About Laura Weaver, MA

I am a writer, facilitator, guide, and consultant with over three decades of experience working in the fields of leadership, education, rites of passage, culture change, and healing. I partner with individuals and organizations to deepen and mature the connection to soul, community, and earth; to meaningfully honor and mark transitions and thresholds; and to create vibrant and authentic cultures. I am the author of two books of poetry (River of Awe and Luminous) and a book for educators entitled Five Dimensions of Engaged Teaching. My work weaves together contemplative, heart-centered, and earth-rooted transformative practices drawn from my years of work with communities all over the globe and my own intensive healing journeys.

Personal statement

One of our central tasks in these times is to develop and grow our capacity to flourish in the midst of great transformation and change.

Inevitably this means meeting both the resource and the pain in ourselves and our systems. It also means cultivating new or dormant capacities in ourselves—including the presence, skills, creativity and courage required to align ourselves with our deepest callings, tap our innate wisdom and genius, and meet and alchemize our personal and collective challenges. At this moment on our planet, we are also being asked to remember the ways we belong to and are in reciprocity with Life.

In our work together, we will explore what it is to remember what has been forgotten, dream what has never before been dreamed, rewild what has been domesticated, tend our relationship to grief, cultivate our Radical Joy and deepen our connection to the Web of Life. We will tap our many ways of knowing, write new stories, draw new maps, mark essential passages, and “make the path by walking”. We will engage this journey through contemplative, relational, soul-centered, and earth-based practices.

Before shifting into consulting, I served for three years as Lead Facilitator for the year-long Leadership Institute offered by American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley (alfsv.org)—where I worked with diverse cohorts of leaders from the public, private, tech, religious and non-profit sectors to create networks for community change. Before ALF, I served as Director for  PassageWorks Institute for 15 years—(first, as Program Director and later as Co-E.D.)—an educational non-profit supporting schools to cultivate meaningful and nourishing school cultures that integrate social and emotional learning, mindfulness, and equity. Over the last decades, I have taught over a hundred workshops and programs for leaders, educators, young people, and families. I have also guided journeys to the Ecuadorian Amazon for Pachamama Alliance and led land-based rites of passage work and transformational retreats for communities of all ages. 

A poet and writer since my early years, I graduated with a BA in Literary Studies (Trinity College, CT) and an MA in Creative Writing/English (UC-Boulder). I am the author of two poetry collections—River of Awe (Soul Passages, to be released in 2023) and Luminous: Poems & Inquiry for the Soul’s Journey (SoulPassages, 2018), a book for educators The 5 Dimensions of Engaged Teaching (Solution Tree, 2013), and the co-author of numerous curricula for the transitions years. I have also published dozens of poems, book chapters and essays on topics ranging from systems change to rites of passage to healing.  You can find samples of my writings on my blog or in the writings section.

My life has brought me a number of initiatory journeys (including a long walk with cancer) that have taught me about the alchemy of transformation and the powerful, beautiful and gritty terrain of such passages. These experiences deeply inform my writing and work in the world. They also serve as taproots for my work as a guide to others in the midst of initiatory passages and thresholds of all kinds.

In my experience, each of us longs to offer our gifts, to serve Life, to know our belonging, to experience our wild spirit, and to live in sacred reciprocity with all that is. My work, in all of its forms, is dedicated to this discovery and embodiment.

My work is informed by

  • American Leadership Forum, founded by Joe Jaworkski, author of Synchronicity—and my 3 years leading the Fellows Program in Silicon Valley

  • Rachael Kessler and my 15 years as a director at  PassageWorks Institute

  • NCEE--National Coalition for Equity in Education

  • Pachamama Alliance –in partnership with indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest

  • Council and deep listening practice as taught by the Center for Council & the Ojai Foundation (certified levels 1-3)

  • the work of Resmaa Menakem and Somatic Abolitionism 

  • land based rites of passage work through Animas Valley Institute & School of Lost Borders 

  • my poetry and writing mentors: Marilyn Krysl, Lucia Berlin, Mark Irwin, Lorna de Cervantes 

  • trainings in healing modalities-including integrative massage (certified 1992), reiki (levels 1, 2, 3), healing touch (levels 1,2,3), shamanic training & journey work

  • embodiment, dance, and mindfulness practices~5 Rhythms, Authentic Movement, MBSR;  truthtelling practice; Body Talk 

  • earth-based wisdom traditions

  • the work of the Conscious Dying Institute (Sacred Doula training)

  • my own personal experience with rites of passage, birth, illness, death and transitions (in my personal life and guiding and supporting others)