Big thanks! on the brink of our book launch

The Regenerative Life Design Playbook is over a dozen years, hundreds of conversations, thousands of interactions, starts and stops, and nudges to keep going.

There’s a time when a project feels never ending, each day amounts to new discoveries and research and notes taken but we can’t see the 5000 steps to the end. I have felt that often with this book, the inspiration of my creativity that has needed 15 years of gestation, patience, detachment and my attention. Often, I wondered if I ever would see myself to the end of it. With steady footing, a willingness to stretch my edge, ask for help and receive high caliber input, and continue to leverage funding and resources towards this project, I am writing to you a week and a half before the baby will be born into the world. And while it may be my name on the front cover, there are lots of people behind the scenes to thank and appreciate.

This blog, or really love letter of appreciation, would not be possible if it weren’t for peers and heroes, as my friend likes to say “Peeros”, who have believed in me and challenged me to follow through. I want to give my sincerest appreciation to Niki Faldemolaei for inviting me to glasses of wine on the Hawaiian coastline and describing to me how this book within me is a gift to humanity. Additionally, thank you for my landmates Philippe and Max, for being with me during a time of deep debilitating pain as I navigated my return to my community after three years of nomadic exploration. Writing the book grounded me, distracted me from the external suffering of sciatic, and helped me value my experiences. 

This book and writing process went dormant in me for a few years as I returned to my holistic landscape design business, Healing Roots Design, expanded into teaching, and developed other businesses. 

Deep thanks for Michele Ashley, my first editor with a racial equity lens that encouraged and challenged me to make an anti-oppression piece of work that was relevant, informing and action-oriented. Thank you to the students at Omega Institute where I first compiled a day-long course to the staff and heard from my peers that this earth-based toolkit for living was refreshing, grounded and very much needed in a sped up world. Thank you to Kayla Thomas, my first assistant who met me at a Regenerative Life Design class I offered at Lake Eden Arts Festival, Spring 2021, and asked if she could learn more and support streamlining the content, adding her science background and editing powers to curtail some of my verbosity and ambiguous writing. Special thanks to Samara Jade for the guitar classes, the rich worlds of her music, and taking me into her studio to record and polish the songs and meditations, my first public recordings. And thanks to my All-Star team Caroline Williford and Michelle Shine who brought their dedication, organization, editing skills, pizazz and design sensibilities to see this project to completion. I want to dearly appreciate the 24 funders (y’all rock!) from the IFundWomen crowdfunding campaign who answered my request for financial backing at a critical stage of production to keep motivated and infuse much needed funds into the book project. To my momma, whose inherent belief in me is simple and staggering, and to my beautiful, trusted friends and readers who I have asked to read, constructively critique, hear my insecurities along the way and nudged me to keep going: Juanita Brown, Christine Josephine, Alina Talladen, Sunil Patel, Brandy Hall, and Caroline Williford. 

Special thanks to Michael Bartholme, for holding down Healing Roots Design with me as I stretched myself across 2 businesses to follow my dreams. 

Momma Earth, thank you for your inspiration in my life, my muse, and for being with me always, as I walk in your image, and help translate for people your love and resilience.

May this work serve to unlock worlds untapped with nature’s beauty and resilience, resourcefulness, interconnection, health and vitalistic life-giving , and in myself, and for the greatest healing to all it touches. 

Love,
Keri

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