Fey Wolf: Creating Ripples for Change

“Hope is a lifeline right now. Hope is a necessity right now, and we can’t live on without hope.”

What would the world look like if we tried something different?

What if we celebrated, and even encouraged, a phase of life where we were allowed to wander, where we were given the time and support to find our place physically and spiritually?

What if we could let go of ego and ask for help? To safely be able to say I don’t know? To be able to look for a different way, a way that is maybe even foreign and a bit scary?

What would it look like to bring the ways of indigenous cultures more deeply into our society today? What if what was considered to be on the fringe now was instead, another option; another way to live, to heal, to learn?

What would it feel like for humanity to connect to nature in a deeper way again? What if we saw nature as part of us, part of our well-being, rather than a commodity?

What would it feel like to deepen our connection with our local community? What would change if we bought our foods from local farmers and were satisfied with what was available seasonally? What if we even grew it ourselves?

What would it feel like to hold a pebble in your hand, drop it in the waters of life and witness how the ripples that spread from your pebble, your gifts, impacted those around you? What if those ripples, your ripples, gained momentum as they inspired others to share their gifts, to drop their pebbles, in the waters of life as well?

What could be achieved then? What might change?

As I begin writing about Fey Wolf, a practitioner who offers energy work, mentorship and guidance for others on their own spiritual journey, I have found myself reflecting back to the circumstances surrounding the crossing of our paths and have been holding in awe and wonder in the ways life leads us to those who have the medicine for what we need most at a given moment in life.

I first met Fey in December of 2019, a month and a half after my wife, Teresa, had passed away. I knew I needed to go to counseling and I also knew that I needed to find a way to get that in a different way, a more spiritual way. I had never been to a therapy session that included energy work but I trusted the person who referred me to Fey and my conversation over the phone with Fey was very pleasant.

After my first session with Fey, I felt hope. I felt like there was a chance; a chance to be okay again whatever that might look like.

Fey helped me find that hope at a time when I wasn’t sure that would ever be a possibility, when I was calculating how long I needed to hold on in order for the kids to be okay and old enough to take care of themselves.

In October of 2000, Teresa and I were married. I don’t know what the 8 year-old Fey was doing then but I do know that she was holding inside of her a gift, a pebble, that someday she would drop into the waters of life creating ripples that, some years later, would reach me when I needed it most.

Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Fey now resides on the Big Island of Hawai’i where she continues deepening into her current practices as well as exploring new modalities, both for herself and as offerings to others, such as somatic healing, rites of passage practices and Maya ceremonies, including the Maya Spiritual Bath.

Fey’s “formal” studies were conducted at Oregon State University in Corvallis where she graduated with her bachelors degree in Psychology and took her first steps into being of service to others as she interned at the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence. From this experience, Fey has held a passion for helping survivors of sexual trauma to move through their traumas and find empowerment in their life.

The pebble, the gift, was now held in her hand.

After graduating from Oregon State, Fey moved back to Portland where she worked at a crisis center for houseless youth and worked with adults with disabilities, a place where she found her desire to work with people on a more individualized basis.

At this point a path was placed before her. A path of service, a path that many have taken and a path that, no doubt, Fey would have excelled at.

But another path was presented. An offer to travel for four weeks in Thailand.

Sometimes four weeks can turn into six months.

Sometimes a path that we could have excelled at isn’t the path we need to take.

Sometimes we listen to what’s inside of us and go a different way; a way that is scary; a way that is out of the norm; a way that is less understood but necessary nonetheless.

“It was terrifying….but I had let go of the confines and could live in a way where I could really wander.”

The pull inside of her to remain in Thailand, to continue to explore, to wander, to learn a new way to live - to be - led Fey to sever the ties she had with the job that was waiting for her and begin walking down this new path, the unexpected path. Something in her was telling her this was her path to walk if she chose.

After six months of exploring, wondering, meditating and becoming, Fey returned home to Portland with both a new sense of self and a fear of how to integrate into a way of life that didn’t fit, that didn’t seem to offer her, whether perceived or real, the room for who she had become and who she was becoming.

Fey’s gift was there and it had grown but sometimes our gifts, the pebbles we each hold to make those ripples of change, feel too heavy. We still hold them but only out of obligation or because it is harder to let go completely than to hold the weight of a life half lived.

After trying to work in a way that was on a path more travelled, Fey, again, listened to the deep voice inside of herself and, again, followed her heart, her deeper self.

Holding the pebble lovingly between her fingers and her thumb, she raised it in the air, intuitively adjusting the height in order to have the greatest impact on the change her gifts could bring when released.

Fey travelled to Guatemala and became a certified yoga teacher.

Guides and mentors presented themselves on her path to teach her shamanic healing and energy work.

The first stint in Hawai’i.

Then home again to Portland.

