/ love in the cracks/ takes many shapes. Some days it's helping a group recognize their conflict patterns and remember their skills. Some days it's collective art-making with clay from a shared riverbed. The material changes. The medium doesn't — it's always relationship.

I support individuals, families, communities, and organizations who are yearning to build the skills and systems needed for relational transformation — with one another and the more-than-human world. This work lives at the intersection of conflict, care, and collective imagination. Below are some pathways I offer and envision, though in practice the work is often collaboratively shaped by what the people and place in front of me need.

• land mediation

  
       I want to work with individuals and groups navigating land projects, including land transitions, land based celebration, watershed stewardship, forest management, and land-use decisions. That could mean clarifying complexity between people and land, or one person learning how to listen to land — building their own practice for hearing what a place is asking for. Either way, the process includes the voices it affects, human and more-than-human
  

• community engagement 

  
       I design spaces for real dialogue between neighbors, communities, and organizations. Sometimes that's working through conflict. Just as often, it's gathering ideas — what a new art installation should look like, how to use a shared space, what a community wants to build next. In all ways, people get to listen deeply, speak honestly, and help shape what happens.

• art and earth guided facilitation
  
  

       I bring art into facilitation, through storytelling, collective making, hands-on process, to reach what words alone can't. This is for people who want to build shared visions, honor place, navigate complexity, or mark a transition. Art opens space for what's hard to say directly.

• loving conflict practice

  
     One-on-one and small group sessions for practicing presence, honesty, and care in conflict. We build real skills — listening, boundary-setting, repair, staying grounded under stress — so cracks become places where trust grows .

“mekdela helped me find relationship with plant kin which was reverent, healing and accountable. Her connection with more than human, as well as her general embodied grace, dignity and justice inspires collective power as she holds space. I am honored to have received her care and be in constellation with her.”
 - brintha y

“mekdela has a gift for seeing a person's authentic self and innate goodness. the softening that a person experiences when seen that way invites so much.”
 - wendy van wagner

“the practice group opened up a new way 
to process and tenderly act 
in complicated situations.”
 - jessica thomas

“i’m grateful to have more 
tools for repair.”
- ember amador