Reclaiming Relationship
with the Animate World
We all come from beauty, wisdom, and reverent relationships with the Earth.
It is in our bones.
Tova Fleming | she/her/we
This site is comprised of things that I carry with me at all times: a love for words and story, magic, performance, yoga, music, animism, ancestors, and the earth.
I am an animist who tends to the world through ancestral lineage healing (certified practitioner through Ancestral Medicine), psychopomp (aspirant), writing, performance and music, and Tantra-inspired yoga (500-Hour RYT).
I earned my master of arts in interdisciplinary social science from Humboldt State University’s Environment and Community Program. My bachelor’s is in English with an emphasis on creative writing from Sacramento State University. I earned my associate of science in “so-called” natural resources from American River College.
My blood and bone are roughly half Scandinavian and half Scottish. My mother immigrated to the U.S. from Denmark and my father’s people came to Turtle Island from Scotland in the late 1700’s (to the best of my knowledge). Culturally, I am “hella” Northern Californian as I was born and raised here. I love this place and the collective of other-than-human kin that adopted, loved, raised, and tended to me as if I were their own regardless of the history of my people. My gratitude is fathomless.
For the past 25 years, I have been healing from complex PTSD, chronic anxiety and depression, and unravelling and reweaving intergenerational trauma into something new, ancient, and beautiful.
I currently reside on Nisenan homelands in Sacramento, California.
ABOUT
During a Yoga training in Sri Vidya Tantra, after an intense engagement with a Vichara practice (deliberation/discernment), I wrote out the Sankalpa statement “I reclaim my energy and ancestral power” and the following Sankalpa vision or path to bring life to the statement. I had no idea what it meant at the time: “Day in and day out I wander under the trees. I listen and speak with the spirits of the stones and the birds and bears, with the wolves and waters and ancestors, and with the unnamable alive. I follow the tree roots deep into the earth and climb the branches into the sky. Sometimes I reach out my fingertips to brush the surface of the stars which swirl like their reflection in water. I share the impressions, the stories, and tales left with me and the wisdom of the spirits. I walk out from under the canopy, my path lit by the sun and the new moon.” And here I am, still wandering down this path…
Photo Credit: Black bear By Soren Wolf is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0