Why I Build Collective Spaces: From Isolation to Sacred Community
When I think about why I’m so devoted to collective spaces…
why I center community, why I refuse to do this work in isolation…
it all roots back to one of the most painful, clarifying seasons of my life.
January 2020, I had just returned from Hawaii, where I led a two-year sacred training circle. It should’ve felt victorious. But instead, I came home empty and completely undone. What should have been an honoring left me in a full spiritual unraveling. A dark night of the soul.
My kiddo was 18 months old. I was newly pregnant with my second. My partner and I, and our toddler, all came home with what we now know was COVID, before the world even had a name for it. By March, our home in West Seattle had become a literal island. The bridge shut down. The world shut down. And I shut down.
I was working part-time, parenting full-time, and had no idea how isolated I truly was.
I couldn’t ask for help. I didn’t know what I needed. And even when people offered support, I couldn’t let them in, because the perfectionism, the whiteness, the need to hold it together told me:
“Do it alone. Do it right. Do it your way.”
Then came baby two. I gave birth in a hospital wearing a mask, with no visitors, no family, and no space to fall apart.
And I did fall apart. Quietly. Invisibly. In the silent violence of postpartum capitalism.
I had no community. No validation. No sense of being mirrored in the chaos I was in.
And worst of all? I was supposed to be the one with the tools. I was the therapist. The spiritual guide. The one training others.
Which meant the story running through my body was:
“You’re not allowed to be this undone.”
I spun out in shame, confusion, and survival.
Until I finally collapsed into the truth:
I am not wrong. This system is.
I didn’t need to be better—I needed to be held.
I didn’t need self-improvement—I needed context.
I didn’t need to fix myself—I needed connection.
And this is why I build collective spaces now.
Because I don’t want any other woman to believe the lie that she is alone.
Because the personal and the collective are not separate.
Because healing can’t happen in a vacuum, and isolation is a tool of supremacy.
Because white motherhood, capitalism, and self-help culture conspire to keep us stuck in shame, pretending we’re fine, when we’re actually falling apart.
What I needed most during that time wasn’t another course or self-care practice.
I needed to sit in a room with other women who were falling apart, too.
I needed someone to say, “It makes sense that you feel this way. Let’s walk through it together.”
I needed community that didn’t perform healing, but lived it—mess and all.
This is why I do what I do now.
In every group I lead (in THE KEY, in sacred circles, in everything I create) I bring the macro and the micro, the personal and the political, the ancestral and the immediate into the same room.
Because when we understand our experiences in context, we stop blaming ourselves.
Because when we’re seen in our full humanity, we soften.
Because healing isn’t about fixing what’s wrong with us, it’s about remembering what was erased.
And because community isn’t just support, it’s survival.
If you’re unraveling
if you’ve been told it’s all your fault, or you just need to try harder, or get it together
you belong here.
Come into a space where truth is named, context is sacred, and your wholeness is not up for debate.
We don’t do good girl healing here.
We do truth.
Together.
Start with unarmor
Join us in THE KEY
Nourish yourself with Nervous System Devotionals
Drink up Truth is A Portal