The Medicine of Story
I work with writers whose spiritual journey is inextricable from their writing life.
As a traditionally published and critically acclaimed memoirist, I combine sharp craft instruction and publishing industry savvy with a soul-led pedagogy and concrete spiritual tools—accompanying nonfiction writers through the underworld process of becoming who they need to be to birth the book the world needs most.
I believe the traumas we suffer comprise the first half of an initiation. To complete the initiation, those of us born as writers must alchemize these experiences—transforming them into the medicine our culture needs.
Doing this requires not only command of our craft, but the ability to recognize and move through the spiritual invitations of our process.
This page is currently under construction.
My clients confront nervous system activation, learn tools for embodiment, face difficult truths about themselves, connect with spirit guides, remove negative energies or entities, persevere through murky stretches of disorientation, and develop a mature relationship to illness, sexuality, and death despite society’s deep aversion.
Showing up to the writing process fully changes us into clearer, braver, more vibrant versions of ourselves—imbuing the work with a different kind of potency.
My story:
Between 2009 and 2010, I survived repeated death initiations: from collapsing in a parking lot from a genetic heart condition, to spending five months waiting for treatment while afraid I would die, to undergoing my first heart surgery, to becoming septic and spending three weeks in the hospital feeling death move through me.
In the spring of 2012, I met an intuitive bodyworker at a hot spring and a psychic in a buffet line— and suddenly I was plunged into a process of connecting with a version of myself beyond myself, for whom these excruciating experiences were not accidents.
In the 13 years since then, I have attended psychic school, completed Reiki I & II trainings, studied at the Arizona Trauma Institute, apprenticed myself to mythosomatic qigong, undergone past life regressions, reprogrammed through hypnosis, learned from plant medicines, collaborated with a somatic coach, and more. I have had two—soon to be three—more heart surgeries (further death initiations), and writing about these experiences for my book Lightning Flowers required that I delve deeply into somatic experiencing, EMDR, holotropic breathwork, pelvic healing, angel work, meditation, and tarot.
In 2022—after a brutal and quick mental health decline— I learned I had been living in a house with an extremely malevolent entity. Even after I shrugged loose from the house and received cleansings and exorcisms, I found myself repeatedly running into spirits in hotel rooms— entering an era in which I would be asked to trust my own read on the energy of places, spaces, and individuals, and to act out of the full sovereignty I had come to know. I began to perform clearings. This transition proved impossible to separate from my work as a teacher and trauma writing doula, as the Universe increasingly brought me clients whose negative energetic attachments and snarly energetics impacted their writing process as much as their trauma and craft questions.
I am currently enrolled in the Nordic School of Shamanism in Lavik, Norway.
“ This work has been life-changing in ways I never could have expected. I feel that I have a very different relationship to my trauma now that it exists in a narrative form. I have had the opportunity to sit with it as I write, and to allow myself to have the space to feel the feelings without guilt—even if that means taking a break from the writing. This experience has been more transformative than many cumulative years of therapy and counseling. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I can’t say it enough.”
Apply to work with me:
“ Kati’s guidance, assignments, and feedback didn’t just reinvent my approach to personal narrative; it reoriented my entire approach to my own healing. Kati’s insistence that I see my trauma healing as non-negotiably body-based, not something I could hide in the verbal or intellectual, changed the trajectory of my life. Since working with Kati, I’ve graduated from talk therapy, embraced somatic healing, and am even changing the direction of my career. I cannot thank her enough for acting as a model for trauma survivorship, and for showing me the true, messy meaning of wellness.”
What is Thyrsus?
You may see the word Thyrsus listed on some of my business materials. But what is it?
A thyrsus is a wand topped with a lantern-like pinecone— carried, mythologically, by both Hanael (the Archangel of Venus) and the Greek God Bacchus. Hana—the angel of joy, pleasure, and nature—makes beauty from wreckage. She helps us find pleasure in all circumstances. She makes fruitful what was barren. Bacchus is the god of wine, god of the forest, fertile, honeyed, ecstatic, trafficking in epiphanies and subverting the dour oppression of authority. He is the dying-and-rising god. Born of Persephone, he is also known to be half of the Underworld—chthonic and wild with darkness.
And so the thyrsus is a light bringer in the midst of the wild dark. That is what we do here: We make beauty from wreckage. We cross the bridge from carcass to shyly budding garden. As a business name, Thyrsus is a process of restoring aliveness to the body after trauma. It is a way of working with writers that grows their voices down into the wet soil, connecting them with the nourishment they need to blossom. Thyrsus is the lantern casting light on the path; it is an erotic reunion between writers and their worlds.
Upcoming Workshops:
I’m a Patreon artist.
A literary life is full of uncertainty. You can honor the writing you love and help me make better art with a monthly Patreon pledge.