Growing Humankindness

Writing Through Illness: A Poetry Workshop with One Art
2025-07-17 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
“Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you. Your feelings need you. Go home and be there for all of these things.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Illness – of all shapes and forms – is a complex threshold. As we journey through her doors, we meet change, loss, fear, pain, grief, fatigue, gratitude, wonder, awe – the full mystery of what it means to be human and to live in a human body.
In this online playshop with One Art, a poetry journal, we’ll explore, write and share our way into a more generous, deeper connection with the complexity that arises when we host an illness in our body’s ‘guest house.’ We’ll use writing practices, presence, and poetry to meet these guests and nurture a more regenerative, curious, and compassionate relationship with our bodies, hearts, and minds.
What might illness have to share with us? How might it meet us? How might we meet it?
This workshop is open to anyone who’s been touched by illness – their own, a loved one’s, a friend’s – and all kinds of illness – physical illness, mental illness, chronic illness, sudden illness. All levels of writing experience are welcome.
If you can’t join us live, we’ll record our time together so you can explore it later at your own pace.

Gathering Ourselves: A Creativity Circle to Nurture Connection and Compassion
2025-06-06 08:00 - 2025-11-14 17:00
Friends, please join me and my co-facilitator, Tamara Strijack, for Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with ourselves and each other.
In these online gatherings, we’ll use centering exercises, prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our inner world.
We’ll couple our exploration with group sharing – a safe, sacred space where we can share, listen to ourselves, and listen to each other with ‘the ears of our hearts.’
We’ll be meeting once a month from June to November from 12 to 3 pm CDT on Fridays. Tuition is 6 monthly payments of $125 USD and there are limited spots. If the group is full, please contact us to join the waiting list.
Learn more and register here.

Gathering Ourselves: April creativity circle
2025-04-25 12:00 - 15:00
Friends, please join us for an upcoming, free, open to all experience of Gathering Ourselves, a creativity circle to connect more deeply with ourselves and each other.
In this online gathering, we’ll be using prompts, poems, and our own creative expression – whether it’s collage, journaling, writing, journal pages, drawing or more – to nurture a more generous, deeper, and restorative relationship with our inner world.
We’ll couple our exploration with group sharing – a safe, sacred space where we can share, listen to ourselves, and listen to each other.
This gathering is a chance for you to experience a taste of our upcoming 6 month group, Gathering Ourselves, to see if it’s the right fit for you. Bring yourself, and bring a friend!
Learn more and register here.

Reclaim Your Power Summit
2025-04-01 08:00 - 2025-04-17 17:00
Hello friends, I want to invite you to join me at the free Reclaim Your Power Summit where I’ll be one of 15 guests speaking about health and recovery.
My interview will focus on caring for the roots of emotional eating, how to support yourself in sticky situations, and how to help shift the narrative we can carry inside of “I’m broken.”
You can learn more and sign up here.

Book of Love - 2025 Soul Diver's circle
2025-01-19 08:00 - 2025-06-23 17:00
Friends, this is my favorite group to facilitate, and one that’s perfect for you if you’re needing rest from the ‘work’ of healing.
The Book of Love is a playful, art based group to reconnect to your wholeness: to birth the deeper story that lives underneath our experiences of loss, disconnection, rupture and trauma.
In this ongoing group you’ll be crafting a journal – using a blank book that you fill with images, stories, symbols and more – to create a book of connection, a chronicle and witness to your soul’s story. Through this creation and through sharing a space with others, you’ll reconnect with your deepest self, soften shame, and embolden courage.
The next Book of Love group begins January 2025 and is open for registration through January 13th. We’ll meet once a month from January to June from 1 to 4 pm CST on Sundays or from 10 am to 1 pm CST on Mondays. You choose your group – Sundays or Mondays.
Tuition is 6 monthly payments of $125 and there are limited spots. You can learn more about The Book of Love here.
If you’re reading about this event after January and are interested in a future Book of Love group, please contact us to join the waiting list.

