About Margaret Howard, MFA, LCSW
Margaret Howard is a crone-aged grandparent, living in southern Illinois. Though living in a small-town, rural area now, she spent much of her life living in major cities and towns in the U.S.,, Europe, and Scandinavia. Importantly, all of the states she's licensed in are states where she's lived, and still visits regularly, and so in connected to the lands there. The work she offers is within the frame of a system she conceived, comprised of evidence-based based methods for which she has been trained, The Four Pathways©: The Land, The Unconscious, The Body, and The Conscious, which works with and at the intersections of somatic and depth psychotherapies, calling in land wisdom, dream work, ritual, spiritual reconnection deepening into communication with the land, and boundary warrioring, as well as cognitive methods. A Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), she is able to independently practice in Colorado, Illinois, and Missouri and via Telehealth. Before landing in this profession she has worked in construction, laying railroad track, as a radio systems installation and repair person in the US Army, and in electronics afterward. Immediately after getting out of the Army, where she fell in love with small, maneuverable aircraft, they achieved a private pilot's license, and much later went on to work as a technical writer for an aircraft manufacturing company. After spending 10 years or so being a homebirthing, stay-at-home mom while also doing childbirth education and aspiring to be a midwife (never got to that goal, though). they spent a few years working in journalism, being a part-time professional musician (piano/flute/voice), teaching college writing, doing web design and various kinds of technical writing. Their first graduate degree was a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Poetry. During and after completing the Master of Social Work degree, she worked as a human trafficking policy advocate, training law enforcement, medical workers, and NGOs regarding human trafficking prevention and treatment and a crisis response clinician. During this time they began to study the need for yoga to be trauma-informed, and wrote on that subject. Now, Margaret enjoys their work as psychotherapist in private practice. She/They continues to work on several books, including a novel, a memoir, and a non-fiction work in the field of mental health. She grew up around water and forest. Lakes, the rivers of southwest Missouri, and at times the oceans. Her elders taught her how to navigate the land, build fire, read the signs of weather, plants, trees, and birds, and to hunt, fish, garden, and cook. She was also given the gift of learning piano, flute, and voice, and has written and recorded music. She has studied with elders of land-spirit-recognizing spiritual traditions, including Indigenous healers, and, as a white person, continues to try not to co-opt, colonize, or romanticize. Her known ancestry is northern European and Cherokee. Selected Publications, Interviews:
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~~~ Member of the Breathe Network ~~~
Mission Statement The Breathe Network connects survivors of sexual violence with trauma-informed, sliding-scale, holistic healing practitioners. We provide education and training for health and healing professionals on the impacts of sexual trauma and best practices in providing trauma-informed care to increase survivors' access to healing. Licenses/Credentials/Governing Bodies
Formal Education Master of Social Work, Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, 2011 Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2000 Bachelor of Science, University Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 1994 Some Trainings, Modalities, & Training Areas This is not a complete list Somatic Experiencing (Y1) Polyvagal Theory Multiple Jungian and Archetypal Psychology Trainings Sand Tray Somatic Depth trainings Trauma and the Soul (with Donald Kalcshed) Body positivity and "health at all sizes" Telehealth Ethics Telehealth Security Considerations HIPAA Motivational Interviewing CBT, DBT, ACT Understand Cults: The Basics, Dr. Stephen Hassan Multiple trainings in human trafficking, coercive control EMDR Levels 1 & 2 EMDR for Child Abuse Recovery Illinois Social Work Licensure Supervisor Training FLASH Technique, Basic and Advanced Multiple Cultural Competency trainings Military Sexual Trauma Preventing Veteran and Military Suicide Ethical Considerations & Best Practices with LGBTQIA+ Clients Internal Family Systems and Social Worker Self Care Shadow Work with James Hollis Land Connectedness with Rune Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen of Nordic Animism Many years working with Lakota Medicine Man, William Baker Becca Tarnis. Intersection of Jung's Red Book and J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trauma and the Soul with Donald Klashed Archetypal Astrology with Lawrence Hillman (son of James Hillman) and Ancestral Lineage Healing with Daniel Foor Trauma-Informed Yoga Archetypal Psychology Depth Somatics Myth and Story Work, with Jean Shinoda Bolen, Sharon Blackie, and others Dream work of various schools/types Land Reconnection Eco-grief |