Meet Holly (she/they)
COLLAPSE PSYCHOLOGIST & POLITICIZED GRIEF TENDER
First, you must know, my soul is a wild one. She’s sensitive and rebellious, curious and courageous. She’s also “positively obsessed” with rupture and repair as my soul medicine and community as my calling. In answering that call, I’ve had my fair share of experiences that have deeply changed and rearranged me. These “rough initiations” have taught me how to tend to the depths of loss, change, injustice, and relationships. They’ve also left me fuller, more compassionate, alive, and connected to all that is. Below is a bit about my 42 years on this wondrous planet—it’s not everything but enough for you to know a bit about who I really am. I hope, someday, I’ll know a bit about who you really are.
When I was 10 years old my older brother, Brett, died of a heroin overdose. He had long, beautiful hair, wore a snakeskin belt, and played the guitar with magic fingers. He’s someone I looked up to and loved my entire life, and then one day he was gone. Everything changed in an instant. That’s when I began my apprenticeship with sorrow and soul.
A decade later, when I was 21, I experienced another life-shattering event. Six weeks before graduating from college, I was run over by a drunk driver who fled the scene with the help of his fraternity brothers. They lied to the paramedics about what happened, would not speak to the police, and hid the driver in a fraternity annex in the days following. While the driver was convicted of a felony, the overall lack of accountability continues to this day (and as an abolitionist I’m much more interested in community processes of accountability rather than state punishment). In addition to the relational and emotional harm I experienced, I suffered from a traumatic brain injury which left me with over 200 stitches in my head, a broken pelvis, and crushed knee. That night the doctors couldn’t tell me if I would live. Later they told me I would never finish my college degree and never go on to get a Masters or Doctorate (proved them wrong on all counts—told you my soul is rebellious). I’m eternally grateful to my sister, Ivy, and parents who supported me as I navigated the world after this threshold experience.
Six years ago, in July 2019, my sister, Ivy, died. Her death was devastating and I’m still learning to be in this world without her. She was a fiber artist and poet, weaving together materials and words into captivating pieces. She lived with chronic illness and disabilities for years, continually experiencing the dehumanizing impacts of an ableist soceity + the medical industrial complex. She’s now a beloved ancestor and I continue to tend to our relationship through ritual and writing.
My other sorrows include romantic and friendship break-ups, witnessing ongoing ecocides, genocides and injustices, and navigating chronic mold illness. All of these experiences have changed me. None of these are mine alone; everyone has stories of loss and harm, some similar, some completely different. Of course, weaved within all of this, I’ve had times of WILD JOY, falling in LOVE, and CELEBRATION with the people and places around me. These times of AWE have shaped me just as much as the rough initiations.
Sharing a bit more about the shape of my soul: I’m queer in many senses of that word, including neuroqueer and poly-hearted. I’m a practicing, politicized witch and belong to an active coven. I’m a donkey enthusiast and am blessed to be the guardian of a miniature mule, miniature donkey, and pup, who, along with the land I inhabit, are my primary teachers. My blood-lineage is Bohemian (Czech), then English, Scottish, and German. If you’re into astrology, I’m a Capricorn sun, Aquarius rising, Gemini moon with LOTS of action in my 11th and 12th houses. On any given day you can find me giving offerings to the beyond-human world, practicing interspecies friendship, and writing about love in times of polycrisis.
*Note: I’ve created a commitment statement that says more about how I hold spaces. It’s a work in progress and you can check it out here: A living spell of Holly’s values and commitments.
Holly Truhlar (they/she) is a collapse psychologist, politicized grief tender, and soul activist. Their work revolves around neuroqueering collapse, cultivating a cosmology of belonging, and practicing the alchemy of rupture and repair. They hold a Doctorate in Law and a Master’s in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, though their deepest learnings come through relationship with the Wild, including the Dreaming Earth, Ancestors, Hekate, and donkeys. As a member of the Bohemian diaspora, they embody síla pravdy: the liberating force of truth. Known for weaving fierce clarity with grounded compassion, Holly cultivates spaces capable of holding the layered grief and relational complexity of living through the death of a global empire. They're committed to tending the collective molt, the shedding of supremacy and domination toward the teneral emergence of intimacy and revelation.