CURRENTLY: $8240 of $14000 goal
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Firstly, I want to mention that I am not without awareness; I feel a bit uncomfortable launching a personal fundraising campaign amidst all that is happening in the world right now. However, it’s once again long past time to expand my work and figure out how to return to effectively and uniquely serving my extended community.
Here’s what I want you to help me do:
AMBULATORY GRIEF RECOVERY
As most who are familiar with me know, I embraced a mobile living situation in 2015, leaving behind a successful healing practice which included teaching grief recovery. While ambulatory massage services are limited to state licensures, I am nationally certified to teach one of the most powerful tools I have at my own disposal, which has deeply impacted my life for the better.
Everywhere I go, all over the country, and as the fissures in civilized society continue to tear larger, the need for collective recovery skills is only becoming more critical. I could be teaching a lot of people a lot of useful shit if I had a comfortable place to host them in my transient life, as I did while in 8 years of private practice in Seattle.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
The Grief Recovery Method® created by The Grief Recovery Institute is not counseling, or extended open-term therapy. It is a method of completing grief through simple and small actions taught in either a one on one setting or in a small group. The program is non-secular, and will work for anyone, regardless of your faith, spiritual belief system, or other forms of orientation.
We start by examining and dismantling the unhelpful coping strategies that were passed down to us, establishing rapport and introducing key concepts. I then guide you through experiential learning of a better way (that actually works) of completing your emotional losses, by working one of your losses through the method with you.
In a program of 8 sessions, that are ~90 minutes each, we will:
- Define grief and loss in a tangible, straightforward way
- Dismantle the myths and misconceptions regarding “the grief process”
- Learn to respectfully enroll others in parts of our grief processes.
- Empower ourselves to better support loved ones through loss.
- Address what about your most impactful loss is left incomplete, and complete it.
- Leave with a repeatable structure from which to efficiently approach future (and past) grief experiences.
The work is intensive and requires roughly 2-4 hours of homework between sessions, there is a course book we work from, and it’s important to be in a safe private space where emotion and trauma can be allowed to surface freely — ideally NOT the same space my client lives in.
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As I’ve said in the past when fundraising my projects, my calling in life is to transform lives. Over the last 3 years, I’ve been working on transforming my own, learning to live with less, coming to terms with my wandering nature, and the state of the world around me.
The van is functional.. mostly. But it is not sustainable for any of my work, including facilitating recovery. I’ve reached the limit of what I can accomplish living and working in Bella Stinkbutt. The time has come to once again offer more.
The first step to getting this done is to upgrade my mobile live-work situation so I can offer sessions again (and do things like store fresh food to sustain my own self properly). I am fundraising to cover the remainder of what I need after liquidating all I can to make the leap.
MEETING MY GOAL WOULD:
- get me the rest of the way into this rig,
- after getting a buyers inspection with my truck place,
- including the sales tax and licensing for the year,
- and enable me to set aside whatever I get for Bella as a revised safety net.
Donate via Paypal, Venmo, Square, or credit/bank draft via Stripe through Moonclerk
UNDERFUNDING
Regardless of whether I win this particular race, I need something sooner rather than later, so while it is possible I will be unable to get this particular rig (I have until Monday July 23 to fundraise/decide) I am launching my fundraising campaign to help enable an upgrade now. By September of 2018, I’ll either be in a bigger vanbox, or will have bought a trailer of some sort to tow back down south with Bella.
REWARDS
All levels: You’ll be invited to my monthly support newsletter (if you’re not there already!) and added to an existing art project of personalized bathroom tiles (or the like) from my first tiny house fundraiser in 2012, the result of which produced a fifth of what I needed to get me into Stinkbutt in 2015. I’m still tracking that, and once I’m in a rig that I can personalize, you’ll be on my wall, somehow, along with other donors. Thank you for helping!
$20 + level: I’ll send a postcard from the road!
$50 + level: I’ll send you a snail mail thank-you package with CFR shwag
$150 + level: and an original ink sketch
$500 + level: and teach you my grief recovery program (within two years in the U.S.)
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PREVIOUS FUNDRAISING SUCCESSES
In 2011 I crowdfunded my solo show Embodied on Kickstarter in which 26 backers pledged $3,901. I then later funded Life in a Box, wherein 16 backers pledged $702. 1/5th of the cost of my current van was raised via C-Rex’s Itty Bitty Hizzy Committee while fundraising to build a tiny house on a trailer.
As Creative Director of Vita Arts from 2009-2013, I was involved in multiple successful fundraising campaigns ranging from dinner theater to online pushes, accomplishing tasks as varied as performance directing and cooking for 35 people. When Vita disbanded in 2018, thousands of dollars in funds I helped to raise were gifted to other 501(c)(3) nonprofits.
I’ve a long history of integral successful fundraising, and see through on my commitments. This time I’m trying a self-hosted option, with no kickstarter fees or overhead.
STRETCH GOALS
Pssshh, you KNOW I will find excellent ways to spend your money. But I do have a stretch goal: Ultimately, I hope to build a monthly sustainer income that will enable me to adopt a model akin to the Vipassina retreat I did: wherein you do not pay, and donations, which are not required and go toward enabling future participants, are not accepted until you’ve completed your multiday sit.
This is my stretch goal marker for longish term ‘success’, as I believe that would allow me the freedom of movement I need to do this well, while being in integrity with how accessible I want to be able to make the work. So if you wanna see some stretch, in addition to your donation, sign up here, too!
IN CLOSING
Some of y’all may remember the days when all my music was online for free, and my theater work volunteer, and my grief recovery groups were a pittance, because my basic needs were taken care of at the time.
I like to think that I contributed to our countercultures back then, in ways I haven’t been capable of for a while, and I’m really excited to take another step in the direction of having more to offer my people; More space, more art, more connection, more relief.
This is only a step in the direction of the Big Ultimate DreamPlans I’ve been developing, but it is a very big and integral step, and I appreciate that you took the time to read all the way down to here. Enjoy hearing this little backtracked performance of Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” I did in 2012, and please do pitch in if you can. Thank you!