Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~ Jelaluddin Rumi
Cealila Komalam (“sa-LEE-luh” “KO-ma-lum”) cultivates sacred ways of living with self, with others, and with Mother Earth. She offers her beauty-making skills as gardener, grief-tender, educator, writer, ceremonialist, land artist, doula, and minister. For the past 25 years, she has apprenticed with the forces of nature and elder teachers who have infused her service path with their love and wisdom. Cealila’s work is body-aware, Earth-honoring, and includes a range of modalities to hold space for individuals, families, and communities to renew themselves and their connections with Earth and Spirit.
Cealila’s gardening practice is rooted in more than two decades of hands on relationships with plants ever since she fell head over heels in love with growing food on the banks of the Connecticut River in 1996. Her plant studies include Certified Permaculture Design with Earth Activist Training, Master Gardener Training in Home Horticulture with Oregon State University, and Seed Academy with Don Tipping at Siskiyou Seeds as well as countless hours of self-study and working closely beside master gardeners. She has served residential clients in the Portland, Oregon area with her own business, offering garden care and garden mentoring, since 2014.
Cealila completed her BA in Anthropology & Music from Dartmouth College, including foreign study in Morocco and Spain and field work in music therapy and religious innovation in North America. A passion for dance led Cealila on a journey of gathering tools for healing body and re-membering soul through Vermont, New York City, New Orleans, and Salvador, Brasil. During this fifteen year stretch of her life, she performed as a dancer, managed a nonprofit arts company, and practiced as a licensed massage therapist, midwifery assistant, and birth doula while deeply apprenticing herself to the musical and religious traditions of the African Diaspora.
After navigating a major health crisis and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, she dove into a life changing five year apprenticeship with Peruvian mesa work including one year living in Peru. Since relocating to the Pacific Northwest in 2006, Cealila focused on serving youth as a Minister of Life Blessing & Maiden Spirit Mentor – facilitating rites-of-passage programs for girls – and became a mother herself to a beautiful girl in 2009.
The intense experience of her mother’s death in 2011 ushered in a deep dive into Death Doula work, studying companion & professional level courses with A Sacred Passing, training with Signature Hospice and the No One Dies Alone project, and completing the 9 month Death Doula Ministerial Program with Home Temple and Tulku Orgyn P’huntsok Rinpoche. A major devotee of life-long learning, Cealila has been a student of Martin Prechtel’s school, Bolad’s Kitchen, since 2017. Recently, she completed a year-long training with Day Schildkret to facilitate a 7-step nature, art, & ritual practice creating impermanent earth art with groups and was named a Certified Morning Altars Teacher.
Cealila = the play of waters (a name gifted by Hurricane Katrina)
Komalam = graceful/beautiful (a name gifted by Mata Amritanandamayi)
Christine Kosonen = my birth name
I give thanks to my Ancestors of blood, Finnish Karelian, Irish, English, & unknown,
I give thanks to my Ancestors of place, the Chinook, Multnomah, & Clackamas peoples,
I give thanks to the Ancestors of my lineage traditions *
Ultimately, any good I have to offer, I received in grace from my teachers. Each is a master who I have received the blessing of working with directly in this life. Each opened my heart wider to the Beauty of Nature and put skills in my hands to share in service to this world. While their teaching styles, personalities, and cultural traditions vary widely, these big-hearted elders all imbued me with reverence for the wild natural world and trust in the resiliency and courage of the human spirit. In a time when so many lack the guidance and mentorship of trusted teachers, I am in awe of my fortune to have sat for years at the feet of these ones: Ochazania Klarich (dancer, Vodun priestess extraordinaire – Thank you for seeing me); Don Oscar Miro-Quesada (kamasqa curandero, altomisayoq adept – Thank you for refining me); Don Mariano Quispe (Q’ero pampamisayoq, master of despacho offerings – Thank you for connecting me to Pachamama); Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma – living Goddess, humanitarian, beyond all explanation – Thank you for your shining epitome of inspiration); Martín Prechtel (Thank you for your patience opening my mind & training my hands); Sobonfu Somé (Dagara keeper of the ritual – Thank you for your laugh, your trust, and your push)….and to all the many other teachers with whom I have danced close, knelt in prayer beside, sat at the feet of for teachings, read their wise words, and received blessing in shorter-Earth-timed ways, I give thanks – your names are too many to list; your heart medicines are precious mosaics in the patchwork of my beauty-walk. May all beings benefit ***