In 2018, Fey started her independent practice, offering energy work, mentorship, and helping others find their paths along their own spiritual journeys.

She let go of the pebble, and the ripples from her gifts began to spread.

The idea for this website, a place to not only share my stories but to also offer the story of the practitioners who have helped me and so many others, was born from a class that Fey offered in January of this year called Soul Nourishment for the Revolution. At the core of this class was Fey’s offering of tools to help those in service to others take care of themselves and, in turn, better help those that they are in service to.

At the time I wasn’t sure I belonged in the group as I didn’t see myself as being of service to others. I spoke with Fey about this concern before joining the class and she assured me that the class was a good fit for me and that being a parent was most certainly being in service.

I’m glad Fey encouraged me to join and I’m glad that I listened.

Over the last two and a half years that I’ve worked with Fey through mentorship, counseling, energy work and taking part in her offering of the Maya Spiritual Bath ceremony, I have felt and know how special Fey’s gifts are and can be. Being a part of Fey’s class, where I got to see her gifts touching the lives of all those who participated shed a new light on the scope of what she does.

Hearing Fey and the other participants tell their stories, talk about their work and discuss what feels challenging to them each week in their work and their personal lives, lit a flame within me to find a way to do more. To find a way to add to this ripple effect.

I could hear the hope in their stories, I could hear the comforting and support in Fey’s offerings and I also heard the challenges and the doubts that each had about what they do.

As most of us have experienced in our lives and from our various decisions, there have been doubts for Fey:

Should she have chosen the more conventional path?

Is it possible that she has strayed too far from the norms of society?

What if the destabilization that she has experienced on this journey turns out not to have been worth it?

Sometimes these doubts are strong enough to make her question her choices, to contemplate abandoning her current path but, ultimately, that knowing, that feeling that she began following in Thailand, is too strong to abandon. Along with listening to herself, sitting with her feelings when these doubts come up, Fey finds the desire to carry on from the support she receives from her mentors, from the fulfillment she receives from the work that she does and from making time for the things that bring her joy in life.

The relationships she has built with her mentors, mentors who have presented themselves at various times along her path, have provided her with both the support she needs in her personal life and the continued growth she has desired by continuing to learn about and adding to the healing modalities that Fey can offer to others as they have been offered to her. These relationships with her mentors help assuage those fears and offer a guiding light that shows she’s not alone on this path; she isn’t the first to walk a similar path and won’t be the last.

“What I find most fulfilling is the sense of relationship and intimacy…through supporting this person and their story. It’s so nourishing to me…”

In addition to the support and knowledge Fey gets from her current mentors, the fulfillment from the work that she does also helps keep the doubts at bay. Seeing how those she works with grow and find their own path; those that find healing through her work; those that have felt her gifts and, in return, reflect those gifts back to her in their own ways have given Fey reassurance that she is on the right path; that the fears she feels and the doubts that come to her are real but, ultimately, fleeting. She is on the right path.

Leaning into her curiosity of the Maya culture and traditions, a culture that has held a place in her awareness for some time, has also helped ground Fey in her path and as she learns the ways of healing through union with plants, to learn what others knew and what has almost been lost, has also continued to give Fey purpose and remain on the path she has been following for the last seven years.

Swimming in the ocean.

Dancing.

Connection with friends, nature and community.

“The dream that I’m holding for humanity is to relocalize in terms of our communities.”

Seeing Fey work with others, and meeting a small sampling of those who know Fey, I can see how her gifts have rippled through the lives of others.

With the world and society as it is today, (globalization, multi-national corporations, global warming, wars, etc), it’s easy to feel insignificant. It’s easy to feel helpless; hopeless. It’s harder to see the ripples of change that we all make when viewed from that obtuse of an angle.

At a local level, however, these ripples are easier to see. We can see how our actions affect the close community around us, our neighbors, our close friends, our family.

We can see those but, even then, it sometimes takes someone else pointing them out to us again, to say, those are your ripples - those are the changes you made; the differences you made; the way you have impacted this world when you decided to share your deep and beautiful gifts with the rest of us.

Those are the ripples created from your gifts and the courage you showed to hear, to feel and to do what was difficult and terrifying, yet do them all the same.

That is the difference you made.

Those are the people that you helped.

This project is born from the courage that you inspired in someone else to follow their path and to write this about you now to make sure that you know that you are always seen. That you are always heard. That you and your gifts, your vision for the future, are always loved and cherished.

I hope this story does honor to your life and your gifts.

I hope your story inspires others to listen to their divine selves whenever they are able to.

I hope; because, as you said in our conversation about your story, hope is a necessity.

Thank you, Fey for helping me find my hope and thank you for all that your gifts offer to those in need of their medicine.

(To learn more about Fey Wolf’s work and offerings feel free to visit her website at: www.feywolfhealing.info)