hi, i’m heather.

I’m really glad you’re here, and I hope you know, all of this is for you.

If you’re wondering “what kind of credentials does this woman have anyway??”
Here’s a snapshot:

  • I am an ordained priest in The Episcopal Church (that’s rev. heather if you’re feeling fancy)

  • I earned a master’s degree in spiritual counseling,

  • a bachelor’s in nutrition,

  • theological education from three seminaries (are you impressed?)

  • and a personal mystical practice that has led me into a richer, deeper formation than any classroom ever has (can you believe you can learn outside of academia?!)

  • I am also a certified yoga teacher, a student and practitioner of yoga.

I believe in the dignity and divinity of every person and every being.

I respect all beliefs and belief systems, but following Jesus’s example, I challenge the ones that cause harm and prop up the powerful.

I believe in the wisdom of our bodies, and that what most of us need is a space to feel loved and supported.

I believe that all of life is our teacher, and that life is most meaningful when devoted to service.

If you want to chat or share something with me

or give podcast suggestions or feedback

or ask any questions or confess your deepest darkest secret

or talk about spiritual counseling or anything else

go for it:

tell me anything you want.

what is a chickmonk?

A part of a podcast community of alternative spiritual contemplatives who are tired of patriarchal religion but not totally done with Jesus

or something like that.

When I was an evangelical pastor (but without the title, of course, because that’s how sexism works in the Southern Baptist Church) and fundamentalism stopped working for me—when I needed a place for my beliefs and worldview and complete identity to fall apart—podcasts became my place of refuge. I found intellectual and spiritual space to be free. I collected a community of voices who had similar questions and experiences—people who expressed their own disillusionment with the black-and-white certainty I called “faith”—people who were on their own journeys to something more expansive, more meaningful, more True.

Eventually I was ready to try back on the practice of “Christianity,” and again, I dove into a pool of people like me, who seemed to express this more expansive, meaningful approach to a Christian faith. I read books by monks who seemed to know God in a way I wanted to. I found voices of internet strangers who were more concerned with being thoughtful than being right, who believed in compassion and contemplative practice as the path of following Jesus—instead of “praying the prayer” and agreeing with a set of doctrine.

Make no mistake: I am so grateful for all of the voices I found who could engage with Christianity from that perspective. But they were like, all male.

A load of my wounds that drove me away from the Church to begin with were specifically wounds to my femininity. My body has been blamed and faulted for being a “distraction” during worship, a “temptation” to a sexual abuser, and in general for being “not-male” while possessing leadership abilities and pastoral gifts. I needed to believe that God was not distant from my female body.

I encountered the Divine Feminine—the confident Inner Voice that told me it was okay to refer to God as “She” whenever I wanted to. I started to actually believe that God(dess) wasn’t male or white or a patriarch, and that I didn’t have to become those things to be valuable in God’s economy.

Sometimes I just wanted to hear a woman talk about this stuff—for sure, there would be female guests on podcasts and I LOVED them! But where were the women who were as passionate about this as I was? who couldn’t stop seeking Love? who needed to have these conversations? who could express the Divine Feminine in explorations of Christian spirituality?

Long story short: while this podcast was brewing in my mind, the stars aligned when my ex-boyfriend’s dog killed a chipmunk and brought it in the house as a love offering and traumatized me forever. I tried to ease my disgust by playfully calling it a “wittle chick-munk,”

and in a resurrection act of Divine Mother magic, out of this creature’s death, Chickmonks was conceived.

Welcome to the Chickmonks Podcast, where we seek the wisdom path of Christian spirituality through divine feminine and non-patriarchal perspectives .

May you find the healing, acceptance, and grace you seek, and may the Love of this amazing reality we call God transform your heart as you enter in.

Light and Peace,

Heather