About Jenna (me. Myself. I)
In August 2022 my daughter Rose died of heart attack.
Rose was 40. We had lived together all those years. She had a diagnosis of Down Syndrome. She was my life partner, my soul mate. My friend.
A lot of my motivation in studying the healing arts was to help her.
During COVID we traded sessions many Sundays. She was a gifted hands-on healer. In July of 2024 I found a note buried in a kitchen drawer that I know I had cleaned before. It begins, "My mom will be a great healer." "I think my mom can make a big difference in the world. . . I am happy for her."
I don't know when she wrote it nor why I hadn't found it before. But I have it now and it has encouraged me to rewrite my website, to share this bit of my process.
Over these years of profound and continual adjustment, I never stopped giving sessions. I'm deeply grateful to the long-term clients who have continued to value my work, as well as to new clients, all who have continued to trust my gifts and allowed me to listen more deeply in to what those are.
In a divination session after Rose's death I was told, that I work with a "spirit-filled" energy that comes through my hands, that I have the ability to gather up rivers of energy, direct and use them. It's hard to be in pain -- and OH! what pain -- and be in a loving place with myself and the world. But that's my walk. My aim is to share solace, to elicit the calm and comfort, that underlie healing.
There isn't much of my backstory that feels particularly relevant to who I am now, but so you can better know me, I am sharing.
Rose was 40. We had lived together all those years. She had a diagnosis of Down Syndrome. She was my life partner, my soul mate. My friend.
A lot of my motivation in studying the healing arts was to help her.
During COVID we traded sessions many Sundays. She was a gifted hands-on healer. In July of 2024 I found a note buried in a kitchen drawer that I know I had cleaned before. It begins, "My mom will be a great healer." "I think my mom can make a big difference in the world. . . I am happy for her."
I don't know when she wrote it nor why I hadn't found it before. But I have it now and it has encouraged me to rewrite my website, to share this bit of my process.
Over these years of profound and continual adjustment, I never stopped giving sessions. I'm deeply grateful to the long-term clients who have continued to value my work, as well as to new clients, all who have continued to trust my gifts and allowed me to listen more deeply in to what those are.
In a divination session after Rose's death I was told, that I work with a "spirit-filled" energy that comes through my hands, that I have the ability to gather up rivers of energy, direct and use them. It's hard to be in pain -- and OH! what pain -- and be in a loving place with myself and the world. But that's my walk. My aim is to share solace, to elicit the calm and comfort, that underlie healing.
There isn't much of my backstory that feels particularly relevant to who I am now, but so you can better know me, I am sharing.
My Story
As a wild child growing up in the mostly-rural San Francisco Bay Area, I obsessed with the Beatles. My dad took me to their final concert at Candlestick Park. I wove and retailed earth-colored yarn belts; embroidered blouses to wear when I folk danced at Stanford University; and wrote in a journal almost daily. I lived in Cuernavaca Mexico for a month and spoke fluent Spanish.
I wanted to be Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez, so I taught guitar. I was also the family go-to for baking desserts. I worked on an archeological dig and on the Save the Bay Campaign; drove a VW Beetle through the Pacific Coast Range; and discovered the joy of backpacking (my parents were confused because, as a child, I wanted to be carried when on family hikes, though to be fair, sitting up on my Dad’s shoulders was pretty nifty).
I began my own healing journey at UC Santa Cruz in the 1970s. When I graduated with double honors, I remember wishing I could “just” be a medicine woman, a healer. My journal from two years before that says, “If I could be anything, I would want the power to heal people with plants, to doctor.”
All these decades later, it’s odd to find that I am that, though not in the way I imagined.
UCSC’s Community Studies program required me to do field study and write an undergraduate thesis. So, I lived on the Crow Indian Reservation for six months and developed a how-to manual for traditional crafts for the local 4-H program. I hung out with two ladies at the Crow Arts & Crafts Cooperative, learned to bead while listening to their stories. I participated in my first sweat-bath ceremony, disoriented from the heat and a dip in the Little Big Horn River, I promptly drove my VW bug in a ditch.
As a wild child growing up in the mostly-rural San Francisco Bay Area, I obsessed with the Beatles. My dad took me to their final concert at Candlestick Park. I wove and retailed earth-colored yarn belts; embroidered blouses to wear when I folk danced at Stanford University; and wrote in a journal almost daily. I lived in Cuernavaca Mexico for a month and spoke fluent Spanish.
I wanted to be Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez, so I taught guitar. I was also the family go-to for baking desserts. I worked on an archeological dig and on the Save the Bay Campaign; drove a VW Beetle through the Pacific Coast Range; and discovered the joy of backpacking (my parents were confused because, as a child, I wanted to be carried when on family hikes, though to be fair, sitting up on my Dad’s shoulders was pretty nifty).
I began my own healing journey at UC Santa Cruz in the 1970s. When I graduated with double honors, I remember wishing I could “just” be a medicine woman, a healer. My journal from two years before that says, “If I could be anything, I would want the power to heal people with plants, to doctor.”
All these decades later, it’s odd to find that I am that, though not in the way I imagined.
UCSC’s Community Studies program required me to do field study and write an undergraduate thesis. So, I lived on the Crow Indian Reservation for six months and developed a how-to manual for traditional crafts for the local 4-H program. I hung out with two ladies at the Crow Arts & Crafts Cooperative, learned to bead while listening to their stories. I participated in my first sweat-bath ceremony, disoriented from the heat and a dip in the Little Big Horn River, I promptly drove my VW bug in a ditch.
