The Wildwoven Path of Seeing the Whole System

🌀 Kristin’s Bio: The Wildwoven Path of Seeing the Whole System

For most of my life, I was connecting dots I didn’t yet have words for.

I grew up inside Olympic National Park, where nature was my first teacher, and stories were my first language. My dad read aloud with character voices, my uncle spun his legendary “Jack stories,” and my childhood was filled with tales that revealed deeper truths about how the world worked.

I also grew up Catholic—absorbing early messages about women’s place in the system and the contradictions that came with it.

At church, I learned that women should know their place,
that they should be meek, mild, submissive—
a vessel, not a voice.

But none of my female ancestors fit that mold.

I come from a line of women who traveled unaccompanied by men from Ireland to the United States, from Massachusetts to California via Cape Horn, who lived in the Wild West as single women.

As for my mother and her mother? Let’s just say no one would ever describe them as submissive.

Even before I understood systems, I could feel their impact—from the Logger vs. Spotted Owl battles happening in my backyard to my family nearly losing our home to the Carter administration, when the government tried to “buy back” land from settlers whose homes had later become part of the National Parks.

I decided early on that I wanted to be a writer. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that storytelling wasn’t just about words—it was about power, meaning, and survival.

🏢 Bushwhacking Through the System (Before I Had the Language for It)

My young adult years were a rebellion against the expected path.

After graduating with a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, while my peers followed structured careers, I was on the road with my dog Bart, waiting tables to fuel my freedom, and collecting stories across the Western states. I read Tom Robbins and saw myself in Skinny Legs & All—a college-educated waitress navigating the absurdity of a world that didn’t know what to do with women like her.

But then—after some life-altering events I’ll save for another story—came the creeping doubt. The societal pull to “get serious” about my life.

I tried to fit myself into the mold of corporate America—first at T-Mobile, where I found myself inside a startup-turned-giant, absorbing and bulldozing the cultures of every company it acquired. I navigated the power struggles, sometimes resisting, sometimes swept along. I saw how power consolidated, how departments fought over resources instead of the bigger picture, and how people gamed the system for personal gain. My systems-thinking mind could sense the deeper dysfunction, but I didn’t yet have the language to name it.

Meanwhile, I started volunteering at the King County Crisis Line, answering late-night calls from people in the throes of heartbreak, disorientation, or deep despair. I learned to listen without judgment. To hold space for someone’s pain without rushing to fix it. We didn’t offer quick solutions—we offered presence. We helped people navigate what felt impossible: connecting them to food, shelter, mental health services, or simply a steady voice on the other end of the line. What I didn’t know then was that this would become the throughline of all my work: helping people feel seen in their hardest moments—and guiding them back to themselves with dignity, care, and truth. Long before I had a framework or a business, I was learning how to hold story, tension, and transformation—one call at a time.

Boeing was another crash course in how big systems resist complexity. I joined the 787 project as a Wing Integration Specialist, tasked with getting global partners to work together on a new strategy that many inside the company already feared would fail. Leadership had outsourced major design and manufacturing work—including critical wing components—to international partners in hopes of cutting costs and speeding development. But beneath the surface, seasoned engineers were quietly predicting disaster. Again, I didn’t have the language for it, but what I was witnessing was a company treating an adaptive challenge—a complex shift requiring collaboration, experimentation, and culture change—as if it were a technical problem solvable by process alone. The consequences of that mindset would ripple outward for years to come.

Still, I did what I’ve always done when dropped into unfamiliar terrain: I looked for patterns, built relationships, and created clarity where I could. One of my colleagues later wrote:

“Kristin came into a field with no knowledge or background of servicing and repairing aircraft. With minimal guidance, she saw the big picture and developed a strategic plan from scratch for a multimillion-dollar project… Her cultural awareness and ability to pick up on misunderstandings allowed her to facilitate international meetings and increase productivity on both sides. Filling her shoes has been nearly impossible.”

Ultimately, I only stayed in that role six months. When the contracting company gave me a choice between an unsustainable 60+ hour workweek or a reduced pay rate—due to what appeared to be a clerical misunderstanding—I chose to walk away. At that point, I was beginning to trust that honoring my values mattered more than forcing myself to fit inside systems that weren’t designed for long-term sustainability.

And I started to recognize a pattern:

The same power struggles that play out at the highest levels of industry mirror the same dynamics in government, culture, and personal transformation.

At Teams & Leaders, I taught emotional intelligence before it was trendy and watched enlightened leaders struggle –and fail– to create a fair playing field inside the framework of Power in Systems (Power in Systems is the leadership game modeled after the disastrous 1971 Stanford University Psychology experiment, which exposed how quickly people conform to oppressive roles inside broken systems—a lesson that still plays out in corporate and societal structures today.)

