Vanessa Osage
Vanessa Osage, director, first experienced the power of supported transformations in her work as a birth doula. Having trained with Doulas of North America in 2001, she went on to know honor of assisting women and their families with the profound shift of a new child entering their world. Amidst explorations in activism and social justice she trained as a Sexuality Educator, through Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Boston in 2006. Along the way, she also earned a BA in Humanities, from New College of California, San Francisco, with a concentration on Women & the Environment.
In 2008, Vanessa gave birth to a baby girl. In undergoing the transformation herself, she marveled at the similarities between the second passage, into motherhood, and the first, through adolescence. She started dreaming of a similar support program for girls as they moved into their power as adult women. To facilitate this work, she trained as a Coming of Age Mentor, through Rite of Passage Journeys in Bothell, Washington in 2009.
She holds a love for rivers, dancing, circus arts, organic farming and natural building. Her own coming of age involved sacred time with friends in a tipi they built in the woods beyond their school, followed by years of solo travel. All told, she has crossed the land mass twelve times, exploring all 48 contiguous states and parts of Canada. Of all the places she has seen, none has touched her more deeply than this wild northwest corner.
In 2010, through collaboration with friends in the Rooted Emerging Collective, and in partnership with the Ground Floor Healing Arts Community, she established Rooted Emerging as a framework to offer support services to people in a variety of life transformation situations.
Rooted Emerging is delighted to be partnering with the Free Range School, in all the magic and beauty they bring.