Female

39

Written in 2008:

I love spending quality time with friends. Although I enjoy gatherings and love to party with beautiful people, what I most enjoy are sincere heart to hearts with others that are filled with laughter, sharing, problem solving & good food or drink. My work-life covers 2 areas: the elimination of violence against women and self expression thru the art of middle eastern dance.

I've been working part time at a local not for profit agency, Support to Single Parents Inc., for +/-3 years now. I am the coordinator for the Peer Support & Social Action program. It's a volunteer driven program that offers one-on-one support to women victims of violence. I am loving my experience working with the women in this environment: those who work at the agency, the volunteers, the other women in other agencies in the community and the women who come to us for support.

I've focussed a lot on bellydance in the last +/-10 years. I've spent a lot of time lurking in the virtual wold of this dance and even more time learning / teacing in the Maritime provinces. My favorite style to share with the public is veil dancing. I founded a school, Studio Sephira, that has seen me thru some pretty interesting and intense personal changes during the past +/-8 years.

Before the dancing came into my life I spent quite a number of years being a university student. I studied sociology & history, slowly changing my world view thru my life-experience. Then the sudden, violent, death of a close friend changed the course of my life. It opened up a world where I slowly discovered an array of alternative healing modalities, including the dancing.

I've since become an amateur herbologist and I've been dabbling in flower essences for a couple of years now. A goal for me is to slowly build my knowledge and experience of flowers & herbs thru gardening as the years of my life go by and to explore my creativity in the kitchen, especially since I've been learning more and more of the healing properties of food. I regularly practice a meditation called Ascension and I also occasionally practice Reiki and QiGong. Since starting my work at Support to Single Parents inc. I've gained an incredible amount of knowledge around building & maintaining our emotional health.

I would love to start bridging the knowledge gained from my former studies of history and sociology, with the world of dance, the work I do in the non for profit sector and the various paths to alternative healing in the next couple of years.