Linden Connects, Portland, OR (2026)

09/17/2024

New article, friends! Please share thoughts, comments, feedback, questions, or insights. I'd love to hear them! 🥰

"A deeper and more nuanced understanding of the ways our biology influences our experience, and the ways that we can intentionally create experiences that influence our own (and others!) biology, allows us to step into a place of empowerment. It frees us to enter into a more skillful relationship with our own and others’ behaviors and ways of being in the world that seem baffling, undesirable, or just plain unhelpful.

Rather than banging our heads against the walls of reality with the story that we should be able to think ourselves into acting differently or incentivize others into 'better behavior' (by force or by plea), this lens offers an alternate way of perceiving and understanding the human experience. Without this awareness, we often attempt to effort or will ourselves or others into more convenient or preferable or pleasant states. We stumble around in the fog of our reactivity, taking it all so personally, believing our struggles to be pathological or indicators of some innate moral deficiency."

The foundation of all of the work that I do (and, it seems, the lens through which I have come to see the world) is an applied understanding of the ways that our human brains and nervous systems operate. Our ability to respond skillfully to life’s challenges, the quality of our relationships with ...

03/09/2024

Beloved humans, consider this a personal invitation!

HELLO JOY! Weekend Retreat, April 19-21st in Vernonia, Oregon with me and Heather Burns.

We will laugh and play together, connect to the natural beauty of spring, reflect in deep conversation, practice imprinting delight into our nervous systems, and explore the ways we (and the culture we live in) block ourselves from our joy and the vitality and resilience that it brings. We will eat good food and wander around the forest and dance and laugh so hard we cry and reconnect to the simple beauty of being human together.

If you are feeling like you need an infusion of joy and vitality in your life as you emerge from winter, join us. If you feel like you don't have time or are too busy for such frivolous things, JOIN US. Seriously. You fu***ng need this. We all do.

DM me for questions. I can't wait to play in the forest with you!

Joy is a practice we can cultivate and a practice we need to feel more fully human and more fully interconnected. Enjoy a week-end focused on remembering and experiencing joy through embodiment, imagination, play, and earth connection. In a world steeped in complex problems, we all need restorative....

03/01/2024

Tenacity. Grit. Determination. Perseverance. Fortitude. Toughness. Invincibility. These are the words offered as synonyms for resilience. Take a moment and sit with the energy of those words in your body, even just reading them. How do you feel? (Seriously: how do you feel?)

I realize why people are tired of hearing the word. It's because we are tired.

All of these words have the energy of enduring, of standing in the face of an oncoming storm and holding one's ground, gritting one's teeth and buckling down and digging deep and efforting into the void, pretending like I am a stone and not a squishy meatsack with feelings and needs. Sometimes this stance is necessary, but it’s damn sure not sustainable.

What if resilience wasn't about efforting into the void? Withstanding and enduring and all that?

The way that I think about resilience, the way that I've come to understand it based on what I know about stress and trauma and the biology of our brilliant nervous systems is that it is less about enduring and more about the ways that we cultivate our capacity to stay engaged with the world and regulated in the face of all of its many challenges. When I facilitated social-emotional learning classes with high schoolers, one of the things that I would tell them is that it's not that the load gets lighter but that our backs get stronger. That is resilience.

[Click the link to read the full article!]

Tenacity. Grit. Determination. Perseverance. Fortitude. Toughness. Invincibility. There is a rigidity innate to these words, a hardness that evokes images of armored soldiers and exhausted mountaineers. To me, the message of these words is: work harder, try harder, keep going, do more. There is a ti

02/13/2024

Hey, y'all! I've been working over the past few months to clarify (for myself and others!) just what it is that I offer with my work in the world. This has translated into an updated website, yay! Please take a look and let me know what you think, and please reach out if you are curious about working with me.

And if you know others who you think might benefit from my work, please share with them! Most of the organizations and individuals I work with connect with me through word of mouth, and I am deeply grateful for your willingness to pass on the good word. 🩵

creating spaces for human connection and belonging We as humans have a deep and intrinsic need for connection and belonging. We are relational beings and can only experience true fulfillment and well-being when we are held in webs of healthy and nourishing communities. When we are disconnected from....

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Portland, OR
97214

Telephone

(503)9359618

Website

http://lindenconnects.com/

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