THE HEALING HEALERS
Are you a deeply gifted and passionate healer who feels like you need to hide your human side from the world to be considered “professional?”
Are you too busy helping your clients, patients, students or community members that you don’t have time to get your own support too?
Are you watching the world being run by vastly less sophisticated leaders than yourself but feel too overwhelmed to do much about it?
Welcome. You have come to the right place.
“The Healing Healers” is my eleven-month leadership training program for practitioners of the healing arts ready to reclaim the ancient story of the Wounded Healer and create a new mythology.
I have been a therapist for twenty years and I’m tired. Tired of seeing so many of us in the healing arts limping along, with dimmed lights and tattered souls, hiding our fears and pains in isolation while we help others mend theirs.
That was never the design of the Wounded Healer. We are not here to deepen our wounds . We are here to celebrate and share their lessons. We are here to heal, too.
If you are reading this, you likely already recognize that the world needs us to get healthier. To let ourselves be seen, held and honored by other healers. Only then can we create the new mythology of healing warriors liberated from the culture of chronic burnout leading the way to world change. But we must get healthier, first, to transmit healing from our own wholeness.
As you already know if you are in the healing arts, healing never really happened any other way.
I am calling the Wounded Healers of the world to join me in a commitment to evolve into The Healing Healers. It is time.
Why The Healing Healers
I created this program because across my diverse trainings – from academia to the sex education industry to peer led connection movements – I encountered contradiction. I was taught to give away my health for the sake of helping others.
I knew there was something very wrong with these environments. Yet the hypocrisy was so normalized that I went along when I shouldn’t have. I thought these compromises were the necessary initiation. I saw no alternatives. Sound familiar?
Why The Healing Healers
I created this program because across my diverse trainings – from academia to the sex education industry to peer led connection movements – I encountered contradiction. I was taught to give away my health for the sake of helping others.
I knew there was something very wrong with these environments. Yet the hypocrisy was so normalized that I went along when I shouldn’t have. I thought these compromises were the necessary initiation. I saw no alternatives. Sound familiar?
As I matured as a therapist and coach, I shifted from dismissing my discomfort to imagining my aversion was telling me something important, something very important.
Let’s think of it this way: As a guiding truth of healing, you know well that any unwanted parts – cast into the shadows of your psyche – will take over your life, right? So in essence, what you are hiding is ruling you.If the prevailing framework guiding our profession suggests that we as healers must be above the human mess, how can we be whole?
By separating our humanness from our endeavor of healing, we are risking subscribing to a model of dis-integration. We are keeping ourselves fractured, and risking passing on psychological dis-integration to our clients, patients and students.
I believe we can do better.
As I matured as a therapist and coach, I shifted from dismissing my discomfort to imagining my aversion was telling me something important, something very important.
Let’s think of it this way: As a guiding truth of healing, you know well that any unwanted parts – cast into the shadows of your psyche – will take over your life, right? So in essence, what you are hiding is ruling you.If the prevailing framework guiding our profession suggests that we as healers must be above the human mess, how can we be whole?
By separating our humanness from our endeavor of healing, we are risking subscribing to a model of dis-integration. We are keeping ourselves fractured, and risking passing on psychological dis-integration to our clients, patients and students.
I believe we can do better.
Do you know the concept of the “Wounded Healer?”. The idea that our wounds – whether through loss, abuse, addiction or illness – catalyzed the healing gifts we share with the world. As Leonard Cohen famously sings, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”
What if the wound that wrought our healing gifts, rather than being something to hide, was something to celebrate?
Scholar, philosopher and researcher Dr. Jean Houston writes, “When we cannot mythologize, we pathologize”. Seems to fit our current paradigm, don’t you think!
We are missing a mythology to help us revere our calling, celebrate our origin stories and join together with others like us. To “remythologize” is to take the stigma out of the story. To reclaim our narrative as if it was by design not by accident. And to find ourselves reconnected with a larger purpose that leaves no part of us behind.
Do you know the concept of the “Wounded Healer?”. The idea that our wounds – whether through loss, abuse, addiction or illness – catalyzed the healing gifts we share with the world. As Leonard Cohen famously sings, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”
What if the wound that wrought our healing gifts, rather than being something to hide, was something to celebrate?
