I grew up in a small heavily Mormon community in western Wyoming. Nearly all of my ancestors had been Mormon (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) from the time of the faith’s founding. While this family and cultural framework did offer many beauties, for a gay kid like me, it also provided the conditions for tremendous psychological harm.

Right around the experience of overhearing my mom, my paternal grandmother introduced me to genealogy. And bless her, because it became a sort of life-line for me when everything else in my world began to feel terrifying. I always had an innate interest and curiosity about my ancestors, and I had always been an extremely observant, kind, mature, and deeply spiritually-inclined child.

Genealogy research gave me something to feel connected to. I discovered a natural gift for sensing ancestor spirits and intuiting their lived experiences, solving challenging research problems, teaching others, and retaining amazing amounts of information. It gave me a small bit of confidence, and ultimately, a safe place where I could escape, completely lose myself, and not feel into the pain of believing I was deeply broken (and possessed).

I got obsessed with genealogy research. Like, capital-O Obsessed. It was all I wanted to do. I was a pretty nerdy teen and didn’t have a lot of close friends or confidence. And because genealogy mattered so much in Mormon theology, I started to believe my skill was God’s way of offering me a bargain: be useful and “righteous” enough and maybe I’ll fix you one day.

In my mid-30s, I had a complete mental breakdown and nearly ended my life. I truly didn’t want to be here anymore. Years of stress, repression, and fear around my sexuality finally caught up with me.

I’m sharing that plainly because this is the level of harm spiritual trauma can create—and also because healing is possible.

Simultaneously, I experienced a faith crisis around my Mormon beliefs and felt the bottom falling out of the spiritual and psychological framework I had built my life upon. Core theological teachings and faith tenets no longer made sense, met my emotional and spiritual needs, or resonated with my newly emerging "self."

After a tremendous battle of inner turmoil and support from a life-saving therapist, I determined a divorce was necessary and found myself starting life over again as a fresh, new person. That was most difficult and scariest thing I have ever done. Breaking away from a seventh-generation family pattern and an unhealthy cultural system is never an easy feat.

Today, I get to share and experience a beautiful life with my incredible husband and love of my life, A.C. Ivory, along with our three amazing kids and little cockapoo, Hampton. We live in south-central Utah near the sacred lands of Capitol Reef National Park (ancestral lands of the Ute and Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) peoples) and are honored to share home with all of the many other beings here in our lands. We live on a small one-acre regenerative farm with a small 1911 farmhouse, chickens, alpacas, large gardens, a greenhouse, and a 20-tree fruit orchard! We love the high desert climate and are nourished by spending time in all of the amazing state and national parks and monuments that are close by.

In addition to my work as an Ancestral Healing Guide and professional genealogist, I’m also a trained herbalist and love working with the plant spirits to bring magick and healing into people’s lives. Spiritually, I practice a blend of Celtic Paganism and Witchcraft as well as classical Shaiva Tantra; and I love weaving together practices that help me to feel more alive in my body and the living world around me.

I see our wholeness as humans being deeply tied to how well we assume a relational role (and right-sized place) in the great interconnected web of life. We are a part of Nature and the great energetic Mystery that animates the lives of all beings (human and non-human). We are each unique expressions of the Divine Universe, and as we heal wounds brought about by broken cultural systems (and work to dismantle those same systems), we are better able to step more deeply into our powerful gifts—gifts that not only allow us to find greater joy and vitality ourselves, but to also elevate the vibrancy of both the human and collective Universal consciousness.