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While my home-base is in Colorado—on the stolen, ancestral lands of the Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne tribes—I work with people and communities across the Dreaming Earth. You can send me a digital howl using the button below or by emailing support@hollytruhlar.com. If you want to know about upcoming workshops, groups, and in-person events sign up for my newsletter below, connect with me on instagram, check out my substack, or explore my Events & Offerings page.

 

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If you’ve been following me for a while, you kno If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’ve been frustrated with the term “nervous system regulation” for years. To be clear, it’s not only about language (though language matters); it’s about the approach underneath it. Every time I share this, some folks reply, “But THIS is what we mean by regulation, you just don’t understand.” I do understand. Among other things, I’m trained in somatic trauma work, attachment therapy, transpersonal psychology, and deep democracy work. I know how people are being trained. What we’re often pointing to when we say “regulate the nervous system” are things like widening our window of tolerance, increasing capacity to feel without shutting down, soothing ourselves or another, or coming back into enough balance to keep going. And yet, why use the term regulation at all? Why use self-regulation? A phrase that, to me, is not just unrelational but violent. Do these words reflect what’s really happening in our bodies, our groups, our collective nervous systems, and our ecosystems? No. Sometimes I still use them, because I want to be legible to a wider audience or I simply slip. I’m not villainizing anyone who utters these terms. What I’m questioning is why these particular “terms of art” feel so comfortable to us. My answer: because we live in systems of supremacy and domination, systems that prize control and containment over our wild, full expression. Systems that can’t imagine non-coercive ways of being. Because mainstream psychology, and even much of “alternative” psychology, is born from white, colonized constructs that mistake taming and palatability for healing. So what if we talked about this work, this becoming human again, in wider and wilder ways? What if instead of regulation, we reached for words and practices that help us navigate the Long Dark together, with all of life? Words and practices that more closely convey collapse, and the reality of watching a holocaust unfold in real time? What language feels more relational, more liberatory, more alive, more neuroqueer for you? XO, H 🌈🫏🧙🏻‍♀️ PS: This is my periodic post about this. The first 6 slides are new, the last 9 are from previous posts.
I’m celebrating my dear friend, mentor, and co-f I’m celebrating my dear friend, mentor, and co-facilitator, Francis Weller, today. His new book “In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty” just came out this week, and the ten-year anniversary edition of “The Wild Edge of Sorrow” was released in hardcover. Well done @natlanticbooks ~ this box is beautiful! The books are beautiful! Such needed soul medicine for these times. If you’re grieving, if you care about collective liberation, if you’re drawn to soul activism, I hope you’ll pick up one (or both) of these books. I’m so dang proud of Francis and thrilled to see these come into form. I’m smiling and crying at the same time as I write this. Indeed, “it is time to become immense.” As Francis says in his note I am reading here: May we make radical changes to our interior and communal lives. XO, H 🌈🫏🧙🏻‍♀️ PS: This is my first “unboxing,” and it’s pretty new to me to edit a video with a voice-over. I only kind of know what I’m doing, but I hope it nourishes some souls today. . . . #TheWildEdgeOfSorrow #InTheAbsenceOfTheOrdinary #EmergentStrategy #GriefWork #SoulWork #SoulActivism #PolyCrisis #ClimatePsychology #FrancisWeller #AdrienneMareeBrown #AndersonCooper #ThomasHubl #MichaelLerner #NorthAtlanticBooks
The other day I half-woke from a nap and scribbled The other day I half-woke from a nap and scribbled down the line: “the normalization and curation of collapse.” It’s about the ways the over-culture, celebrities, politicians, the wealthy are pretending everything is normal. While we watch a holocaust livestream into our psyches, they churn out albums and merch about the show of it all. It’s like: Nothing to see over there, let me entertain you and continue to drain your community of resources—including our money, time, attention, & nature. It’s also about how we’ve all been trained to pretend we’re okay, when we’re really not okay. No one I know is okay. We are struggling. Many of my dearest kin are in crisis. And we’re mostly not publicly talking about it. Or, if we are talking about polycrisis and collapse, it’s usually curated because to be totally unhinged would mean being deemed illegitimate, unreliable, not credible. That likely means loss of income & exile. That’s why lately I’ve been quieter, doing things with my hands: embroidering, hide tanning, creating altar offerings. I’ve felt something moving in the collective, & in me. Some response, some needed evolution we haven’t yet embodied. And I’ve been telling people: “There’s a level of complexity here that I can’t yet integrate.” So I stare at shadows moving across the grass. I stitch colors into my jacket (my technicolor grief coat). I talk to people who are being real about how deeply they’re collapsed. I know some will say it’s a luxury to collapse; that not everyone can just fall apart. That’s true, & I feel it. As a chronically ill, neuroqueer, single person who’s been through devastating loss, I know what it’s like to not be able to afford to break down while also being shattered across the underworld. Yet, it’s the movement we’re in. We can’t be composed while what’s needed is our decomposing. We have to stop performing okayness. We need to start speaking to how truly needy, lonely, & exploited we are. How unsustainable & soul-sucking the overculture is. We are collapsing. Let us live this truth out loud. In our breaking down, we become life for each other. How real can we get about the depths of our unraveling? XO, H 🌈🫏🧙🏻‍♀️
