TRANSFORMATION MAP

How might we transition from survivor to thriver; from chaos to creativity; from healing to wholeness; and from resilience to regeneration in ways we can restore and re-story our experiences that shape our personal and collective narratives?

This has been the quest of my life journey so far and I'm grateful to be sharing you what I unlearned and learned along the way.

In the last 13 years, I have been trying to weave my soil and soul work as a cultural creative working in the healing arts and as an innovator working with regenerative solutions. Both worlds have invited me to look at what supports and enables a truly transformative transformation from the self, community, and planetary levels.

I came up with this map and promised myself to live all stages and experience them first before sharing them broadly to the wider public, outside of the relevant conferences and workshops I've shared this at. They say that 7 years is a period of renewal for both the physical and spiritual self and so from 2013-2020, it feels whole to finally offer it here publicly as I put this site together at the start of the pandemic for all who wish to learn and experience the process.

ORIGIN STORY

I started it while I was taking care of my mother who was on her deathbed in 2012 and I was reading Gabrielle Roth’s Maps to Ecstasy. It occurred to me that some of these stages she described were the same creative handles I used and developed in my transformative art workshops. Then through an invitation to design some art based tools for cancer patients at Wellnessland Health Institute, I tried to design a journey that integrated these stages of creativity as a change process and aligned them on a U framework based on adult unlearning methodologies which I learned before my mom's death. I would eventually encounter Theory U a year later as I joined the u Labs of the Presencing Institute.

I integrated trauma-informed handles to support the journey of survivors into thrivers which I learned through trainings when I started working in disaster recovery. Then when I started working with disaster affected communities using regenerative solutions, I discovered Berkana Institute’s Two Loops model through the work of Bob Stilger of New Stories who applied this in his learning journeys with disaster survivors in Japan.

Because of the climate grief and resilience lens I was using, I then started seeing the alignment with the regenerative movement I was part of which was modeling the transition from an industrial growth society to a life sustaining one in the backdrop of a systemic collapse. I would eventually learn and apply learnings from deep ecologist Joanna Macy years later, discovering the same alignment with her Work that Reconnects spiral.

Beyond these inspirations and alignments, I am also immensely grateful to the mentors and workshop participants who found it valuable over the years. I am truly inspired to continue sharing this journey map to those who will find it valuable. It has no name yet but I trust that it will emerge in time.