LINDSAY James
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LINDSAY James
HOME
COUPLES WORK
RETREATS
MENTORSHIP & TRAININGS
ORiGIN STORY
PATHWAYS
KIN & COLLABORATORS
LOCAL TRUSTED RESOURCES
ETHOS
CONNECT
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  • HOME
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  • RETREATS
  • MENTORSHIP & TRAININGS
  • ORiGIN STORY
  • PATHWAYS
  • KIN & COLLABORATORS
  • LOCAL TRUSTED RESOURCES
  • ETHOS
  • CONNECT
  • HOME
  • COUPLES WORK
  • RETREATS
  • MENTORSHIP & TRAININGS
  • ORiGIN STORY
  • PATHWAYS
  • KIN & COLLABORATORS
  • LOCAL TRUSTED RESOURCES
  • ETHOS
  • CONNECT

Origin Story

welcome, kindred.

Every life is a story stitched through mystery, memory, and becoming.

The Wild Holiness of Existence

I was born on the red earth of Oklahoma in the early 1980s.

Back when childhood still happened outdoors.

When kids disappeared on bicycles until the streetlights came on.

When creeks were kingdoms, trees were cathedrals, and entire afternoons could be spent chasing adventure with scraped knees and a pocket full of possibilities.


Long before I had words like ceremony, grief work, somatics, ecopsychology, or death doula, I was already listening for something...


A deeper song.

A hidden current beneath ordinary life.

A way of being in the world that felt more alive, more honest, more connected than what I saw around me.


I've spent most of my life following that thread.

Not in a straight line.

Never in a straight line.

Through love and loss.

Through motherhood, marriage, and divorce.

Through heartbreak and reinvention.

Through wild landscapes and dark nights of the soul.

Through classrooms, nonprofit boardrooms, hospital rooms, ceremony circles, birth rooms, deathbeds, forests, kitchens, deserts, and countless conversations around sacred fires.


Each chapter asking the same question:

What helps human beings come fully alive?

The answer has never been simple.

But it has always been beautiful.


The Long Way Home

I thought I might become a lawyer.

Then a social worker.

Then a special education teacher.

I've always been drawn toward those living at the edges of what society understands.

The misunderstood.

The overlooked.

The grieving.

The struggling.

The extraordinary.

The deeply human.

Yet every path eventually led me to the same realization:

I cared less about systems than I did souls.

Less about bureaucracy than belonging.

Less about managing people than understanding them.

Then, in what felt like divine sleight of hand, life rerouted me into a degree in Peace & Reconciliation Studies when I transferred during my final year of Social Work course work at Colorado State University, to the University of Maine, where my then husband got a job..

That education changed everything.

Suddenly I was immersed in three more years of course work in ecopsychology, depth psychology, conflict resolution, death and dying, social justice, forgiveness, community restoration, collaborative communication, ritual, herbalism, healing arts, shamanic arts, and the question of what allows individuals and communities to heal and thrive.

It wasn't simply an academic program.

It was a doorway.

The first place where all the seemingly disconnected pieces of my life began to converge.

Human behavior.

Nature.

Spirit.

Grief.

Community.

Love.

Justice.

Belonging.

Death.

Life.

For the first time, I understood that my work would never fit neatly inside a single profession.

I wasn't training for a career.

I was being initiated into a vocation.


Before finally opening my private practice in 2011, I spent a decade tending the roots of community care in the nonprofit sector—working as a social worker, leadership trainer, and facilitator of philanthropic giving, advocacy, and service projects devoted to collective restoration.


A Life Spent at Thresholds

Over the last two decades, I have walked alongside thousands of people as they navigated the tender and terrifying work of being human.

I've sat with the dying.

Held grieving families.

Guided ceremonies.

Mentored leaders.

Supported couples.

Facilitated healing circles.

Trained practitioners.

Raised three extraordinary children.

Built communities.

Lost things I loved.

Found myself again.

Lost myself again.

And somewhere along the way I realized that most of us are not suffering from a lack of information.

We're suffering from disconnection.

From ourselves.

From one another.

From our bodies.

From the natural world.

From grief.

From purpose.

From the sacred.

My work exists to help restore those relationships.

Not through perfection.

Not through performance.

Not through bypassing the difficult parts of life.

But through presence.

Honesty.

Embodiment.

Community.

Ritual.

Courage.

And a willingness to stay present for what is real.


What I Believe

I believe grief belongs in the village.

I believe love is a practice.

I believe community is medicine.

I believe our bodies carry wisdom.

I believe the Earth is teacher, guardian, provider, and Mother.

I believe death has something to teach us about being fully alive and the passageway through is meant to be honored as ceremony.

I believe every threshold contains an invitation.

I believe healing is rarely neat or quick.

I believe transformation is both sacred, significant, and wildly ordinary.

I believe we are here to participate in life, not perfect it.

Most of all, I believe that beneath all of our striving, performing, fixing, and proving, there is something in each of us longing to remember who we already are.

My work is simply to help people find their way back, and then through.


The Credentials, If You're Curious

Bachelor's Degree in Peace & Reconciliation Studies

Certified Death Doula

Trauma-Informed Somatic Practitioner

Leadership Trainer & Community Builder

Student of Ecopsychology, Depth Psychology, Conflict Transformation, Embodiment, Breathwork, Sound Healing, Internal Family Systems, Emotional Clearing, Ritual Arts, and Earth-Based Practices 

Founder of The Way of the Medicine Woman

Co-Founder of WildKind Women's Leadership & Resilience Certification

Author of 'Roots & Rites- The Art of Tending Life Itself, A Living Guide for Space Holders'

Mother of Three

Keeper of Many Fires

Perpetual Student of Existence


But truthfully?

The credentials matter far less than the life.

Because the real training has always been the same...

Showing up.

Paying attention.

Staying curious.

Loving deeply.

And learning, again and again, how to remain fully human.


If you've found your way here, welcome.

Whether you're navigating love, loss, purpose, partnership, leadership, grief, becoming, or simply the ache for a more meaningful life, there is a place for you here.


Bring your whole self.

The polished parts.

The messy parts.

The uncertain parts.

The magnificent parts.

I'll meet you there.

You are wildly welcome here — in all your becoming

 ...in all your remembering. 


I am here to walk a few steps alongside you as you discover your way home to yourself, to the sacred, to one another, to our shared body of life.  


It's a mighty path of full of treasures untold, and one that sometimes requires a midwife and guide.


So here I am, offering up my presence.

Explore Offerings Here

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