More ABOUT Robin

Passionate About Empowering the FEMININE

I have always been deeply spiritual, losing my father to lung cancer at the age of 2 touched my life with a profound grief from an early age; but with that grief came a direct and very close line of communication to my departed ancestors and the Divine. Always asking and seeking answers to spiritual questions, wondering what happens/happened after/before this life, and given a life where only the feminine role of parenting was represented.

Raised by my single mother who became involved in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (or Mormon/LDS) when I was 11, I converted and was baptized, committing wholly to this community and belief system throughout my adolescence and early adulthood. My devotion to this ideology led to a desire to share it, and at age 22, I journeyed to central Washington state on a Spanish-Speaking mission in which I served and taught the principles of the Mormon tradition to prodominately Latin American migrant communities residing in this area. This time was profoundly meaningful in my Spiritual development and I found deep fulfillment in sharing and hearing stories of how God was present for people of any belief system; doing so in the Spanish language and with the Latinx people was one of the most humbling and heartwarming experiences of my life.

A unique and often unknown belief in the Latter Day Saint teachings is that there exists a Divine Mother and that creation comes from the sacred union of masculine and feminine and through embodying this union here on Earth, undergoing specific ceremonies and rituals, and maintaining this bond with honor, love, and responsibility, we can go on together after this life to become Gods ourselves and create worlds of our own. This belief is profound and rings of the Truth I have always been seeking; yet I often felt it was incomplete. While this tradition believes in the Mother Goddess, She is not spoken of or even named, she is "protected" from our knowledge so she cannot be abused or profaned; it is not permtted to pray to Her and Her power is not recognized, honored, or worshiped through any ritual or ceremony, of which there are many, offered through these customs. Rather, She is portrayed as surrendering to and receiving the power of and given to the masculine; with her nature of care and compassion, her primary purpose is caregiver and nurturer to strengthen the power of man. But I have found through study of other traditions that this has been exactly switched and for a true union to be divine, it should be that the masculine is the foundational support which allows the power of the feminine to shine forth into the world. I've found a metaphor that provides the most resonant way of explaining this to be: the masculine is the riverbank which contains the feminine river.

I left the church in 2012 and have been seeking the Great Mother's spiritual wisdom from many mystical and esoteric traditions ever since. Even relying on a more humanist approach within scientism throughout my education in Social Work, but I found here a tragic lack of soul. Despite all my searching and attempts to define the Sacred Feminine, I struggled to find anything resonant of Truth in the majority of traditions in existence today, especially in the West. Or with some Eastern traditions in which Goddess worship is alive and thriving, I couldn't fully resonate with them due to a fear of cultural appropriation and feeling a general sense of foreignness with them.

I discovered again and again that the divinity of the feminine had been deleted, erased, or diminished to only Her power of care and compassion. Through my own excavation and exploration of my own power as a woman here on this Earth, through my own experience as a mother, and through the devlopement of my own practices, rituals, and ceremonies to know Her personally; I have found that this is only part of Her. An important and True part to be sure, but a part that has been used to keep women meek, submissive, and powerless to the whims of a masculine that has been unchecked by Her TRUE power for generations.

Raised in the high desert and growing up at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains along the Truckee River, my relationship with the Great Mother began through nature. An avid camper, skier, backpacker, mountain biker/cyclist, swimmer, and stand-up paddle boarder, I have always relied on Mother Nature to recharge and ground through the hardships life brings. Leaning into the wisdom of trees, fungi, and the furred and winged creatures with whom we share this beautiful planet brings a remembering of the balance to be found by following our instincts. A remembering of the POWER of nature, humbling me through Her vastness and capacity to maintain balance through intricate, interweaving ecologies. And I've learned that Her power is never for or on behalf of any one individual, but rather for the community or habitat as a whole, which can be a hard lesson to grasp coming from the rugged individualism hallmarking Western spiritual ideologies. Especially when we consider how some life must die in order to feed and fuel new life and growth. Mother Earth in Her most natural and undisturbed states has been my greatest teacher in this endeavor to know The Great Mother. Lake Tahoe in her beauty and majesty is the saphire jewel of my affection and I go to her often to swim and paddle, to ski on the peaks circling her, and to steep in her deep, ancient wisdom.

This, I have come to learn, is Animism, which is defined by the Webster dictionary as "the worldview that non-human entities - including animals, plants, rocks, rivers, and weather systems - possess a distinct spirtual essence, soul, or conscious life." This defines my spirituality more than any other concept, tradition, or belief system I have thus encountered. And this brought me into a whole new world of research rabbit holes to spiral into, and spiral I have!

