Welcome

Living Leaves is more than just an initiative. It is a local effort at the precipice of a living, growing movement that is emerging across that nation. One that seeks to mend the fracture in our consciousness around the cycle of life, by restoring death awareness as the essential and necessary component to what it means to be alive. It also has a very practical approach to reimagining our responsibility in what we leave behind.

It is a relational, spiritual, environmental, practical, and process-minded approach that seeks inspire collective action at the grassroots and individual level. 

The three focal branches of the Initiative are: individual life path, community resources for conscious living and dying, and redefining our responsibilities to the land by creatively embracing the cyclical nature of life and death.  

As a Life Doula, I recognize the importance of relationship, impermanence, and the force that connects one to oneself, ones community, and those those that will follow in our footsteps. 

I encourage each to seek out their own path, and communities to come together to nourish and sustain their environment and resources.

In a world that is largely individually focused, I embrace this need to understand the self and foster diversity. However, I also challenge us to look beyond the common definitions of identity, to source from within, and like the living ecosystem around us, develop deep roots that not only strengthen our sense of purpose, but also allow us to expand beyond the "boundaries" of the self, towards what the ancient wisdom traditions often spoke about as "the way" where life merges with something much larger than ourselves.

Living Leaves embraces the loving nature of all paths, lifestyles, and belief systems  

As a natural burial advocate, I encourage communities to reimagine their landscapes as opportunities to embrace the cohabitation of the living and the dead in its natural cycle, where one sustains the other. 

Perhaps in doing so, the real and metaphorical divides we see in iron fences, fractured relationships, broken concrete, and forgotten stories can be repaired in our lives, communities, and heart spaces as well. 

The hope is that these public places will nurture concepts of community, reciprocity, and responsibility.