This morning I saw a concerning post from a fellow This morning I saw a concerning post from a fellow liberationist that was liked by many of my mutuals. It basically said we shouldn’t be grieving, we should be raging. There is a lot I want to express about this but I have limited time today. Grief is sacred. Grievers are sacred. Grief expresses in many different ways, including holy outrage. Grief is meant to activate us toward what we love and who we need to protect. Today’s spell: I welcome all expressions of grief and holy outrage that move us toward a more liberated world. I see through inauthentic or performative expressions of sadness or rage (particularly from celebrities) that lack soul and accountability. Please don’t go after the person who made the original post in these comments or anywhere. People are grieving and rightfully angry, it’s coming out in all kinds of ways. They get to have their experience, and I get to have mine. I will always stand up for grievers, grief, and Soul. May Palestine be free. May we all be free. XO, H 🌈🫏🧙🏻‍♀️ TLDR: Please don’t shit on grievers or grief work. Thank you. . . . #TheWildEdgeOfSorrow #EmergentStrategy #WhatItTakesToHeal #GriefWork #CollapsePsychology #Polycrisis #CollectiveLiberation #DontShitOnGriefWork
Now Hiring: Collaborative Assistant (Part-Time, Re Now Hiring: Collaborative Assistant (Part-Time, Remote, Through 2025) I’m seeking a Collaborative Assistant to help with the back-end flow of my offerings and the front-end heartbeat of community care. This part-time role (6-10 hours/week at $35USD/hour) supports both logistics and relationship-building. Tasks include tracking email and participant applications, supporting my online communities (Soulful Life, Unravel | Entangle), and bringing programs into form. You’ll also help coordinate Zoom sessions and occasionally co-host (admin only), create simple Canva posts for events, and tend to participant outreach. The right person is relational, consistent, creative, and attuned to the values of grief, soul, and liberation. Ideally, you’re someone curious about politicized grief tending, collapse psychology, and soul work, perhaps someone who would benefit from access to my programs or occasional mentorship (and might even want to do some work for trade). Looking for someone familiar with tools like Gmail, Google Docs, Dropbox, Canva, Substack, Zoom, and Mighty Networks, or willing to learn them. For more info and to apply, please check out the form in my bayo. Update: The application form is now closed as we have received over 120 applications. I will keep people updated if we reopen applications. XO, H 🌈🫏🧙🏻‍♀️ . . . #GriefWork #SoulWork #CollapsePsychology #ClimatePsychology #TheWildEdgeOfSorrow #SoulActivism #CommunityBuilding
Imagine teaching about confidence, soul, shame, po Imagine teaching about confidence, soul, shame, power, vulnerability, or visibility and not being willing to tell your friends and “followers” that you’re not okay with watching a genocide unfold. Imagine holding space for grief and holy outrage, but staying silent as a holocaust happens before our eyes. Imagine being a climate psychologist and not speaking about the ecocide and genocide in Palestine. Imagine being a soul activist and staying silent as people in Palestine and beyond are further severed from land, lineage, and life. That’s not how I am going to show up to these times of rupture and repair. That’s not how I am going to go down. And, we are going down… into the depths, together. If you, like me, are wondering: What do I do? What risks am I willing to take? Then here’s an easy one. On Friday, August 8th, many of us are going to be disrupting business as usual, pausing our groups and meetings, and gathering together for prayer and protest. Making donations, calls, and altars for Palestine. You don’t have to be a coach or therapist to participate, you just have to be a person who cares. You might be a healer, grief tender, teacher, witch, group facilitator, writer, artist, or donkey. Tell the people you work with why you’re disrupting that day. Ripple this out in the ways you can. If you can’t cancel all your calls & programs (bc we know end-capitalism is complex, and some of us are forced to work) cancel what you can, join the call on 8/8 at 1-3pm ET. Thank you to @rachaelmaddox @stephanierosezoccatelli @deemz123 @artofloving and @nishamoodley for organizing this. Thank you for weaving Palestinian liberation and Jewish healing together because they ARE inextricably linked. And thank you to every single one of you who joins us and dares to keep your heart open in these times. There’s a portal in my bayo with more ways to support. Always together. XO, H 🌈🫏🧙🏻‍♀️ . . . #CollectiveLIberation #FeedGazaNow #Grief #GriefRitual #PoliticizedGrief #EmergentStrategy #TheWildEdgeOfSorrow #Polycrisis #CollapsePsychology #ClimatePsychology #SoulWork
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