Scholar, philosopher and researcher Dr. Jean Houston writes, “When we cannot mythologize, we pathologize”. Seems to fit our current paradigm, don’t you think!
We are missing a mythology to help us revere our calling, celebrate our origin stories and join together with others like us. To “remythologize” is to take the stigma out of the story. To reclaim our narrative as if it was by design not by accident. And to find ourselves reconnected with a larger purpose that leaves no part of us behind.
Imagine. Imagine a culture of healing that empowers us to grow sound in mind and body because we are truly walking our talk. Imagine the healing transmission that would be possible then.
Imagine what it could be like for you to pay homage to the history that forged you. To lift up your journey as the source of your wisdom. To diligently practice receiving support from other healers who understand your plight intimately.
Imagine forgiving yourself for your humanity as if there was never anything to forgive!
I invite you to join me to “come out” as the beautiful human you are surrounded by other potent healers. And in so doing, to complete your work as a “Wounded Healer”. And to free yourself to evolve into the next iteration as the “Healing Healer”.
Imagine. Imagine a culture of healing that empowers us to grow sound in mind and body because we are truly walking our talk. Imagine the healing transmission that would be possible then.
Imagine what it could be like for you to pay homage to the history that forged you. To lift up your journey as the source of your wisdom. To diligently practice receiving support from other healers who understand your plight intimately.
Imagine forgiving yourself for your humanity as if there was never anything to forgive!
I invite you to join me to “come out” as the beautiful human you are surrounded by other potent healers. And in so doing, to complete your work as a “Wounded Healer”. And to free yourself to evolve into the next iteration as the “Healing Healer”.
Dr. Jessica Tartaro possesses a genius for calling forward the leader in all of us striving to lead. She does it with love, humor and play, which is why it works. I told her at the end of our class that she is a ‘Leadership Savant’ and I meant it. She was designed to lead leaders.
I have struggled with fatigue from trying to be successful following a model of overextension, very little rest, and habitually skipping over the voices within me saying “stop.” This course gifted me the visceral understanding of how to connect with and offer trust to other parts of me whose perspective I need in order to be whole and to truly rest. Dr. Jessica led with paradigm-shifting vulnerability and facilitated a safe and intimate connection between 8 women that came to feel like a sisterhood by the end. There was a profound quality of healing that emerged during the weekend intensives that I usually associate with “shamanic” healing offerings, where the unseen world becomes more palpable and the extraordinary breadth and depth of our beingness feels touched in new ways. I am grateful for the whole experience!
Each time I hear this song by the band MaMuse, my body chills and my heart swells. They offer inspiration for the path of the Healing Healer. Listen as they sing: “It is time now / It is time now that we thrive/ In this great turning we shall learn to lead in love.” http://www.mamuse.org/
THE HEALING HEALERS
Feel moved by what you have read? Starting in February of 2020, I will offer the first 11-month round of “The Healing Healers” for 12 practitioners who are ready to co-create a culture of support and sustainable health around their practice.
CONTACT ME to set up an interview to be considered for this program.
I ask you to bring the following willingness with you through the door of my Leadership Training:
A willingness to:
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Examine the internal obstacles in the way of your vulnerability
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Practice remembering how to be vulnerable
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Explore your relationship with receiving
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Get in the seat of receiving, often
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Own your experience/use ownership language
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Receive supportive feedback in the service of your growth
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Give yourself permission to be messy
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Explore the edge of your relationship with being in control
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Give and receive consent-based, non sexual touch (in class exercises)
-
Redesign your model of healing to include loyalty to yourself as your bedrock
A willingness to:
-
Examine the internal obstacles in the way of your vulnerability
-
Practice remembering how to be vulnerable
-
Explore your relationship with receiving
-
Get in the seat of receiving, often
-
Own your experience/use ownership language
-
Receive supportive feedback in the service of your growth
-
Give yourself permission to be messy
-
Explore the edge of your relationship with being in control
-
Give and receive consent-based, non sexual touch (in class exercises)
-
Redesign your model of healing to include loyalty to yourself as your bedrock
Modalities and principles I draw from include:
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Authentic Relating games
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Circling (a relational meditation)
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Improvisational movement including Contact Improvisation
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Internal Family Systems practices
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Sacred psychology and mythology exercises
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Journaling and narrative therapy practices
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Gestalt techniques
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Music and poetry as prompts for reflections and deepening
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Co-creation of personal and group ritual
-
Grieving as an ongoing wellness practice
-
Time in nature cultivating slowness and intuitive listening
-
Healthy sexual wellness as an essential element of wholistic health
Modalities and principles I draw from include:
-
Authentic Relating games
-
Circling (a relational meditation)
-
Improvisational movement including Contact Improvisation
-
Internal Family Systems practices
-
Sacred psychology and mythology exercises
-
Journaling and narrative therapy practices
-
Gestalt techniques
-
Music and poetry as prompts for reflections and deepening
-
Co-creation of personal and group ritual
-
Grieving as an ongoing wellness practice
-
Time in nature cultivating slowness and intuitive listening
-
Healthy sexual wellness as an essential element of wholistic health
Modules in The Healing Healers will include:
I. Remythologizing Healing Leadership ~ Through improvisation, journaling, ritual and movement, you will recast and retell your healing journey.
