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Welcome to my corner of the web;
it's a delight to have you here!
For this self-taught artist, my site is the vibrant tapestry of an ongoing creative journey. If you find joy in what you see, I warmly invite you to return often. Whether you’d like to say hello to this mender of interconnected systems, schedule a therapy session, join one of our events, or seek information that eludes you, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Relational Mending of Systems: An Invocation of Healing
Nearly seven decades of navigating my life’s journey have, since 1990, been paralleled by apprenticing with complex trauma in service of those seeking change. Along the way, I have learned invaluable lessons about the human experience: we are born to parents, embraced by kin and friends, known to our neighbors, welcomed into communities, and eventually exposed to the greater world. The reception we receive in these contexts were both nurturing and challenging.
You might say that much of this is common knowledge, and you would be right! However, what is often less acknowledged is how the joys of connection, the pains of disconnection, and everything in between are essential to our understanding of relational life. These experiences shape our ways of relating to humans and beyond. On the day you will read this, who we both have become has been influenced by many diverse experiences, including unremembered challenges that (likely still) continue to define us.
The joys of connection, the pains of disconnection, and everything in between are essential to this understanding of relational life. If there was a balance of goodness, challenge, and mending, we acquired fluid ways of relating to ourselves, others, and the world at large. If that balance was lacking, we likely struggle. Being received can be warm and nurturing at times, while at other times, it may be more than challenging. Our identities are woven on a continuum between events we can remember and experiences held within our bodies without any knowable narratives. Whatever we were handed,
“…we will, we must, we do attach.”
Perhaps that is why you find yourself reading this to learn about me. So, here I go: My path as a systemic fabric mender —something I’ll elaborate on elsewhere—began in 1990. For 34 years prior to that, I navigated some highs and many lows (at times debilitating) of complex trauma without even realising what it was. The confluence of lived experience, years of interdisciplinary study, and numerous multimodal trainings not only provided me invaluable insights into our shared humanity, it also eased my nervous systems ‘merry’-go-round, honed my expertise and skills, and granted me to share with change seekers what I have learned. A most beloved gift, indeed!
At this juncture, a note about sharing seems appropriate
The socio-cultural grounding I received in my place of origin (Odenwaldian-German), combined with the language blend I later acquired (German, English, a bit of Latin, and a smattering of French), along with the felt wisdom that the more-than-human world bestowed me so richly in my childhood, has all contributed to my knack for words. I express what I see and hear through language that I can sense and feel. Sometimes this is a simple replacement, and at other times, a true neologisms.
My playful use of language often deviates from the typical terminology used in healing professions. For example, I refer to you (and me) as “change seekers” instead of “clients,” and I’ve transformed ‘witnessing’ into the much richer word withnessing; a shift my inter-language brain simply could not resist. With it I address an intentional participatory state of voluntary interbeing. I also, as you might already notice, have a lifelong desire to share myself through words, story-making, and storytelling. So, when something screams “spell-check malfunction,” it may not be! You might find an in-depth explanation of unusual words elsewhere on this site.
On that note, let me share a bit about my relationship to the word healing. Many years ago, while studying and practicing acupuncture, I felt that placing needles at points of stagnation or moving the heat of moxa over areas of emptiness was an invocation of life force to rise and nourish the person toward renewed degrees of wholeness. The healer is a person’s life (force) that responds to the a person’s desire to heal and the invocation of their engaged mending actions. A similar dynamic occurs in emergency rooms when —a literal act of mending– a wound is cleaned, stitched, and covered. Thereafter, the life force —and the patience of the ‘patient’— facilitates growth of tissue that reconnects severed parts.
You will find me speaking of mending when the agency of my change seekers’ supports the healing of frayed, broken, or severed connection by invocations of life force toward whole-ing. These actions encompass many practices. We include ceremony, journaling, movement, dance, systemic constellating, laughter, conversation, walking a maze, times of stillness, communal lament, joined exultation, and more, all offered in service to healing into wholeness.
In that spirit, please, accept my warmest regards
Karin Dremel, m.t.s., hp