Meet Heather
Meet Heather
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Hi, I'm Heather.
Hi, I'm Heather.
I’ve spent much of my life moving between roles, places, communities, and ways of understanding the world.
I’m a helper, storyteller, Reiki Master, advocate, lifelong learner, and someone who asks a lot of questions. I’ve also spent enough time trying to fit neatly into boxes to know I’m not particularly interested in doing that anymore.
Bimini grew from my own search for healing, connection, belonging, and a more sustainable way of showing up—for myself and for the people and communities I care about.
I've spent a lot of my life feeling like I was standing between two worlds.
I've spent a lot of my life feeling like I was standing between two worlds.
Over time, I've started wondering if standing between two worlds isn't only about belonging nowhere. Maybe it also gives us a particular place from which to notice, question, connect, and imagine something different.
— Heather 🌟
My Story
My Story
I’m a survivor, a helper, an advocate, a Reiki Master, and a lifelong learner. I’ve worn a lot of different hats over the years, but underneath most of them has been the same question: what helps people feel safe enough to be fully themselves?
That question is personal for me. I survived child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual violence, and for much of my life, safety and belonging felt like things I was always reaching toward rather than things I could simply expect. Those experiences shaped me—but they also shaped the way I learned to see other people.
As a nurse, advocate, case manager, leader, and through more than twenty years of supporting people impacted by trauma, I kept encountering the same gap. People were often handed services, resources, referrals, or another system to navigate when what they also needed was someone willing to walk beside them. Someone who could see more than what happened to them. Someone who could recognize their wisdom, their strength, their complexity, and all the parts of them that were still becoming.
And if I’m being real, this work also grew out of loneliness. I spent a lot of my life feeling like I was standing on the outside looking in—very good at showing up for everyone else while quietly wondering where I fit. Over time, I started realizing that maybe belonging isn’t about finding the one perfect place where every part of us makes sense. Maybe it’s about creating spaces where we don’t have to leave pieces of ourselves at the door.
My own journey has included deconstructing the evangelical faith I was raised in, navigating the world as a queer cisgender woman of color, and reconnecting more deeply with my Puerto Rican and Taíno heritage. I’m still learning. Still questioning. Still discovering parts of myself I didn’t always have language for.
That’s part of why I created Bimini.
I believe we all deserve spaces where we can be seen, heard, valued, cared for—and given room to become more fully ourselves.
What Shapes My Work
What Shapes My Work
CONNECTION
CONNECTION
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation. Relationships matter—to ourselves, other people, community, culture, and the living world around us.
CURIOSITY
CURIOSITY
I’m much more interested in asking good questions than pretending I have all the answers.
WHOLENESS
WHOLENESS
Trauma-informed practice matters to me, but so does remembering that people are more than what has happened to them.
RECIPROCITY
RECIPROCITY
Care shouldn’t always flow in one direction. Sustainable relationships require giving, receiving, boundaries, responsibility, and repair.
These ideas show up differently across Reiki, coaching, community spaces, and organizational work—but they’re part of the same Bimini foundation.
The way I understand connection changed in Alaska.
The way I understand connection changed in Alaska.
I’ve always loved being in nature, but I also carried a lot of fear and didn’t always know how to relate to the natural world. My mom still gets annoyed when I take my shoes off the second I can be outside. 😆 The longing for connection was always there; the disconnect was in how I was raised. And if you had asked younger me where food came from, the answer was basically Publix. 😆
I also learned early that caring for people meant putting myself last—and that being “good” at helping was measured by how much of myself I was willing to give away.
Moving to Alaska challenged a lot of that.
Through relationships with Alaska Native communities, I was exposed to ways of understanding community that centered reciprocity, collective care, celebration, seasonal rhythms, and relationship with the land. I began to see community as something much more active than simply being surrounded by people. It was something practiced. People showed up for one another. Knowledge was shared. Elders mattered. Land mattered. What we leave for the people coming after us mattered.
Around that same time, I began looking more deeply into my own Puerto Rican and Taíno heritage—and discovered that much of what I had been taught about Taíno people simply wasn’t true. We had not disappeared. People were still carrying traditions, reclaiming language and culture, preserving knowledge, and reconnecting with ways of being that colonization tried very hard to erase.
That learning continues to change me. And I want to be clear: when I talk about Indigenous wisdom, I’m not claiming to have mastered some neat little collection of ancient teachings. I am learning, reconnecting, questioning, and figuring out what responsibility comes with that knowledge too.
What keeps coming back to me is this: we belong to something larger than ourselves. Reciprocity matters. Relationships matter. The earth that keeps us alive matters. The people who came before us matter, and so do the people who will inherit whatever we leave behind.
Those understandings are woven into Bimini—not as decoration, but as part of how I think about healing, community, responsibility, and care.
Because I don’t believe healing happens in isolation.
It happens in relationship—with ourselves, with one another, with community, and with the living world around us.
Why Bimini?
Why Bimini?
Bimini is a Taíno word connected to the land now called Florida—the place where much of my own story began.
I chose it because this work is, in many ways, about returning: to ourselves, to community, to relationship, to curiosity, and to ways of living that remind us we were never meant to do all of this alone.
Bimini is still becoming. So am I.
A little professional context
A little professional context
(because apparently you should know I’m qualified 😆)
I’ve spent more than 20 years working alongside people experiencing trauma, transition, crisis, change, and all the complicated human stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into a job description.
My path has been anything but linear. I’ve worked in healthcare, education, ministry, advocacy, human services, nonprofit leadership, training, facilitation, higher education, and community-based work. I’ve been a nurse, teacher, worship leader and minister, case manager, advocate, program leader, trainer, preventionist, consultant—and yes, there have also been weddings, fundraising galas, musical productions, and more than a few moments of figuring things out as I went.
Along the way, I’ve:
Supported youth and adult survivors of violence, trafficking, homelessness, addiction, and other complex experiences.
Built and led programs, supervised teams, facilitated difficult conversations, and helped organizations think more intentionally about how they care for both the people they serve and the people doing the serving.
Worked across healthcare, schools, shelters, nonprofits, faith communities, and community-based spaces—each one teaching me something different about people, systems, power, healing, and belonging.
Developed and facilitated trainings on trauma-informed practice, gender-based violence response and prevention, human trafficking, burnout, leadership, case management, and creating healthier organizational cultures.
Continued learning through formal education, professional training, Reiki practice, lived experience, community relationships, and the kind of lessons no certificate could ever fully capture.
I do have credentials and training behind my work. But more than anything, I bring years of sitting with people in real life—when things are messy, systems don’t work the way they should, there isn’t an obvious answer, and someone still needs to feel seen as a whole human being.
That’s the experience I bring into Bimini.
What I'm curious about now...
What I'm curious about now...
These days, I’m especially curious about what belonging actually requires, what sustainable helping looks like, how ancestral wisdom can inform modern life without being extracted from its context, and what changes when we stop treating healing as an individual project.
I’m also currently spending a lot of time on the road, so there will almost certainly be thoughts about places, people, food, family, unexpected detours, and whatever else catches my attention.
However you found your way here, I’m glad you did.
However you found your way here, I’m glad you did.
You don’t need to know exactly what you’re looking for yet. Read something. Look around. Get curious. And if one of the ways I work feels like it might fit what you need, we can start there.
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