What matters most

I pledge allegiance to
Mary Oliver and Ani Difranco.
To my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.

I declare myself a committed
citizen to the constitution of
kindness.

And when I fall to my knees
weary or weighted,
from all of what it means
to be human in this wide,
beautiful and aching world,
may I, while I’m down there,
know how to fill myself
with humble prayer
for the reverent joy it
takes to get back up.

The regular stuff

I received clerical ordination into the Order of Interbeing in the Plum Village tradition by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in 2007 and given the Dharma name Chān Diêu Hoa, which means: True Wonderful Flower. I am the founder and program director of the Be Here Now Sangha, a mindfulness and meditation community group that has been meeting weekly since 2002. As a spiritual leader, I meet with folks for private consultations, host online practice groups, and organize mindfulness-based community events & retreats.

I am deeply invested in my own personal growth-work and regularly seek out opportunities for learning. I’ve taken online courses on trauma-sensitive mindfulness with David Treleaven, mindfulness & kids with Christopher Willard, and the strong heart relationship program with Dr. Rick Hanson. I attend a variety of different online offerings centered around trauma healing, mental health support, resiliency, and skill-building. I also follow closely and read & learn a great deal from Brene Brown, Susan Piver, and Sharon Salzberg.

Writing is a great passion of mine. I pen a regular column for Montana Woman magazine called Mindfulness Matters; am an avid blogger (over 1,000 posts!); write poetry and spoken word (not the same thing) and I also enjoy journal & travel writing. I am a hospice volunteer, musician, community organizer, and I work remotely part-time as an office assistant for Deer Park Monastery.

As of July 2022, I live off-grid in the woods with my lovely husband Mike. We bought 24-acres of land outside of Superior, MT sans structures or services, and are starting to slowly build and grow our long-held vision of starting a mindfulness practice center (see Empty Mountain tab above).

Here's a little more info, if you're left thinking: Um, but, like, where's she from and stuff

Nicole (aka: me, though I will set to write in third-person here for this section, as this way it appears I have "people") was born in the year that the UK elected its first female Prime Minister (insert brief pause here while I decide whether or not to make you google this tidbit of info...did anyone guess 1979?) and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (in the Bucks Country area).

She moved west on a strong and distant urging from the state of Montana, which prompted her to pack up her belongings and boyfriend at the time into her old blue Pontiac Towanda - whose name was inspired by one of her favorite movies: Fried Green Tomatoes - a few days before she would turn 19-years-old. Sadly - but not sadly, too - said packed-up-boyfriend did not last long. Not sadly because Nicole was then freed up to meet her Montanan-grown husband Mike a few months later. A pairing that continues to this day, against most odds, having been wed at the young and generally clueless age of 20-years-old. NOTE: She regards both moving west and marrying Mike as the two all-time best decisions she's ever made and considers herself victorious in the endeavors of life due to having made them.

Writing as a form of self-expression and an outlet of creativity, has been present in her life since as far back as she can remember. What started as diary entries about crushes she had on boys in third grade turned into brooding/hippy-esque/pretend non-conformist journaling in high school. Oh, and there was that stint she ran an "underground" zine called They Kill Us For Sport in high school, too. (Underground in the sense that she got found out pretty quickly by a teacher who then volunteered to be her academic advisor so she could continue circulating it on school grounds.)

Other than completing a correspondence course in Children's Literature in 2001, after spending two years in college going after a degree she chose to stop pursuing, she's had no formal writing education - unless reveling in David Sedaris and Bill Bryson counts, which she likes to think it totally does.

She hopes and hopes some more that her comedic wit translates well to others outside of her own mental landscape - at least once in a while - as she finds her own self terribly funny and would like to be remembered for this quality when she dies.

P.S As she is interested in pushing back against a system that fosters female-folk who deem it inappropriate to share both their accurate age and weight, she wanted me to tell you that currently (as of Aug 2024) she is 45-years-old and prolly weighs around 135-pounds (but this is just a guess cuz she now lives off-grid in the woods and wonderfully doesn’t own a scale).