My experience as a mother and step-mother of two daughters has intensified this need to know the most natural form of the Feminine, not only for myself, but for them. Work in systems of care through a lens of Social Work, has also enlightened my understanding of all the ways our system of patriarchy is failing to raise and cultivate healthy children and families, and all the holes in policy and gaps in resources to effectively intervene to protect women and children from the violence perpetrated by men. Men who are deeply unhappy and unfulfilled themselves, and rather than stand accountable for the failure of the system they created, women are blamed and shamed. By taking women out of our communities and forcing us into isolated "nuclear" families, men and women have both lost the most meaningful part of being alive: To share the bounty of this beautiful existence in awe and wonder with all those around us. Ultimately, there is a CULTURAL flaw creating the unhealthy norms of isolation and individualism keeping our families from truly thriving.

I began playing violin in 6th grade, when I decided I NEEDED to play Violin specifically. The Christmas of 5th grade "Santa" brought me my first violin, and I stared at it hopelessly, not even able to tune it because no one else in my household knew anything about violin, until I got involved in the free music program provided by my public school system in 6th grade. I have relied on this gift of music to express and cope with the emotional pain of the harrowing exposure to child suffering I have witnessed from such an early age. Music has been the only expression that has continually healed my own HEART center from the layers of armor that exposure to this knowledge causes me to contruct around my heart, allowing me to show up vulnerably and openly in relationships and with the world.

Music has been my direct line of communication to my departed ancestors and the Divine. And two years ago, in a personal ceremony I created for myself, I dedicated my music to HER. To the Divine Feminine and Mother Goddess in every beautiful woman and care worker I have ever met who continue to show up for this broken world and keep giving of their care and compassion, even when it feels so hopeless right now. This work has a toll and it is a heavy one. When our hearts centers are blocked in giving our love because we give our love all day every day, to the most broken humans of our society, we cannot show up for our families, for our own children, for our communities, and we certainly are not encouraged, taught, or supported in showing up for ourselves.

All my music is played using the A=432hz tuning system, which is more aligned with Earth’s vibrations and most commonly used in sound healing. I also use unique arrangements of classical music in my workshops and rituals, which research has shown has a calming and regulating effect on the human nervous system. It is important to come together in safe and sacred reverence to heal the wounds to our Root, Sacrel, and Heart centers, perpetrated by the abuse and violence of the patriarchy. Only once we have done this energetic work, can the flow of creative energy from the Great Mother Goddess be unimpeded in bringing forth what is next.

In Sound Healing there is a formula commonly used to define it : Intention + Vibration = Healing. Throughout all my years of seeking esoteric and mystical wisdom, I have learned how POWERFUL the human consciousness is. That our minds, but mostly our HEARTS cary electro-magnetic energy, and the state/frequency resonating from our hearts is what actually writes the law of what we attract. I have and continue to do the work of unblocking my HEART so I can bring loving intention as I share my healing vibrations with anyone in need of tuning their energy centers, in particular, the HEART. The center for lovingkindness and compassion, and the FEMININE NATURE that will heal the world. It is my hope that this work will develop others' abilities to connect with Her, to link arms and watch the FEMININE RISE, so we can imagine a new way of being BEYOND patriarchy.

Most recently I have taken a role as a medical social worker for an agency providing home health and hopsice care, assisting the aging and their caregivers in accessing needed resources, helping the dying as they work through their diagnoses emotionally, and supporting their surviving loved ones through the grief and bereavement process once they've crossed over. I hope to extend my music to playing for the dying and offer group grief rituals to help anyone struggling with the loss of a loved one to feel and be witnessed in their sorrow as they learn to carry that vacancy in their hearts.

Certifications

Bachelor of Social Work in 2013, beginning work as an intern in 2012 within the child welfare system.
Master of Social Work in 2020 with primary research topics being the negative impacts of helping/healing work, namely: compassion fatigue, vicarious and secondary trauma, and burnout.
Life Coach Certification in 2023 through Co-Active Training Institute, with an emphasis on compassionate and human-first leadership development in an initiative to improve child welfare workforce retention.

Qualifications

13 years of experience in micro, mezzo, and macro social work within child welfare to promote more strength-based and culturally adpative intervention with families.
10 years of experience as a coach and teacher of new staff coming into the field of child welfare.
3 years of leadership coaching experience within multiple child welfare agencies to shift leadership values toward a human-driven and supportive approach.
Current practice as a hospice social worker, asssisting the aging and their caregivers and providing grief and bereavement support to survivors following death.