 Me and Frank at Crow Fair, August, 1976
I married a member of the Crow Nation. When our daughter was born with Down’s Syndrome, I began a lifesaving healing journey for her, for myself.
For more than 30 years, I led Crow-style sweats for women. For sixteen I went on solo vision quests/retreats. I completed most of the coursework to certify in Nature Connect work (eco-psychology), but let that go when I began to study BodyTalk™ I have 42 years of business ownership expertise, 18 of which as the owner/partner/president of Accents West, Inc., a Bozeman Main Street business, one of Montana’s first retail stores with a flair for the New West. In those days when I went to merchandise shows in cities like LA and San Francisco, salespeople thought of Montana as barely civilized. As a business owner, I mentored several young women on their personal and professional life journeys. On closing the store, I trained to become a Life Coach, then committed to learning KaTaSee Traditional Healing and Balancing, becoming a practitioner of holistic healing arts. In my quest for wholeness and health, I sampled a smorgasbord of approaches: counseling and hypnosis, chiropractics, massage, physical therapy, Shamanic healing, sweat baths and Sundance ceremonies. For three years, I trained in Life and Business Coaching with Coach U and was one of the first life and business coaches in Gallatin County. But I remained restless, seeking. After completing most of the coursework to certify in Nature Connect work (eco-psychology), in 2003, I began four years of intensive study in Ka Ta See Traditional Healing and Balancing. I continued as an advanced student until 2012 and as a mentee until April 2024. In 2009, I became a certified BodyTalk™ practitioner. In 2012, I trained in Craniosacral Fascial Therapy. In 2013, I began to study Ortho-Bionomy® and am an associate practitioner. |
I had environmental sensitivities before there was even language for them. My reactiveness and people’s responses made me feel crazy. Was it all in my head? It sure didn’t seem like it.
Decades ago, my daughter penned this portrait of me in a notebook. It so accurately portrays my stress level at the time she drew it that after gifting it to me, she never wanted to look at it again.
I used to feel like I was caught in a trash compactor and it was squeezing the life out of me. Now, there is so much research about the effects of childhood trauma, but at that time there simply wasn’t and I often felt crazy.
I had environmental sensitivities before there was even language for them. My reactiveness and people’s responses also made me feel crazy. Was it all in my head? It sure didn’t seem like it.
To calm down, feel better, keep going, I became a workshop junkie. I read self-help book after self-help book. I looked for the one person, single approach, that could give me the crucial key to my own healing.
.
If my daughter hadn't been completely dependent on me, I probably would have given up on myself, on life. Being a mother remains intrinsic to who I am. That's a lonely truth when she's not physically present in my world. .
I used to feel like I was caught in a trash compactor and it was squeezing the life out of me. Now, there is so much research about the effects of childhood trauma, but at that time there simply wasn’t and I often felt crazy.
I had environmental sensitivities before there was even language for them. My reactiveness and people’s responses also made me feel crazy. Was it all in my head? It sure didn’t seem like it.
To calm down, feel better, keep going, I became a workshop junkie. I read self-help book after self-help book. I looked for the one person, single approach, that could give me the crucial key to my own healing.
.
If my daughter hadn't been completely dependent on me, I probably would have given up on myself, on life. Being a mother remains intrinsic to who I am. That's a lonely truth when she's not physically present in my world. .
BodyTalk™ Therapy
became an essential missing piece
became an essential missing piece
I was introduced to BodyTalk by a physical therapist who had learned a couple of techniques from a friend of hers. When I first practiced the Cortices brain-balancing on myself, I felt like I was holding my brain in, giving it the safe and quiet space it had needed for so long.
Already a Certified Ka Ta See Traditional Healing and Balancing Practitioner, I embraced BodyTalk’s more mainstream approach to energy healing and balancing. I was attracted to its scope— both simple and infinitely nuanced— and to being able to comfortably present myself as a energy healer while I still worked in Gallatin County’s criminal justice system.
I began to manage my stress. I reduced and then eliminated my dependency on over-the-counter painkillers. My thinking got clearer; my ability to be constructively linear and analytical strengthened.
Already a Certified Ka Ta See Traditional Healing and Balancing Practitioner, I embraced BodyTalk’s more mainstream approach to energy healing and balancing. I was attracted to its scope— both simple and infinitely nuanced— and to being able to comfortably present myself as a energy healer while I still worked in Gallatin County’s criminal justice system.
I began to manage my stress. I reduced and then eliminated my dependency on over-the-counter painkillers. My thinking got clearer; my ability to be constructively linear and analytical strengthened.
Ever so slowly, I began to manage my stress, reduced and then eliminated my dependency on over-the-counter painkillers.
My thinking got clearer; my ability to be constructively linear and analytical strengthened.
Sessions bridge old and new paradigms of health and healing
In 2012, I found Craniosacral Fascial/Dental Therapy, the missing link in providing a hands-on approach to address and unwind connective tissue. Likewise, Ortho-Bionomy® invites release with gentle touch, supporting the body’s organic movement. I taught my daughter how to do some of these techniques; we used to trade sessions. I work on and with myself a lot. I am an enthusiastic advocate for consistent and persistent self-care.
These days?
Ah, well. These days . . . I work with my daughter's artistic legacy and am writing a memoir. I was awarded a life time membership in Women Writing the West because I was a founding member 30 years ago. Subscribe to my email newsletter, here. |
Tepee frame garden at my former home-place of 45 years on Bozeman's so-changed north side. I now live + garden on the east side.
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