In my heart is the truth of who I am and the seeds of my becoming. I am the vastness of the ocean. I am old growth forest and ancient rock. I am an ancestor of the stars. I am an expansive, multidimensional, complex human being seeking to live my life fully and with heart. I am constantly learning how to love myself better and to create my life with love. I am a shape-shifting creature who has made a home of the liminal and in-between. I transcend binaries, boxes, and blocks in imagination. I am constantly evolving, and growing into my own truth, voice, and power. It is my capacity to love that makes me strong.

What I do

Hello! My name is mai. I write and teach writing as a creative practice for processing personal and collective grief, engaging with climate change and ecological loss, and deepening self-connection into greater purpose and alignment. In addition to hosting my own offerings, I am a guest teacher with A Sacred Passing, and collaborate with other practitioners here in New Mexico to offer spaces for connecting and creating through grief. 

I work with grief, writing, and storytelling as fertile and necessary ground for strengthening our personal and collective capacity to engage with the most potent callings of our rapidly changing times. Through my classes and workshops, I teach how turning towards the natural world can support us through loss, death, and change.

My work is held and inspired by being in equitable and reciprocal relationship with the earth, and by honoring the sacredness of the living world that exists within and around me. I am grateful for the teachers and mentors who support me along the way.

My Background and Experience

Writing is the blood, bone, and fire of my being. It is central to who I am and what I do. Writing, from the start, offered sanctuary and self-expression when the world around me couldn’t. I wrote my first poem. when I was nine years old, and published my first poem at sixteen. Since then, I have published and performed my work through the National Queer Arts Festival, the Poetry Project, RADAR Productions, LitQuake, and more. I hold an MFA in Poetry from Mills College, where I attended as a Community Engagement Fellow. As a fellow, I collaborated with local organizing projects such as Care Not Cops to bring reading, writing, and creating ritual with poetry into public space and political action. water/tongue, my first full-length poetry book, was published in 2019 and went on to become a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Poetry in 2020.

Designing and facilitating community offerings is a beloved expression of my creative practice. I’ve been designing and facilitating workshops at the intersection of healing, creative, and spiritual practice since 2008 and have led workshops on radical dreaming, writing with ancestors, queer and trans bipoc poetry and craft, altar making, and more. From 2014-2018, I ran my own reiki practice, through which I offered accessible, trauma-informed energy healing centering youth, women and femmes of color, and survivors of violence. In 2020, I trained and certified as a death doula and began holding grief circles, facilitating writing workshops centered on grief, providing grief support to groups and individuals, and guiding people in ritual and ceremony development to honor all forms of loss and change. My work is informed by over fifteen years of experience in training, facilitation, counseling, and program development in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors, specifically in youth leadership development, anti-violence work, and gender, racial, and reproductive justice, as well as in DIY and community-based settings.

My approach is heart-centered, intersectional, and honors the inherent sovereignty and wisdom of all those who I work. As a life-long student, I continue to evolve in my being and practice under the love and guidance of my beloved teachers, mentors, and the earth. I approach this work and path with deep gratitude, humility, and love.

A​s a femme, Mexican and Vietnamese person living with chronic illness and C-PTSD, I am healing lived and intergenerational trauma by writing a new story. I am grateful for the friends, teachers, and ancestors whose love, wisdom, and affirmation support me along the way.

A full list of my work can be found here.

To get in touch, email me at hello@maicortezdoan.com.