The Nutrition Awakening
2024-12-11 08:00 - 2024-12-18 17:00
The ‘what to eat’ question is one that plagues so many of us! With so much dietary advice it can be hard to know what or how to eat. And yet the food we eat has a powerful impact on our physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual health.
This summit may be for you if you want to:

learn how you can eat for greater health
lower your sugar intake
eat a lower inflammation diet
reverse or prevent chronic illness
or understand the food-mood connection

Experts who’ll be speaking on the summit include Vera Tarman, Bitten Jonsson, Craig Emmerich and Robert Lufkin. My presentation is on how compassion, presence, and relational neuroscience can help you soften painful or harmful emotional bonds with food.
If this speaks to you, I’d love to have you join me. And please share this with those who might be interested.
The summit begins on December 11th and is free. You can learn more and sign up here.

Soften a Sugar Habit with Presence, Compassion and Grief
2024-11-05 14:00 - 2024-12-03 15:30
If you use sugar to self soothe, to care for painful emotions, or to comfort yourself when you’re stressed, the holidays may be an especially difficult time for you. In this four part class, you’ll learn how to use presence, self compassion and grief to unhook from painful patterns with sugar.
Presence and compassion create the safety for change, healing and growth to occur, with sugar and beyond. And yet you may wonder – how do I cultivate these things? And how can they help me eat less sugar? In this course you’ll learn the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ so you can start to build the inner refuge that replaces the ‘holding’ of sugar.
Webinars will be on Tuesdays from 2 to 3:30 pm CDT and will be recorded if you can’t attend live. The last webinar is a bonus class on yang self compassion and how to set protective, loving limits with sugar without activating the stress system.
This was a brand new class for 2023 and received rave reviews. It’s suitable for all levels and is especially designed for people who are new to Growing Humankindness and for those who struggle with sugar cravings during the holidays.
Learn more and sign up here.

Writing the Body: A poetry Thoughtshop with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Karly Randolph Pitman
2024-09-24 10:00 - 16:00
We can have so many complex feelings about our bodies – love, joy, fear, appreciation, disgust, grief, resignation. Our relationships with our bodies are rich and multi-faceted! There are the things we treasure – what our bodies experience, hold, and do. There are the ways our bodies just are – this temporary house for the soul. And there are our bodies themselves – their frailty, strength, and the ways they hold and shape our lives.
Join us for a one day, online writing retreat where we’ll use meditation, mindfulness, and poetry to learn, share and write our way into a more generous, deeper connection with our bodies. What might our bodies have to share with us? How might they want to meet us? How might we want to meet them? Together, we’ll explore this rich mystery.
We’ll be meeting on zoom on Tuesday, September 24th from 8 am-3 pm PST/9 am-4 pm MST/10 am-5 pm CST/11 am-6 pm EST time. We offer three payment options: $125, $150 or $175 USD. The retreat is limited to 20 participants. If the retreat is full, kindly contact us to join the waiting list.
Learn more and sign up here.

Book of Love - 2024 class
2024-08-15 13:00 - 2024-09-19 14:30
Friends, this is my favorite class to facilitate, and one that’s perfect for you if you’re needing rest from the ‘work’ of healing.
The Book of Love is a playful, art based class to reconnect to your wholeness: to birth the deeper story that lives underneath our experiences of loss, disconnection, rupture and trauma.
In this class you’ll be crafting a journal – using a blank book that you fill with images, stories, symbols and more – to create a book of connection, a chronicle and witness to your soul’s story. Through this creation and through sharing a space with others, you’ll reconnect with your deepest self, soften shame, and embolden courage.
Class begins on Thursday, August 15th. Webinars are on Thursdays from 1 to 2:30 pm. You can learn more and sign up here.

