In this episode, the third in the Santa Fe trilogy, Kimberly speaks with Ranier Amiel, an artist, bodyworker, and single mother who is restoring a century-old church in Truchas, New Mexico, and turning it into a home, studio, and eventually a space of community and sacred inquiry. Recorded inside the church itself, their conversation moves between the balance of motherhood and creativity, the grounding power of physical labor, and what it means to hunt for and make God after losing faith in the spiritual community you were raised in. Ranier shares her vulva portraiture work, including its two-year run inside an immersive theater project in Amsterdam, and the stark contrast she witnessed between American and Dutch women's relationships to their bodies. They discuss the trauma orientation as a cultural overcorrection that can become avoidant of self-expression, the obsession with self-definition versus actually embodying who you are, and the need for hierarchy, tradition, and compression alongside the essential self. The conversation closes with reflections on the layers between: body and soul, survival and art, the seen and the unseen.

Bio

Ranier Amiel is an artist, bodyworker, movement teacher, and painter based in Truchas, New Mexico, where she is restoring a century-old church into a home, studio, and community space. Born in Santa Fe and raised deeply inside a spiritual community, she has spent the last two decades on what she calls a path of hunting and making God—seeking the sacred through the body, art, and radical vulnerability. She is known for her vulva portraiture and witnessing work, which she has practiced for over twelve years, including a two-year collaboration with an immersive theater company in Amsterdam. A single mother to her son Ollie, Ranier's life and work sit at the intersection of art, motherhood, bodywork, and the creation of sacred space. She envisions the church as a place of deeper meaning, community inquiry, and a different perspective on spiritual truth—guided by a board of priestesses.

What She Shares:

– The wrestle of motherhood and creativity as a single parent

– Restoring a century-old church in Truchas as her biggest art project

– How physical labor, trenching, building, moving rock, became the most grounding thing she's ever done

– Hunting and making God after spiritual disillusionment at 19

– Her vulva portraiture work and what it reveals beyond trauma

– The night-and-day contrast between American and Dutch women's body relationships

– A vision for the church as sacred community space led by a board of priestesses

What You'll Hear:

– Motherhood and creativity: the wrestle of being a full-time single mom and a wild artist

– Defining for herself what a good mom looks like and what she's willing to let go of

– The history of the church in Truchas and how she found it on Zillow

– Desperation and audacity: taking on a property with no plumbing and no heat

– How building her own home with her hands healed her nervous system

– Being a white woman in a historically Hispano community and being welcomed

– The church's journey from services to gallery to bedroom to future sacred space

– Growing up in a spiritual community that fell apart and watching people cling harder to beliefs

– What church means to her: hunting and making God, creating sacred space

– Removing the patriarchy from people's bodies through bodywork, movement, and painting

– The vulva witnessing work: reclamation paintings, celebration paintings, and touching the place beyond the trauma

– Two years of live witnessing inside an immersive theater project in Amsterdam

– American versus Dutch women: puritanical repression versus healthy embodiment

– Kimberly's reflections on writing Erotic Seasons and holding both wounding and alchemical power

– The trauma orientation as avoidance of self-expression and a block to maturation

– Watching her teenage son self-diagnose and the cultural swing from denial to over-identification

– The geranium and the jungle plant: helping people find the conditions they need to thrive

– Uniqueness tangled with individualism and the obsession with self-definition

– The loss of hierarchy, tradition, and roles—and why compression helps us find essence

– The body as the physical form of the soul, not a separate sack of flesh

– The layers between as that which actually makes everything separate and not

– Kimberly on occupying a between space in the culture and cultivating trustworthiness over customer satisfaction

Resources

Location: Truchas, New Mexico

Website: https://ranieramiel.com/

IG: @ranieramiel

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez, an artist, educator, and depth psychologist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the designer of the cover of Kimberly's upcoming book Erotic Seasons. Part of Kimberly's Santa Fe trilogy, this conversation explores what it means to teach and live emergently: responding to what's present rather than what's planned. Chanti shares her doctoral work on the wound of homelandlessness as a Cuban American, and how she developed a practice of creating and living with the image of one's wound as a daily, evolving relationship rather than something to fix or overcome. They discuss the difference between revisiting and rumination, the ancient link between art and therapy, and why images hold meaning differently than words; allowing wounds to keep shifting rather than becoming rigid stories. The conversation also touches on the Cuban concept of resolver, what it takes to be a student of one's own creative impulse, and how imperfection and planned spontaneity become doorways to aliveness.

Bio

Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez is a Cuban-American artist-author, ritualist, and non-clinical depth psychologist. She believes that images speak a profound language; her life's work is a translator of the unseen and an advocate for the imaginal. She holds two master's degrees in Engaged Humanities and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. In 2023 she completed her doctoral dissertation Navegando Liminal: Rituals to Translate the Image of the Wound. Her work and teaching follows and welcomes, imagination, creativity, dreaming, and deep rest.

She teaches workshops, and collaborative training focused on creativity, yantra painting, dreaming, intuitive movement, myth, restorative yoga, and yoga nidra. Her passion and aim are to inspire all to rediscover their creative self by weaving the blessings with the wounds while honoring the land and ancestors.

Dr. Chanti also works individually with clients using a transdisciplinary approach through creative therapeutics. Learn more.

What She Shares:

– Chanti's doctoral work on the wound of homelandlessness

– The practice of creating and living with the image of one's wound

– How emergence is like an emergency—the urgency of being present

– The toolbox of an emergent teacher: listening, trust, and tolerance for tension

– Why images hold meaning differently than words

– The Cuban concept of resolver—figuring things out with what you have

– How she navigated a PhD program as an image-based thinker

– The link between art and therapy as the oldest form of alchemy

What You'll Hear:

– What emergent teaching actually requires: listening, trust, and a good ear for the pulse of the space

– The tension of being the leader who says "I don't know"

– Chanti's wound of homelandlessness: ni de aquí, ni de allá

– Growing up being told "you belong over there"—and arriving in Cuba as a foreigner

– Creating the image of the wound and living with it as an altar

– The word estúpida on the image—and reclaiming what was once shame

– Pursuing a PhD in Jungian Archetypal Studies as an image-based thinker

– The project-based dissertation: two books, one of words and one of images

– Wound and blessing: the etymology of bless as bleed in French and Old English

– The difference between revisiting a wound and ruminating on it

– How fixed meaning stops a wound from continuing to grow and change

– Choiceless choice: when creative impulses announce themselves

– The incubation period—how long to sit with a bubbling before it overflows

– Art as something that overflows from you and becomes something else

– Kimberly's experience writing her book with a co-editor through word games and play

– Exhaustion, rest culture, and the shadow side of Yin

– Creativity as living in the third space between social and sympathetic nervous systems

– Working with dreams through images and movement

– Mutual seed planting: how flamenco and imagery crossed between them

– Imperfection as doorway: planned spontaneity, blindfolds, dice, and letting things fall

– The layers between words and images, cultures, and belonging

Resources

Website: https://www.yantrawisdom.com/

Kimberly's Next Course: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/STANDUP/