PHOTO © Darin Back[/caption]
Love Blossoms, Inspires and Prevails
Couples can start or renew their lives together with joy, heart, enthusiasm and optimism, and with the good and ample blessings of families and friends.
Through a premarital or relationship enrichment coaching sequence, I support couples to increase their capacity to enjoy each other and contribute to life together. I want you to have the tools you need to keep your relationship vivid and satisfying. I encourage couples to approach the coaching sequence as a grand revelatory adventure of the soul, and their wedding as a major family and community ritual that can be a soul deepening and beauty creating experience of relationship building and enrichment.
It is an honor and joy to be present with two people who love each other; and to help design and participate in a wedding celebration, based on their wishes that can be a deeply meaningful peak life experience.
I want you to have a wedding or commitment ceremony that happens with ease, grace, tenderness of heart, enthusiasm and joy, and that you remember with fondness for the rest of your lives. I’ve worked with individuals, couples and groups of diverse ages and backgrounds. I admit I’m a softie. I’m deeply in love with my wife, and two lovely and fierce adult daughters. I joyfully work with same-sex couples. Also, I serve at other life transitions, including bereavement/memorial services.
Most of my work is in the regional Twin Cities area of Minnesota. Also, I provide coaching via skype, and have traveled to Wyoming and California as a celebrant. I do not make prescriptions. I offer tools and act from my values, volunteering my experience and knowledge in a respectful “take what you like and leave the rest” attitude. I’m involving myself in this work because of my enthusiasm, and the urging of family and friends.
BACKGROUND
I’ve been involved in coaching and celebrant work since 2011. I’ve pursued lifetime interests in creativity, sociology, psychology, spirituality and emotional health. I’m licensed as a wedding celebrant/officiant in Minnesota, certified as a PREPARE/ENRICH facilitator, and registered as a Universal Life Minister. My sources include Terrance Real, Esther Perel, Miguel Rivera, John Lee, Robert Moore, Robert Johnson, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Marion Woodman, Michael Meade, Martin Shaw, Joseph Campbell, Martîn Prechtel and Malidoma Somé. Another source is my own 20-year research involvement in a community based all-process interactive participatory theater for enjoyment, emotional healing, gender reconciliation and community building, Big Woods Theater of Involvement.
I serve as a teaching artist (music/theater/poetry) in the pioneering, national award winning, research-based, intergenerational interactive participatory performing arts program for elders, the Kairos Alive! Dancing Heart™, featured in the 2012 PBS documentary, Arts and the Mind. My essays and poetry have been published regionally. I’m a performing folk musician, professional writer and national award-winning documentary filmmaker. I’ve taught at Minneapolis College of Art and Design.