Home study support call
2024-07-06 13:00 - 14:30
Friends, this is a chance for you to get support as you work your way through our home study offerings. Where are you getting stuck? Where do you need help? Is there a victory or challenge you want to share? Bring your questions, challenges, and insights to these group calls. We’re here to help! The webinar will be recorded if you can’t make it, and you’ll have a chance to ask questions beforehand if you can’t attend live.
This webinar is for any student who’s bought one of our home study offerings. You can learn more or sign up for a home study course here.

Growing Humankindness community - July through December 2024
2024-07-01 08:00 - 2024-12-31 17:00
The community is an online support group for Growing Humankindness alumni who want to deepen presence, mindfulness and self compassion in their relationship with food and with themselves.
Each month we have a Healing Focus that explores a particular area to nurture healing in our relationship with food.

July – Bringing rest and play to the healing journey
August – Inner listening
September – Connecting with the body’s grace
October – Softening pursuit
November – Self forgiveness
December – Birthing your healing story

Then we meet twice a month for zoom webinars where you can ask questions, share your experience, and connect with others. One of the monthly webinars is a ‘Soul Circle’ where we explore the month’s theme in an explorative way – through collage, journaling, inner exploration, or writing.
We meet from 3 to 4:30 pm central time on one Thursday and one Saturday a month:​​​​​​

Thursday, July 11th and Saturday, July 27th
Thursday, August 15th and Saturday, August 31st
Thursday, September 12th and Saturday, September 28th
Thursday, October 10th and Saturday, October 26th
Thursday, November 7th and Saturday, November 23rd
Thursday, December 5th and Saturday, December 14th

The community also includes an online forum, the option to have a listening partner, and unlimited online access to our library of courses.
The community is a 6 month commitment and is a closed small group with a limited number of spots – you sign up for six months at a time. Tuition is $125 USD per month for six months.
Learn more and sign up here.

When Food is Your Mother: Healing the Shame of Food Distress
2024-06-15 10:00 - 13:00
In this signature workshop, you’ll learn why and how food can become a substitute attachment – a place of soothing, regulation, connection, and attunement – and not just a ‘bad habit’ of overeating. From this perspective, food addictions are emotional bonds that serve core needs and regulate the nervous system.
And with this insight, we can approach overeating with more empathy, understanding and clarity, leading to less shame, less stigma, and a greater possibility for change.
This event is being hosted by PCPSI, Professional Counselling and Psychotherapy Seminars Ireland.
This workshop is suitable for all levels and is especially pertinent for helping professionals – therapists, counselors, social workers, and coaches – as well as medical professionals who want to better understand the emotional dynamics that lie underneath a distressed relationship with food.
You can learn more and sign up for this event here.

Expert Diabetes Reversal Summit
2024-06-04 15:00 - 19:00
On Tuesday, June 4th I’ll be one of the eight speakers featured on the Diabetes Reversal Summit. If you want support to manage your blood sugar, reverse diabetes, or to lower your sugar intake, this summit may be for you. The summit is hosted by Lucia Tiffany, a nurse, health coach and educator who’s helped people reverse metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes, and diabetes for the past 50 years.
For my part of the summit, I’ll be talking about how to emotionally let go of painful food habits – how the brain prunes out what doesn’t work. This process is what helps us stop overeating, binge eating, or overdoing sugar.
You can learn more and sign up for the summit here.

Emerge: Create a New Habit
2024-04-15 08:00 - 2024-05-14 17:00
This class is for you if you overuse sugar for stress relief, to care for your emotions, or to self regulate and want help to transition into a no or low sugar diet. You’ll receive daily emotional support and learn how to apply self compassion to the process of habit change, so you can create more nourishing self talk and build resilience, that internal sense of, “I trust myself to move through this.” Weekly webinars and a forum give you a chance to ask questions and daily audios help you feel held each day.
Emerge is our most popular class and has been taken by thousands of students around the world. Early registration is now open. You can learn more and register here.