While enrolled in Seattle University’s Leadership-Executive MBA (L-EMBA) program, I finally named something I had long sensed: business leaders treat the world and its living things as if Earth was a giant Monopoly board.

In one project, our small group was assigned a fictional company, tasked with deciding whether to drill for oil in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. I pushed back hard—and ultimately protested the group’s conclusion to pay off the imaginary official and move forward with the project.

Because if this were real—if we were truly considering the lives of the Indigenous reindeer herders who lived there, or the wild beauty of the place (which reminded me so much of Lake Crescent)—there shouldn’t even be a question. Extracting oil from that sacred land was the wrong choice for everyone.

That’s when I saw it clearly:

• The same systems that strip the land also strip workers of their dignity.
• The same forces that mine the earth mine human labor.
• The same structures that erase Indigenous ways of knowing erase women’s power.

This was the same pattern I had seen as a teen in the Loggers vs. Spotted Owl debates—a false binary that erased the complexity of the real issue.

By then, it was becoming impossible to unsee. 

I didn’t want to climb the ladder in corporate America anymore—I couldn’t stomach it. 

I used to joke that getting my L-EMBA was like studying the blueprint of a house I’d never live in—but knew I needed to map before I could dismantle it.

But the deeper truth was, I didn’t know what came next. I had names for the dysfunction, but no map for where to go from here.

🦋 The Moment Everything Fell Apart (And Came Together)

Meanwhile, even as I was writing papers about systems and extraction and standing up for imaginary Indigenous communities, my own life was quietly falling apart.

In an 18-month span, I lost my job (for standing up to a toxic boss), my friendships (as my siblings and all my best friends were starting families while I was still untethered), my confidence (because my decision to go to grad school threw me into the deep end—of how much I didn’t know, and how much more broken the world was than I had realized), and—most devastatingly—my family fractured in a way that could never be fully repaired.

My entire identity imploded.

So I did what had always made sense to me. I turned to nature.

I put on a documentary, expecting the soothing rhythms of the wild to remind me that at least nature still made sense.

Instead, I watched a stallion kick a baby horse to death.

I turned off the TV, shook my fist at the sky, and shouted:
“Even caterpillars get a stick!!!”

The metaphor landed.

The caterpillar doesn’t just grow wings—it dissolves into goo first. But even in that what-the-hell-is-happening phase, it gets a stick to hang onto.

Humans? We don’t get sticks.

We’re expected to navigate massive identity shifts alone, without structure, support, or understanding of what’s happening to us.

🌿 Leaders are thrown into new roles without integration.
🌿 Activists are expected to burn themselves out for the cause.
🌿 People leave entire versions of their lives behind—careers, relationships, belief systems—and are told to just “be grateful” instead of being guided through the grief that naturally comes with transformation.

🌿 Even the most well-intentioned leaders, given broken systems, will fail.

What I had been trying to see wasn’t just coming into focus—it was coming for me.

And then came the economic collapse of 2008.

I lost my job again.

This time, I landed at a small GIS firm, stepping into a leadership role during a period of deep instability. On paper, I was the VP of Marketing & Business Development—charged with renewing the company’s thought leadership, shaping its strategic direction, and guiding cultural alignment during a time of transition.

But beneath the surface, old dynamics were playing out in new settings.

It was a place where brilliance and blind spots coexisted. Where I was invited in with trust and responsibility, and still found myself navigating power plays, unspoken expectations, and moments of quiet dismissal that felt all too familiar.

Those moments stayed with me.

Not because they were extreme, but because they were familiar.

The Missing Piece: Transformation Isn’t Just Cognitive—It’s Biological

When I was laid off again—this time because the company decided it needed a “sales guy,” even though we had only just clarified our marketing direction—I knew I was witnessing a familiar pattern. I knew they weren’t ready for sales. I voiced this concern. I’d been hired to bring strategic clarity, but the discomfort of following through on a new strategy long enough to enact real change caused them to fall back into old patterns.

I was beginning to trust that not being heard wasn’t the same as being wrong, but also it wasn’t my place to force my knowledge on someone who didn’t want it.

So I bowed out gracefully, and formed the first rendition of what would become Practical-Magick. I designed my own curriculum to deliver to organizations like Weyerhaeuser and Seattle Central Community College, worked as a part-time consultant for Teams & Leaders again, and started to incorporate the Neuroscience of Leadership into my skill set.

