About Bridgett
I am a writer, embodiment coach, highly sensitive person, and a lover of all things wild & free. I've been writing since before I could write (I used to dictate stories to my mother, who would very kindly oblige). My love of language, contemplative practices, and the natural world are central to my life, and it is my joy to share these passions to help fellow sensitive writers on their creative journey.​
I relish deep reading and writing across the spectrum, but my particular love is for nonfiction, and my particular particular love is for nonfiction that centers beautiful language, deep inner inquiry, clear-eyed outer witnessing, and connection with the natural and/or spiritual worlds (which, quite honestly, I see as being one and the same), and perhaps a thread of compelling research, natural history, or philosophy woven throughout.
My own writing is currently focused on a book-in-progress along with monthly essays for my community here (and an ever-amassing stack of journals that currently numbers 55—I just counted). I was delighted to have a recent essay published in the new book Write Yourself Home by Johanna Franzel. Through writing, deep study, and apprenticing to incredible writers, I am continually engaged in increasing my skill in writing craft and creative process.
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The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia has been my home for almost two decades, with several lengthy forays into desert places across the world (and very likely more on the way). I am a deep lover of travel, time, space, meaningful conversation, contemplation, reverence, laughter, silliness, sacredness, wildness, and beauty. I bring a grounded presence to woo-woo topics, love nerdy science and full-bodied wonder with equal vigor, and get giddily excited about cool nature facts (did you know whip-poor-wills time their egg-laying with the moon's cycles?!?). I was almost certainly a monk in another life and still spend a whole lot of time in monkish pursuits in this one. ​
Professional Background & Training:
I spent many years as a registered nurse and reveled in the wild wonder of avian field biology for several more before feeling the call to somatic work. These widely-varying experiences all gave me rich material for crafting the presence, philosophy, and practice of what I do today. My somatic practice originally focused on helping highly sensitive people befriend their sensitivity before making the switch to working specifically with writers.
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My primary somatic training was three years of deep immersion in the Hakomi method of mindful somatic inquiry. I have also trained in numerous other somatic, mindfulness, and contemplative modalities (officially and unofficially, in classrooms and in my own daily practice), and draw from these organically throughout my work with clients. I am continually engaged in deepening my understanding of body, mind, and heart through both didactic and experiential learning. Through my personal experience of these practices' life-changing effects, I have come to deeply believe in the body's incredible ability to enliven, guide, and integrate our whole selves when we give it even a little room to do so. ​​
Training & Education
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Hakomi Institute Comprehensive 2-year Training
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Hakomi Cascadia Core 1-year Training
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Innate Somatic Intelligence, Levels 1-3
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Sense Writing training with Madelyn Kent
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Orion Writers' Workshop
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NeuroAffective Touch, Levels 1-3
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Polyvagal Toning 6-month training with Dr. Arielle Schwartz
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Bachelors of Science in Nursing​​
Other Influences & Areas of Study​
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nervous system health & polyvagal theory
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Feldenkrais
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Body-Mind Centering
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therapeutic mindful movement (yoga, qigong, etc.)
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handcrafts (spinning, weaving, pottery, etc.)
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mindfulness-based self-compassion
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evolutionary & interpersonal neurobiology
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Focusing
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Taoist thought
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Buddhist psychology
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insight meditation
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dreamwork, story, & myth
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experiential ecopsychology​
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contemplative studies (Eastern & Western)
Books I Love​
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Refuge and When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams
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The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin
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The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
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The Names of Things by Susan Brind Morrow
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Anam Cara by John O'Donohue
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Dream Work and Upstream by Mary Oliver
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Nine Gates by Jane Hirshfield
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A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
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The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy​
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The Outermost House by Henry Beston
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The Odyssey — Robert Fitzgerald translation
Why I Write
Words from a Few Favorite Writers
Let’s remake the world with words.
Not frivolously, nor
To hide from what we fear,
But with a purpose.
Let’s,
As Wordsworth said, remove
“The dust of custom” so things
Shine again, each object arrayed
In its robe of original light.
And then we’ll see the world
As if for the first time,
As once we gazed at the beloved
Who was gazing at us.
-Gregory Orr, "Let's remake the world..." in Concerning the Book That is the Body of the Beloved
The earth is so richly endowed that the least we can do in return is to pay attention.
-Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
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-Mary Oliver, "Mindful"