Facing What Doesn't Work: How To Let Go of Food
2024-04-02 14:00 - 15:00
Here at Growing Humankindness we talk a lot about why we can become bonded to food, sugar and other food habits that cause us harm. This understanding is super helpful! For most people, the next question is how: how do I let go?
In this free webinar we’ll be talking about the unwinding process from food. In particular, we’ll talk about facing what doesn’t work – the necessary step that softens the heart, softens our addictive habits, and helps us let go. This hour webinar will offer learning, time for questions, as well as a brief introduction to the upcoming Emerge: Create a New Habit class, so you can see if it’s the right fit for you. The Emerge group class begins on Monday, April 15th.
You can sign up for the webinar here.
How to access the recording:
Friends, this webinar has now passed. The recording can be found in the free welcome room of our Mighty Network. You can join the welcome room here (it’s free but you’ll need to create a username and password.) Once you’re logged in the recording of the webinar can be found here.

Align: Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel
2024-01-30 14:00 - 2024-03-05 15:30
If you reactively push against help or get stuck in feelings of resistance – “No, you can’t make me!” – when you try to make positive changes with food, it can be so frustrating.
In Align: Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel, you’ll learn how to soften the inner conflict between the part of you that wants to change and the part of you that pushes back. Defusing this conflict will help you follow through on the changes you want to make with food, set limits, and express a greater sense of power and agency in your life.
You can learn more and sign up for the class here.

Quit Sugar Summit
2024-01-08 08:00 - 2024-01-14 17:00
I’m a guest on the 11th annual Quit Sugar Summit where I talk about the importance of nervous system regulation, compassion, and mindfulness in healing patterns of self soothing with sugar.
This free summit includes dozens of speakers in nutrition, medicine, psychology, addiction, and lifestyle change to support you in eating less sugar. The summit begins on January 8th and runs through January 15th.
You can learn more and sign up here.

Growing Humankindness community - January through June 2024
2024-01-01 14:00 - 2024-06-30 15:30
The community is an online support group for Growing Humankindness alumni who want to deepen presence, mindfulness and self compassion in their relationship with food and with themselves.
Each month we have a Healing Focus that explores a particular area to nurture healing in our relationship with food.

January – Deepening presence
February – Caring for your inner rebel
March – Caring for alarm and supporting the nervous system
April – Softening guilt
May – Nurturing a secure attachment with yourself – “I’m safe and I’m loved”
June – Softening pressure and overresponsibility

Then we meet twice a month for zoom webinars where you can ask questions, share your experience, and connect with others. One of the monthly webinars is a ‘Soul Circle’ where we explore the month’s theme in a creative way – through collage, journaling, writing or some other artistic way – with the option to share your creations with others.
The community also includes an online forum, the option to have a listening partner, and unlimited online access to our library of courses.
The community is a 6 month commitment and is a closed group with a limited number of spots – you sign up for six months at a time.
Tuition is $125 USD per month and you’re charged on the first of the month, beginning on January 1st, 2024 and then again on February 1st, March 1st, April 1st, May 1st and June 1st.
Registration for the first 2024 session closes on January 8th.
Here are the dates and times for the webinars:

January 11 – 2pm central
January 18 – 2 pm central
February 1 – 2 pm central
February 15 – 2 pm central
March 7 – 2 pm central
March 21 – 2pm central
April 4 – 2 pm central
April 18 – 2 pm central
May 9- 2 pm central
May 23 – 2 pm central
June 6- 2 pm central
June 20 – 2 pm central

Learn more and sign up here.