Then my dream job opened up—in my dream location.

I became Program Director at Olympic Park Institute (now NatureBridge), nestled on the shores of Lake Crescent inside Olympic National Park. Yes. HOME. It was a place rooted in everything I loved: learning, nature, and transformation. I stepped into a role that called for organizational change, strategic growth, and cultural alignment—but what I walked into was a cascade of leadership transitions and power dynamics that would deepen my understanding of systems more than any textbook ever could.

Over the course of two years, I had four different bosses. The leader who hired me went on sabbatical soon after I arrived. I worked briefly under an interim director whose creativity and clarity helped me hit the ground running—and then returned to a revolving door of leadership styles, shifting priorities, and increasingly rigid hierarchies. At times, I was deeply supported. At others, I was actively sidelined.

And still, I led.

I revitalized a money-losing conference program by transforming it into a successful wedding business that funneled revenue into environmental education. I started a newsletter for teachers that helped them feel rooted in our place—reminding them why they returned year after year. I brought in new systems for vetting program ideas. I even got to witness and participate in the final celebration of the Elwha Dam removal project —one of the largest river restoration efforts in U.S. history at the time. It reminded me that even entrenched systems can be dismantled. Even rivers can return.

During my time there, I was honored as a Peninsula Woman for my leadership, though I was also learning—in real time—how fragile transformation can be when ego overshadows integration. How resistance to change is often grief in disguise. And how good ideas stall not because they’re flawed, but because someone upstream decides they don’t like where the current is headed.

At the same time, while continuing my personal research on the neuroscience of leadership, I discovered HeartMath and the physiology of change. I learned that:

✅ When we’re in chronic stress, our brain’s decision-making center—the prefrontal cortex—goes offline, making clear thinking impossible.
✅ When identity shifts, the nervous system registers it as a threat—even when the change is mostly perceived as positive.
✅ Sometimes people don’t “resist” transformation—they just don’t have the tools to navigate it.

I saw people get stuck, not because they lacked vision, but because something deeper was at play.

So I dug further.

I immersed myself in the biology of trauma, and the psychology of change. I explored self-doubt, shame, and the stories we carry in our bodies. I studied systems thinking, somatics, and practices that reconnect us to compassion—both internally and collectively.

But even with all that research, something was still missing.

Because transformation—whether personal, professional, or systemic—doesn’t happen in the mind alone.

If your nervous system is in fight-or-flight, if your identity is dissolving without a framework to hold onto, if you don’t have language for what’s happening to you— you’ll stay stuck.

🏞️ When the system no longer fits, something ancient calls you back.

After two years of constant change and top-down decisions that stripped away local wisdom in favor of centralization —echoes of what I’d seen at Boeing, but in reverse— I was laid off again.

This time, I saw it coming—because I suggested it. When the fourth new Campus Director asked for my recommendations, I told him the truth: we were top-heavy, and my role had become redundant. I carried threads of responsibility across nearly every department—marketing, education, facilities, finance—but I didn’t have full ownership of any of them. When my voice as the author of our teacher newsletter was pulled from me—replaced with prescribed language from the top—I knew it was time to leave. To stop molding myself to fit broken systems.

So I walked away—and this time, I did something different.

I launched my 1:1 coaching practice. 

I began teaching HeartMath tools to women navigating stress, burnout, and big life shifts. Over the next decade, this work morphed as I expanded my tools and my business organically grew. I listened, deeply, to the stories these women were carrying. 

And as I did so, I remembered my years on the Crisis Line—the late-night calls, the weight of holding someone’s story while they found their way back to themselves.

That’s when it clicked.

Our brains are wired for narrative.

Language isn’t just communication—it’s a biological tool for integration. Neuroscience shows that the stories we tell ourselves shape our nervous system responses, influencing everything from resilience to emotional regulation.

And yet—some stories get trapped.

Trauma lives in the body, not just the mind, which is why talking about it isn’t enough. 

True transformation requires a full-body shift.

I started to see it clearly: the work I was doing with these women wasn’t just about tools or techniques—it was about reclaiming language.

📖 The stories they inherited.
📖  The ones they were shedding.
📖  The ones they didn’t yet have words for.

📖 🌱 And this is where my early influences of story and nature come full circle.

Alongside story, nature was still at work.

Not just as a backdrop, but as a companion. A quiet teacher.

Even when I lived in the city, I chose places that backed up to forest trails and water. I walked daily with my dog along creeks and under trees. I enjoyed and observed.

Nature has always shaped me—not just in childhood, but throughout my adult life. But I didn’t always know how to describe the significance of it. 