II. The Genius In the Wound ~ You will learn to celebrate, integrate and relate with compassion to the parts of you that arose from your original wounding.
II. Leading from Transparency: Authentic Leadership ~ Through individualized guidance, you will learn to lead Authentic Relating games while embodying a model of leadership from the inside out.
IV. Receiving: The Advanced Yoga Pose ~ Supported by your fellow healers, you will examine your relationship to receiving and get to practice being held and loved.
V. Intimacy for Healers ~ You will get to dialogue with others about your intimacy journey and learn specific tools for success in love as an empath.
VI. Your Turn ~ You will facilitate a healing offering during our final immersion practicing the new paradigm from our year together.
Modules in The Healing Healers will include:
I. Remythologizing Healing Leadership ~ Through improvisation, journaling, ritual and movement, you will recast and retell your healing journey.
II. The Genius In the Wound ~ You will learn to celebrate, integrate and relate with compassion to the parts of you that arose from your original wounding.
II. Leading from Transparency: Authentic Leadership ~ Through individualized guidance, you will learn to lead Authentic Relating games while embodying a model of leadership from the inside out.
IV. Receiving: The Advanced Yoga Pose ~ Supported by your fellow healers, you will examine your relationship to receiving and get to practice being held and loved.
V. Intimacy for Healers ~ You will get to dialogue with others about your intimacy journey and learn specific tools for success in love as an empath.
VI. Your Turn ~ You will facilitate a healing offering during our final immersion practicing the new paradigm from our year together.
Program Structure:
We will meet for 6 three-day immersions – the first Tuesday through Thursday of the month – every other month in 2020. Our first immersion will be February 4th-6th. Then April, June, August, October and December. I am spacing out our meetings so we have plenty of time to breathe, digest and grow together. This isn’t your typical “cram it all in” training. We are creating something different.
For our immersions we will gather at the gorgeous Zen River Retreat in Quilcene, WA, on the lush Olympic Peninsula, to surround our work by serene natural beauty, quiet and a complete “getaway” from the roles and responsibilities of our day-to-day lives.
In between immersions, I will lead monthly “Connection Calls” via Zoom, offer weekly meditations, invite partner practices and facilitate a private Facebook group for continued communication, development, learning and support. We will also have a number of highly gifted, guest teachers join us for the virtual portion of our training.
The full commitment will be for 11 months.
Cost of Program:
Early Bird Cost of Program by December 15th – Paid in Full: $4975
Regular Registration Program Cost after December 15th – Paid in Full: $5475
Regular Registration Program Cost after December 15th – Payment Plan: $5975 ($500/month to be paid before final immersion)
When you sign up for one of my leadership programs, I will give you a pathway to make your humanness your medicine rather than believing you need to hide to be effective.
Contact me to set up an interview to be considered for this program and/or to apply for private leadership coaching.
All practitioners of the healing arts who seek a path of health and congruence are welcome to apply.