Soften a Sugar Habit with Presence, Compassion and Grief
2023-11-27 14:00 - 2024-01-02 15:30
If you use sugar to self soothe, to care for painful emotions, or to comfort yourself when you’re stressed, the holidays may be an especially difficult time for you. In this four part class, you’ll learn how to use presence, self compassion and grief to unhook from painful patterns with sugar.
Presence and compassion create the safety for change, healing and growth to occur, with sugar and beyond. And yet you may wonder – how do I cultivate these things? And how can they help me eat less sugar? In this course you’ll learn the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ so you can start to build the inner refuge that replaces the ‘holding’ of sugar.
Webinars will be on Tuesdays from 2 to 3:30 pm CDT on December 5, December 12, December 19 and January 2. They’ll be recorded if you can’t attend live. On January 2nd we’ll have a bonus class on yang self compassion and how to set protective, loving limits with sugar without activating the stress system.
This is a brand new class for 2023 and is suitable for all levels. It’s especially designed for people who are new to Growing Humankindness and for those who struggle with sugar cravings.
Learn more and sign up here.

Kick Sugar Summit - 2023
2023-10-16 08:00 - 2023-10-23 17:00
Friends, I’m delighted to participate in the 2023 Kick Sugar Summit. This annual summit brings together wonderful leaders in the nutritional, psychological, and health fields to help you have a healthier relationship with sugar. You can sign up for this free summit here.
Some of the speakers that may interest you include:

Kelly McDaniel – author of Mother Hunger
Dr. Aimie Apigian – physician and trauma expert
Dr. Marcelle Pick – functional medical doctor and women’s health expert
Susan Peirce Thompson – founder of Bright Line Eating

My interview is on Thursday, October 19th where I’ll be talking about Overcoming Addiction with Mindfulness, Grieving and Self Compassion. I hope to see you there!

When Food is Your Mother - 2023 class
2023-09-25 08:00 - 2023-11-17 17:00
For many people, overeating and binge eating are not just “bad” habits or coping strategies but emotional bonds – a ‘mother’ that they turn to for comfort, holding, soothing, regulation, and nurturing.
Self soothing with food is a well intentioned coping mechanism to feel safe, secure and connected in the face of isolation, intense emotions, powerlessness, or pain.
In moments of overwhelm, this emotional bond with food – and the needs that drive it – can override other needs, such as a need for health or nurturing limits. In this class, you’ll learn how to nurture the internal and external safety that enables you to soften your bond with food and deepen your connection to yourself.
The weekly webinars are on Thursdays, alternating between 2 and 6 pm central.

Growing Humankindness community - open for new members
2023-08-28 08:00 - 2023-09-22 17:00
The Growing Humankindness community, where you can connect with others, deepen your understanding, receive help and coaching, and nurture your healing and recovery, is open for new members.
The community is for deep feeling, deep thinking people who self soothe with food and who want to deepen presence, compassion and listening in their inner worlds. Together, we’ll practice the tools and nurture the safety that softens overeating, perfectionism, and overdoing.
The community includes an online group forum, webinars, Listening partners, and Healing focuses throughout the year, where we go more deeply into a common area of challenge. We also go through courses together as a cohort.
The Growing Humankindness community is open to all and also includes access to our library of courses.
Membership closes on Friday, September 22nd.

Emerge: Create a New Habit
2023-06-05 08:00 - 2023-07-10 17:00
If you overuse sugar for stress relief, to care for your emotions, or to self regulate, this course will help you change your eating habits with gentleness and insight. You’ll receive daily emotional support and learn how to apply self compassion to the process of habit change, so you can create more nourishing self talk and build resilience, that internal sense of, “I trust myself to move through this.”
Emerge is our most popular class and has been taken by thousands of students around the world.
This class is open to anyone in the Growing Humankindness membership community. You can learn more and join the community here.

When Food is Your Mother - 2022 class
2022-09-27 08:00 - 2022-11-22 17:00
For many people, overeating and binge eating are not just “bad” habits or coping strategies but emotional bonds – a ‘mother’ that they turn to for comfort, holding, soothing, regulation, and nurturing.
Self soothing with food is a well intentioned coping mechanism to feel safe, secure and connected in the face of isolation, intense emotions, powerlessness, or pain.
In moments of overwhelm, this emotional bond with food – and the needs that drive it – can override other needs, such as a need for health or nurturing limits. In this class, you’ll learn how to nurture the internal and external safety that enables you to soften your bond with food and deepen your connection to yourself.
This class is open for registration. Tuition is $475 USD or two monthly payments of $240.
You can learn more here.

