ABOUT IRIS
Hi There. If you're on this page, you're wanting to know a little bit more about me. So who am I? Great question...
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I am someone that moves through many worlds (& realms) and I've never felt a need to identify myself with one particular label. That said, my vocation in this life is a teacher and I've been journeying with that archetype since I was a little girl coming home from school, dressing her cat up in clothes to be the student while I played at teacher for a few more hours. That playful somewhat fierce learning spirit has never ceased (9th house moon that rules my chart!). That said- I have developed a love for much more integrative ways of learning & teaching than most traditional education models offer.
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Being a teacher overlaps with my life as an artist. I teach in many different ways with different mediums. For my entire adult life, I've made a living as a professor teaching cultural studies and media studies in university. I'm thrilled to be offering new types of teachings through my work in archetypal & evolutionary astrology. I've journeyed with the myths & archetypes my entire life and teaching integrative archetypal astrology is my most truly embodied teaching spirit come to life yet.
I have a PhD in Comparative Literature. I'm also a scholar & a writer. (Check out my new book on healing childhood trauma, poetry & belonging with radical new survivor-centred paradigms!!) I've trained in Expressive Arts Therapy and other healing modalities and yet, archetypal astrology as a path of embodiment & earth-centred spirituality is for me the most healing & soul nourishing modality I've encountered. My own practice weaves in decades of study, teaching & scholarship in philosophy, cultural studies, feminist trauma theory & spirituality.
As a woman committed to supporting others on their healing journeys, I believe in an ancient, raw & earth-born spirituality as a pathway to healing. This path that I teach is rich & deep and it is a wild dance with the cosmos & the archetypes. I've danced this dance since I was a child tramping through New England woods. I now spend my life in Canada between rural living in British Columbia & urban rhythms in downtown Toronto and I've never stopped dancing with the archetypes. They are my truest teachers- them and a few wise humans along with decades of disciplined study and embodied belonging. And perhaps most importantly, the animal guides I've been blessed to share my life with - that's Finnegan up above and Gus & Babes down below!
I absolutely love Evolutionary Astrology and yet! Astrology, like every other field of meaning making touched by humans gets weighed down by biases bred by patriarchy, colonialism & capitalism. It gets (very!) shallowed out by pop culture. [Spoiler alert! I do not practice pop astrology!!!] I love astrology for its depth and un-ending fields of interconnected meaning making. I love to work with others and open up their charts with them. I love teaching integrated & embodied archetypal astrology in groups and will be doing a lot more of this as the years unfold.
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The Madrona Tree
The Madrona Tree, better known as the Arbutus Tree in Canada, is a tree indigenous to the Pacific North West often found on ocean bluffs. The Madrona has a rich history in Indigenous culture and its Latin name translates as the "Strawberry Tree" for the bright red berries they grow.
For me, the Madrona speaks an ancient langage, one that all of nature speaks, but for some reason it was the Madrona that helped me to remeber my own intuitive connection to this earth, to my womanhood and to see the integrated beauty and wisdom that comes from laying bare our own knots and twists out into the world, just as this tree does. Spending time quietly by the ocean with the Madrona has taught me much about what it means, for me, to be a woman. In the way their branches curve, knotted and twisted as they are, the marks and scars and shedding of skin-like bark, I see so many stories of womanhood. The way the light catches their leaves and the vibrancy of their red berries. Simply put, they are beautiful.
When I first moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2007 and lived in Washington State, I immediately fell in love with the Madronas and the rhythm of life that they and the ocean reawakened to my conscious self. It felt as if I were seeing family members I had not seen in quite some time. The pulse of the Madrona that I felt then and continue to feel in my body and psyche, for me, sounds out the intuitive gifts of wisdom I believe we all have access to and sometimes need support remembering how to call up from the depths our society and personal experiences teaches us to banish intuition to. My calling to teach is to offer this support and to help others learn to see the absolute beauty in laying bare and integrating their own knots and twists and supple beauties of self into holistic and honest presence, just as the Madrona tree has taught me to do.