Hi. We're Marley & Brianna
We're therapists, queer folx, dog parents, and wanderlusters. We have been working in the mental health field for a combined 15 years, and have navigated our own transformations within our identities alongside the folx we serve. What we've learned, both professionally and personally, is that it can be really f*cking hard to be a queer person living in a cis-het world. We're told by some to be quieter, more palatable, and by others to be louder, more entertaining.
Guess what? We aren't doing that anymore.
We've walked away from partnerships, jobs, and friendships that no longer serve us. We've walked through periods of conformity, non-acceptance, and hatred (self-imposed and imposed by others) and have finally settled into a place of celebration in ourselves. Has it been easy?
Absolutely not.
But we've carefully laid a path from self-acceptance to self-celebration and because of that, have found ourselves engaging in our lives with more alignment, pleasure, and play than ever before. We are passionate about helping other queer folx move in the same direction, and are so excited to be able to do so through Half Moon Rising. Being queer doesn't have to be f*cking hard.
Being queer can be f*cking joyful.
marley
she/they
Marley totally swooned over Ruth Jamison from Fried Green Tomatoes before she knew what “gay” meant. She jokes that she has never been “in” as a byproduct of growing up in a progressive community. But for the same reason, Marley admittedly wasn’t forced to examine her queerness. She dismissed it when she was tokenized or harassed because it wasn’t “bad enough” to validate. In her late 20’s, Marley got tired of practicing gratitude for treatment a half step above the bare minimum. She decided she was going to enthusiastically bust through that rainbow stained glass ceiling and has been carving out a life for herself where adventure, community, good food, and JOY are at the center!
brianna
she/her
Brianna is a late bloomer, and only learned her queer identity in her 30s. In the unboxing of the systems that kept her from finding herself, she learned about the power of community, boundaries, and self-love -- lessons that she continues to muddle through to this day. Examining herself through this new lens has provided space for her to not only understand herself better, but also learn how to show up in her life in a way that feels more aligned than ever before. Brianna loves to provide space to people to feel seen, and enjoys bringing her authentic self wherever she goes, which includes her sarcasm, love for dogs, and poking fun at herself.
half moon rising ethos
our vision:
our mission:
We believe that queer folx deserve more than the bare minimum. We know the power of imagining otherwise, and see a world where queer folx feel empowered to move in a direction of radical values alignment through leaving behind people, places and rules that no longer serve them.
To provide a space where queer folx can move from a space of self-acceptance to self-celebration through the creation of intentional, community driven, and fun retreats