Kick Sugar Summit 2022
2022-09-01 08:00 - 2022-09-08 17:00
Join me and sugar and nutrition experts Dr. Julia Ross, Dr. Robert Lustig, Dr. Susan Peirce of Bright Line Eating, and more for this year’s sugar summit. My talk on Healing the Emotional Roots of Sugar Addiction is on day 7, September 7th.

When Food is Your Mother - 2021 class
2021-08-02 08:00 - 2021-09-29 17:00
For many people, overeating and binge eating are not just “bad” habits or coping strategies but emotional bonds – a ‘mother’ that they turn to for comfort, holding, soothing, regulation, and nurturing.
Self soothing with food is a well intentioned coping mechanism to feel safe, secure and connected in the face of isolation, intense emotions, powerlessness, or pain.
In moments of overwhelm, this emotional bond with food – and the needs that drive it – can override other needs, such as a need for health or nurturing limits. In this class, you’ll learn how to nurture the internal and external safety that enables you to soften your bond with food and deepen your connection to yourself.
This class opens for registration in late May/early June 2021.
You can learn more here.

Book of Love - 2021 class
2021-03-22 08:00 - 2021-04-30 17:00
When we experience heartache, hardship, or pain, or when we struggle with something long term like illness or trauma, it’s easy to feel like ‘damaged goods’ – like there’s something wrong with us.
Our struggles can become the lens through which we see ourselves, coloring our perceptions and beliefs about who we are. In the wake of this separation, we often lose our connection with ourselves: our hopes and dreams, abiding goodness, capability, and trustworthiness.
The Book of Love is a playful, art based class to reconnect to your wholeness: to birth the deeper story that lives underneath feelings of disconnection.
In this six week class, you’ll be crafting a journal – using a blank book that you fill with images, stories, symbols and more – to create a book of connection, a chronicle and witness to your soul’s story. Through this creation and through sharing a space with others, you’ll reconnect with your deepest self, soften shame, and embolden courage.
You can learn more here.

Small group intensive: Nurturing the Inner Mother
2020-11-02 08:00 - 2021-10-28 17:00
Our small group intensive is for our beloved alumni who want to come together in a small group to nurture spaces of inner ‘mothering’ within themselves – to create an internal refuge of warmth, welcome, compassion and courage.
Over a year’s time, we come together to deepen the healing you began in When Food is Your Mother so habits of self soothing with food, isolation, and self judgment can gently fall away. You can learn more here.

Small group intensive 2021: Nurturing the Inner Mother
2020-11-01 08:00 - 2021-11-01 17:00

When Food is Your Mother
2020-07-27 - 2020-09-17
It’s easy to look at overeating or any kind of overdoing with food as proof of ‘badness,’ a moral failure. It might seem like a lack of character or strength.
But there are good reasons why you overeat! When we feel overwhelmed, stressed, and caught in painful emotions, everything in our neurobiology is wired to connect.
In the absence of true connection, we can turn to other places of safety and holding – like food. When we’re under stress, we can turn to food as a ‘mothering presence’ – a place of care, nurturing, and understanding.
So the motivation behind overeating is to offer ourselves care – to self nurture.
In When Food is Your Mother, you’ll learn how to soften a pattern of using food for self nurturing, soothing, and stress relief and how to deepen true refuge – true connection – with yourself, with others and with life.
What makes When Food is Your Mother unique is that it weaves in the understanding and insights of attachment science and developmental psychology into the area of overeating.
This is our signature course and has been called ‘life changing’ by those who’ve taken it. You can learn more below.