Saying “I grew up in Nature” doesn’t begin to capture the depth of my relationship with the Earth.

Because nature isn’t just scenery—it’s a living presence. A co-author of the Earth’s story, and of ours.

The living world doesn’t just reflect our stories—it helps us rewrite them.

I had already felt this, in the orchard of our home in Eden Valley—where sour cherries taught me about sufficiency and reciprocity in lean times.

 I felt it in the one-room cabin we lived in on Lake Sutherland, using an outhouse and showering outdoors, freezing wind whipping around the corner of the cabin, yet blessed by the view of open sky and water. 

I felt it while leading pilgrimage hikes to Marmot Pass, hosting story-based retreats at our family cabin, and coaching teams outdoors on a ropes course, where the forest held more than mere challenge—it held clarity.

And now, full circle, I live once again in a place where elk wander past my windows. I see them and feel the instinct to protect them—not just as wildlife, but as kin.

Nature has never stopped shaping me.

It’s been there all along, offering rhythms, metaphors, systems, and storylines—quietly teaching me how to live, how to let go, and how to return.

As for the stories that shaped me?

I began to see language and its influence everywhere.

The stories I’d once clung to—about worth, about success, about what it meant to be “useful”—weren’t just ideas I believed.

They were entire structures I was living inside.

Like an old house I hadn’t realized I’d inherited, I had to walk from room to room asking: Who built this? Does it still fit? What needs to be rewritten?

I could feel the walls closing in—not metaphorically, but physiologically. Like my nervous system was reacting to a blueprint I hadn’t chosen.

That’s when it hit me:

We humans don’t only tell stories. We live inside them.

Some were handed to us by family, culture, or old wounds.
Others are waiting to be reclaimed—or rewritten entirely once we have the language to express what we experienced.

Once I began to see where language was missing, notice the architecture of the stories we tell ourselves –and how much these stories are shaped by the “norms” of most powerful human systems in society, I understood that’s where all our challenges are stemming from.

Because here’s the thing capitalism wants you to forget:

🌱 We belong to nature as much as it belongs to us.
🧠 The nervous system regulates best in relationship with the natural world.
🌍 When we sync our rhythms with something older and wilder than ourselves, we remember what it feels like to move through change without force.

Story, language, movement, and nature—
These are not separate tools.
They are the way through.

And when we remember this—when we trust the wisdom of story and nature—

Transformation stops feeling like something to force and becomes something to follow.

🌿 The Wildwoven Way: Naming What’s Been There All Along

I followed the threads of personal transformation, leadership, activism, and storytelling—until they wove into something whole.

That’s how the Wildwoven Framework was born.

Not from strategy, but from necessity.
Not as a brand, but as a lifeline.

Born during the longest Autumn-Winter-Spring season of my life, when I finally stopped trying to fix myself and started listening to what life—and my body—had been whispering all along.

The Wildwoven Way is not just:

🪟 a coaching framework.
🧠 nervous system support.
🐛 identity shifts.

It’s a seasonal map for navigating the goo of transformation without rushing the process.
A rewilding of the soul.
A return to rhythms that are ancient, alive, and already written in your bones.

Because real transformation doesn’t follow the rules of capitalism.

It follows the rhythm of nature.

🍂 Autumn: Let go of who you thought you had to be.
❄️ Winter: Honor the unknown. Feel it. Grieve it. Rest in it.
🌱 Early Spring: Let curiosity guide you—before clarity arrives.
🌿 Late Spring: Reclaim your creativity. Play with becoming.
☀️ Summer: Rise. Speak. Lead. Offer your Sacred Gifts. Live your truth—fully and unapologetically.

And it works—not because it forces change, but because it honors your full humanity.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

Here’s what real women say after walking this path with me:

“I rarely feel physical anxiety anymore—where when I first called you, I was living in a constant state of chest pain and confusion.” – Etta

“Six months ago, life’s uncertainties made my head spin. Now, I feel a deep inner calm and the knowing that I am enough.” – Maggie

“I found my voice, and it feels good.” – Trudy

“Best night’s sleep in years. No anxiety dreams about all I didn’t do for my kids when they were 12 (now in their 40s).” – Jennifer

These aren’t just mindset shifts. They’re full-body recalibrations. 

Because this work doesn’t ask you to bypass the grief or numb the rage.

 It helps you alchemize it.

Welcome to the Wildwoven Way.

If you’re in a season of unraveling, reinvention, or reckoning— you don’t have to navigate it alone. You don’t have to rush your becoming.

Let’s get you a stick and reclaim the story that leads you home.