Hi. I’m Piper-  the founder of Persephone Speaks. I am a teacher, creative, intuitive, and depth guide.  My work has taken many incarnations over the years, but over and over in different places and spaces, I find myself taking people into unknown and unfamiliar places in their psyche, and holding a place of safety and containment while they explore. By working in this sacred space that I hold for you, you can safely traverse these unexplored parts of yourself, learn, and understand new things and find new abilities, even forming new internal wisdom and connections in the process. This facilitates healing and organic growth and expansion.

 I discovered I had an unusual skill of being able to set the psyche at ease. When safe, doors and portals will open.  I’ve worked as a mental health therapist for over twenty years and have spent my lifetime learning and exploring the psyche. I have also enjoyed teaching in a wide variety of settings ranging from academic and business settings to leading therapy groups, retreats, and healing, drumming,  and moon circles in both cities and in the wild of nature.

My work draws from many different influences including classical training in psychology, mental health, sociology, social thought,  intuitive work, body and energy work, archetypal studies, personal experience, dream analysis (both Jungian and Freudian), art/music and creative expression, and using the various levels of consciousness to facilitate personal growth and development.

HOW CAN I HELP?

My job is to help take you to the places where you can find your own answers: to empower you to understand how to use and develop your own unique constellation of  skills and talents, and to develop and become fluid and relaxed with your own powers, gifts, and abilities in a way that works for you.

To begin to understand, accept, and be able to communicate with all of the complex parts and pieces of your psyche is another vital part of being who you are in the most deep and authentic way. My role is to help give you ideas, tools, and ways for you to understanding of how to use the things that you find in this kind work and exploration, to enhance and elevate your life.

THERAPEUTIC BUT NOT THERAPY

This work can be therapeutic and incredibly potent and powerful because it works with the psyche, the mind, and the spirit but it isn’t therapy! It doesn’t replace having a skilled and ethical mental health professional to do mental health therapy and counseling. This work can be done in conjunction with counseling and therapy. The therapy session can be a perfect setting to more deeply explore your new awareness.

I am here to offer information and tools and techniques so that you can explore the deep waters of your own personal psyche where you will find your own wisdom within. This allows you to better understand yourself piece by piece in a way that isn’t overwhelming and daunting. This process can also help you recognize and identify beliefs, habits, and routines that have developed from the culture above and around you which often inhibit your ability to be your best, most authentic, true, sparkling, brilliant soul and self that you can be.

 This understanding allows you to lead a life that is uniquely and authentically you!

 It allows you to better understand how to function, respond, and better navigate life in a way that works for you!

WHY PERSEPHONE?

The idea of Persephone Speaks was born at a time in my life where I was sitting around a small green table in the melting summer Colorado sun talking with a circle of friends in hot, thin, smoky, high-elevation air. One of my friends was inspired and channeled Persephone the Greek goddess of Spring, new life, and the creative spark as the archetypal inspiration for this work. Like a cool wind on a hot day, Persephone descended into my life called by a new friendship/s.

When I a child, it was common for strangers to approach me and tell their unspoken stories to me. I gathered stories like other kids collected baseball cards. True stories, made up tales, and the ones mixed with facts, fictions, exaggerations, and omissions. I read stories others had written. I wrote my own stories. Sitting on my dad’s lap, I escaped both the mundane and traumatic things of childhood, through those empowering stories of wild adventures as he read me Greek mythology and the pirate adventures of Treasure Island.

We live in a time that values the destruction of the unique and the harnessing of the untamed.  A world that asks us to pretend our experience is not valid. We can learn to be authentic, growing, and healthy humans even amid all of these opposing forces, and this is what I hope to help you with.

Persephone Speaks is the place to find the things you want to discover.

WHAT IS LUNAR WORK?

I always felt connected to the night and most safe in the darkness under the watchful moon/luna. Even as a kid, my safe place was in the dark night looking up at the moon and stars, dreaming and imagining.  I’ve never stopped looking up into the night sky. The patterns and cycles of the moon have been a grounding force in my life, and I have found working with the various energies of the moon cycles to have a potent impact on myself and my life.  A mantra of endings, new beginnings, the light and the dark. Cycles and patterns. Analysis and growth.

It has been true for me that “necessity is the mother of invention.”  I searched for decades for a place or book or website that had consistently informative and helpful moon work ideas and information. I only found a few amazing resources. Mostly, I encountered a prevailing toxic culture of political group think where the work and information wasn’t open to all.  Only the defined elect, only to those who spoke as they were told to speak,  and only those who were compliant with allowing others think for them.  Only the people who embraced submission, sublimation, and mental slavery were welcome in those spaces. I was the unwelcome student, the wanton rebel. I remain an unrepentant rebel, an unbridled spirit, a wild mountain vidma, and a lover of freedom and grace. I invite you to explore lunar work in Hecate’s Circle if you feel the call or are just curious.

Hecate’s Circle offers Full and New Moon focused lunar work in addition to the other self-development classes, workshops, and retreats offered by Persephone Speaks. These monthly courses provide a safe and inclusive space for anyone wanting to learn about lunar work or for those wanting to experience  lunar work and exploration. This information is available and is open to anyone regardless of political and/or spiritual orientation – whether a long time solitary person, one who is part of a group, one who has periodically dabbled, or one who has never worked with the energies of la Luna and has always been afraid or unsure how to do so/what it means. All are invited and welcome to peek into this work and see if it speaks to you.

PERSEPHONE SPEAKS SCHOLARSHIP

There have been more than a few memorable times in my life where there was something that would have been so helpful and useful to me, but it was out of my reach solely due to financial limitations. If you find a class here that calls to you, and the only thing keeping you from the class is financial hardship, please submit a scholarship application.

Scholarship Information

EDUCATION AND CREDENTIALS

Masters in Counseling Psychology, Central Washington University, 2001

BA in Psychology and Sociology and Social Thought, Hillsdale College, 1999

Clinical Hypnosis Certificate, 2017

Initiated  2^nd Degree Reiki Practitioner in the Usui System of Natural Healing. 2018

EFT Certified, 2018

Pet Loss Grief Counseling Trained Professional, 2021

Compassion Fatigue Counseling Trained Professional, 2022

RANDOMS ABOUT ME

An engaging speaker and teacher with a sharp wit and sense of humor, I am gifted in holding a sacred and safe place for people wanting to do deep exploration and personal growth work. I have a unique ability of setting the psyche at ease, which in turn provides you with an internal learning and growth environment where deep exploration and work can occur organically and naturally.

I am passionate about every person discovering their unique and ever-changing-self and will hold the space if you seek such a journey!

I love to dance, have a bonfire, be out in nature, howling with the wolves at the full moons, drumming, writing poetry,  and doing art especially collage, photography, and mixed media works.