ecotherapy – audrey di mola – folkloric futurism

my friends + comrades—

it’s no secret that we are living through unprecedented times– literally, these days, Right Now. but would you believe that there is something in the bite and blood, the adventure and danger and jubilation of the Old Stories– Myths and Legends– that can help us localize and re-commit to the Hero’s Journey of our own lives, even in such depth of our current uncertainty?

i am invoking, in my own way, what so many storyteller-healers before me have also called for: a kind of “folkloric futurism” through the revelatory and liberatory act of LIVING YOUR LEGEND– a mode of generative, eco-centric, holistic recontextualization that reconnects us to the sacred aliveness in Story.

thanks to The Institute for the Development of Human Arts (an exceptional org i have been fangirling over since stumbling upon it 2 years ago…), on November 16 we’ll explore with sharing, exercises, and storytelling how forging a conscious mythic renaissance can help to ground us in radical acceptance, untapped or forgotten creativity, devotion to our deep heartworks, and service to community.

HOW TO CONVERT YOUR LIFE INTO LEGEND:
INSIDE THE HERO’S JOURNEY WITH AUDREY DIMOLA
november 16, 7-9pm

+++ huge thanks to IDHA NYC, jessie roth, and noah phillips for co-moderating and facilitating this event {our first!} with me!! <3

/// SEE ALSO

grateful for every opportunity presented to me to share my journey:

++ thank you to vijay r. nathan {and bruce whitacre!} for featuring me and my work on his TRUTH TO POWER SHOW podcast, episode 140 THE WILD TRUTH [listen here] this is the first time formally discussing these philosophies and also integrating my newly-completed training in ecotherapy! i also read my ‘two wolves’ story which started my legend work in 2016…

++ and the day after my 34th birthday this past august, a big big big dream came true and i was published on MAD IN AMERICA, the mission of which is to “mission is to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the united states (and abroad).” read my article, “VALIDATING PSYCHOSIS: THE MISSING NARRATIVE” [right here]

{huge thanks also to the personally life-changing film CRAZYWISE for spreading the word about my piece on their social media!! wow}

[…]

“we are receiving a request to move on still further, from the psychological to the mythological stage […] that understanding is not behind us, but ahead of us.”
–robert bly.

these are the days of All Days.
our world is in transition as we write, dance, rage, create, dig, connect, hope, grieve, uplift our own communities, help + HEAL HEAL HEAL–
no matter what– Our Work Continues.

stay tuned for more mythic chats, exercises, and experimentation– i’ve also added a new LET’S WORK TOGETHER page for enhanced clarity on my emergent offerings in the realms of earth-based healing + legend work.

i’m with you, and hoping you are taking good good care, wherever you are–

101359945_10102734395701154_5416480598124396544_o

I do not come to you with an abundance of formal certifications– none, actually, save for a Bachelors in Media Studies now over ten years ago. I have learned as our ancestors learned– through the natural world, from story, in community, in communion with spirit, and from direct experience.

I did not come to this work because it interested me. I came because my life depended on it.

At 21, I was Managing Editor of a glossy arts magazine in my home neighborhood. At 25, I was managing high-level corporate clients as a digital project manager for a rapidly growing tech start-up. At 30, I became Director of Public Programs for a world-renowned outdoor art museum, NYC park, and community event space. I have self-published 4 books and performed all over the city in venues large and small.

I have wanted to end my life many, many times. I have suffered through the literal shattering of my container so that I could expand to more fully accommodate my truest Self. I was arrested for spreading positivity through poetry graffiti. Ended up an outpatient in an addiction treatment center after my relationship– with a man struggling mightily with hard drug addiction– exploded. Lived years and years of compounded, unresolved interpersonal trauma and codependency. And was diagnosed bipolar II and anxiety disorder in 2018.

With the help of alternative frameworks, earth-based traditions, radical vulnerability, community in the human and more-than-human worlds, and the “mythic remediation” that comes with recontextualizing my Life as Legend– I have arrived in this Place that allows me to come to you As I Am, to meet You, As You Are.

I am interested in Ecopsychology and its practice of Ecotherapy because it brings me new vocabulary for the deeply interconnected, reverential, poetic, mythic, wild realms I have inhabited my whole life, but especially over the past 5 years of descent and healing. I am naturally inclined to help you walk between worlds and reclaim your birthright as a wondrous creature on this precious earth, privy to the generative wisdom and inner/outer adventures that extend so far beyond our purely mental capacities as well the mortal realm.

I am here to shatter traditional narratives and disempowering, oppressive, disconnected frameworks in the way that my own was shattered– to remind you that there is a framework that already exists, that already belongs to you, as you belong to it.

During my time in the addiction treatment center, one day in group a man who never ventured to say anything, for weeks, suddenly spoke– and he said, “You have to rewrite your own legacy. Because if not they’re going to be standing around your casket saying– ‘He never got a hold of that, did he? He never kicked it.'” On the way out of the room I told him, “I liked what you said about rewriting your legacy.” And he replied– “You have to, or someone else will.”