Program Faculty:
Dr. Jessica Tartaro – Visionary, Channel & Catalyzer
Here’s a story you might not believe. In late August of 2017, I was sitting in a grassy field on Marrowstone Island looking out over the Salish Sea. It was the day of the epic solar eclipse when thousands were gathered across the country to behold this spectacle. I was part of a sacred ceremony guided by two strong medicine woman. One burned tobacco to help us commune between worlds, she said. Another beat a drum and sang. I joined my voice with hers. That summer I was visiting Washington from my home in Dallas, Texas, to teach at Dance Camp Northwest, which coincided with the eclipse. The dancers gathered in the field alongside me passed the glasses back and forth that allowed us to gaze heavenward and view the sun’s withdrawal as it slid behind the moon. When the sun finally disappeared, a holy chill settled in my bones. It was instantly cold, like I imagined the bottom of the ocean would be. I began to cry and shake for no reason I could name. Something took over. I asked the man next to me, a friend I’d just met, to hold me. And I told him this. “I’m getting a message that healing must happen through love, not through suffering anymore”. I said it over and over. Guided by that message, I moved to the Pacific Northwest, set up my practice and created this program.
Renee Baribault – Program Oracle
I am a mother of two, a mindfulness coach, a gifted massage therapist and a psychic. Early in life I knew I was an empathic healer. During my adulthood, especially through the grounding practice of mindful parenting, I have evolved my empathy to a form of psychic knowing that continues to grow. I feel thrilled to be dedicating my skills to the Healing Healers journey as your Program Oracle. During our journey together in 2020, I will be supporting the overall flow of communication between you as the participant and us as a program team. I will also be teaching psychic/empath hygiene practices and principles and leading one week a month in our online forum. I look forward to growing, healing and playing with you! Read more about my coaching and contact me at www.SacredWisdomCoaching.com.
Zachary Robison – Sage of the Road
I was born in a dark place. My sojourn began in poverty, reared by the broken. In those days, any light I had I used to keep the darkness from sliding deeper in. During my final years of public education, I was homeless, learning the lessons of hunger, uncertainty and loss of direction. From there, I committed to a direction: to find happiness with a sword named wit, a shield forged of care and a compass that pointed to anywhere that was different from my past. Along the road my sword and I helped others fight a way out of their own darkness. And when that wasn’t enough, I held space by simply holding their hand sending them love as they closed their eyes one last time. My path is to learn the ways home so that I can help as many others find their way to theirs. In The Healing Healers Journey with you, I will be co-leading Module 3 – Authentic Leadership – and empowering you with the tools to teach Authentic Relating Games to find your own way home.
Can We Find Compassion for Even The Worst Behavior – In Them & In Us?
The ability to respond with forgiveness and understanding in a world that is teaching us to fight and condemn feels Divine. In this essay, I reflect on what it means to me to become better than my own history of trauma in order to heal myself and the world around me.
How to be A Friend to a Therapist: Life One Year into the Pandemic
If you have therapists and other mental health professionals in your networks of friends and family, there are a few things worth keeping in mind about how to be a friend to the folks who are quietly holding together the sanity of our country, one video session at a time.
YOU MUST KNOW YOUR WILD TO LOVE ME
I trust you to the degree that you have welcomed your own wild out and befriended them... Only then will we be safe to love one another.
Testimonials for The Healing Healers
I felt trusted, loved and respected within a willingness to meet me where I am in general and in the present moment. I learned how to use my vulnerability as my strength in ways I knew deep within myself and in ways I learned over the course of our time together. I feel stronger as a leader, more confident in my ability to lead within my profession as well as in my personal life. My gratitude is in every cell of my body and will continue to grow as I move forward.
~Jane Thornton, Somatic Therapist, Graduate, “Leadership From the Inside Out”, 2019
In our second immersion weekend we tapped into our wounded healer and made time for the parts of myself that were needing care and healing. The process that Jessica guided us through allowed me to clearly see what is underneath the places and patterns that I feel stuck in. There were many “aha!” moments of connection between my personal work and how it affects what I can offer in my professional work. This was a cornerstone in my transformation into a more integrated healer, which allows me to be a more vulnerable leader. And I gathered so much just by watching Jessica guide the group through exploring this new model of leadership. Witnessing her transformation into a leader who is not willing to sacrifice herself for others was so powerful and offered me a strong foundation to lead from.
– Renee Baribault, Bodyworker & Intuitive Healer, Graduate, “Leadership From the Inside Out”, 2019