insight, cohesion, feedback, intelligent inspirited community, and richly productive application to my personal inquiries, especially those initiated during the many years I was intimately mentored in esoteric and earth-based spiritual practices by the elementals, Shining Ones, spirits of the land, and ancestors, some of whom were blood ancestors and others ancestral to the region where I live, for whom my homage goes beyond mere words and whose names lie beyond the winds. I also give honor to one of the living human ones of this land, S. C———l and her teachers, Toni and Rocke who were not interested in sharing any detailed practices of their Aniyunwiya(Cherokee)indigenous lineage traditions with me but who did prod, provoke, model, trick and insist that I develop my innate openness to the wild, undomesticated voices of Spirit with the rigor and discipline of long-term trial and fall-on-your-face error, who battled and severely challenged me at every turn as I relentlessly and certainly not always willingly shed layers of self-image and ambition, and who taught me to track my results critically, thoroughly, unsentimentally, with wit and humility, throwing out anything that didn’t work. Their lessons about the true nature and uses of power, as well as its corruptions, were beyond measure and hopefully remain alive in all I do.

I also give deepest thanks to this dear Earth as my most fundamental, faithful teacher and loving, guiding presence; to the Great Mystery and Spirit who moves in all beings for my life; to the Shining Ones and their gifts of Beauty, Magic and Timelessness and for helping me experience belonging and to perceive Beauty as a moral presence even in the most disturbing circumstances; to the Ancestors for all their deep lessons and daily presence, persistence and patience, for I approached them last of all and with great reluctance and misunderstanding; to the Winds of Earth and their Essences; to all the domains of Nature and to the precious animals: they heal me, teach me, and fill me with wonder and joy. And as always....big smiles and great gratitude to Jane Roberts and her channeling of Seth which figured so importantly very early in my process. Though initially I resisted, it blew my already quite open mind and got me out of the tight box of consensual materialism and into the mysterious and most sublime universe.

*Most of the pictures on this website are mine, taken on land I steward and am nourished by in the Blue Ridge Mts. of Virginia. Other artwork is credited or is being used for its evocative beauty while seeking to find the artist.