Thank you for visiting Healing x Abolition! I launched this project to publish essays about spirituality primarily for an audience of post-evangelicals and those recovering from religious trauma who feel uneasy sheltering with atheism or other traditions. Born in Holland and raised in Switzerland then Nashville, I came up in what I have come to understand was a cult. But I am recovering through abolitionist organizing. I am healing by way of abolition.

I radicalized at Vanderbilt Divinity School from which I received a master’s in theological studies. I cut my teeth on activism through reading Black liberation theology. Though I have released the theology bit, at least as div school would define it, I cannot let go of liberation. Since then, I have worked for national organizations in the movement to end homelessness, even as I organize to undermine the nonprofit industrial complex. I’m a Circle Keeper and am privileged to travel all over facilitating and training about housing justice.

I am an avid but embarrassed Premier League fan (Liverpool forever). I don’t rewatch TV shows but I do watch my favorite standup specials over and over; hang out with me too long, and you will have endured me quoting dozens of comedians. I’m queer, but feel like an imposter. I’m a member of my local nonprofit movie theater. Mayonnaise is the best condiment. People who know more about these things tell me I’m a Virgo and enneagram One; my discomfort with these systems is such a “One” thing, they say. My ancestry traces to the British Isles and I find myself on a quest to connect with my people before the invention of whiteness. I live on the stolen lands of the Cherokee, Yuchi, and Shawnee nations, known as Nashville, in the neighborhood where I grew up, with my daughters, Genevieve and Adelaide.

If my writing affects you and you’d like to chat, I’m usually open to that! Message me.