I’m so glad to meet you! I’m Karly, the founder and steward of growinghumankindness.

I help people who overeat bring kindness into their relationship with themselves. There is so much about life that can be hard. And there are so many ways we can tend to our hardships, including with food. I help people understand the wisdom beneath their overeating, anxiety and other coping strategies so they can come into a new relationship with them.

There’s a deeper story that lives underneath the surface story of our struggles, and this story is both more true and more merciful. It’s this story, together, that we midwife into being.

Growing human(kind)ness arose from two things:  first, from my own journey of multiple eating disorders, body hatred, and my experiences of depression and anxiety.

This work also arose from bearing witness to the beauty of other people’s stories of courage, persistent love, and radical acceptance with food, shame, addiction, and beyond.

If I had to describe in a sentence how I offer my particular form of service to the world, it would be thus:  may we soften our hearts towards what we fear, misunderstand, and shame in ourselves and in each other.

May we hold our human vulnerability within our hearts.

May we see our noble beauty.

For me, the word that most conveys this softening is respect – a word whose origins are akin to something like this:  to see again, to regard in a new way, or to see with new eyes.

As poet John O’ Donohue so beautifully said, ‘when we approach things with reverence, they have powerful ways of approaching us,’ as well. And so I wonder:  what rises to meet us when we offer reverence to those things that we most fear in ourselves?

Our hearts are so thirsty for dignity. May we be tender towards our pain, forgiving towards our human stumbling, and open to the ground underneath our feet, All that holds and cares for us.

Breath by breath, my wish is that we may embody our wholeness – our deeper story – and live from this knowing.

I believe that listening to each other’s stories and witnessing the vulnerable courage of each other is one of the most powerful ways we can soften what divides us, both within and without. And so I bend my knee towards these stories in many forms.

I write essays about healing and connection at Oh Nobly Born, write books and courses, teach classes, and speak to groups. In all I weave together my love for the Deep, my gratitude for attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology, and radical self compassion.

I offer these teachings in service to all who feel the shame of human stumbling and who yearn for wholeness, and to presence a more compassionate and connected world. Underneath all my work you’ll find a love for the human heart and a devotion to the One, ‘the Arms We Can Never Fall Out Of.’

I live in Austin, Texas with my husband Patrick and our family, two dogs, a very frisky cat, and beautiful oak trees who make excellent friends. I love good stories, good music, good food, good words, lifting heavy things, and long walks.

Media inquiries & speaking start here

Connecting with my offerings

If you have a painful relationship with food or sugar and resonate with my approach, please, make yourself at home here at Growing Humankindness. I’ve gathered all my free resources on this page here. It’s a great way to see if we’re a good fit.

If my approach resonates with you and you feel at home with me, the next step would be to take a do at home course or a group class. I offer two do at home courses, Emerge: Create a New Habit and Align: Heal Your Relationship with Your Inner Rebel, that you can take anytime.

I also offer two group classes a year, The Book of Love and When Food is Your Mother, that are filled with soulful men and women. You can find all my courses here.

My teachers + the foundation of my approach

Lastly, I offer a bow of gratitude to my lineage and to those who’ve blessed me with their teaching. My approach is trauma informed and draws from three primary wells:

• Self compassion
• Human development – attachment theory and IPNB (interpersonal neurobiology)
• And Presence – I draw from Sufism, vipassana and RAIN meditation, earth based/Shamanic/animist approaches, the Divine Feminine, and contemplative Christianity

I’m especially moved by the intermingling, healing waters of interpersonal neurobiology and spirituality and speak to this often in my writing and teaching.

Many have blessed me with their offerings, but a few stand out in how their work has impacted me and shaped my thinking and perceiving. I  honor their great hearts.

• Bonnie Badenoch, trauma trainer, therapist and teacher, author, The Heart of Trauma
• Tara Brach, meditation teacher, therapist, author, Radical Compassion, True Refuge and Radical Acceptance
• Dr. Gordon Neufeld, theorist, developmental psychologist, founder of the Neufeld Institute
• Abby Seixas, therapist, meditation teacher, author, Finding the Deep River Within
• Mark Silver and Holly Glaser, Sufi teachers, heart centered business teachers
• My teachers on grief, culture, and human making, Francis Weller and Stephen Jenkinson

I’m also influenced by the work of Eugene Gendlin, the creator of Focusing, Richard Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems, and the poets, story tellers, and artists of all shapes, sizes, and forms.