HOLLEY'S HOLLOW

Welcome to my website and blog: Holley's Hollow.

I am presently on medical leave from working as a Health Promotion and Wellness Nurse for our local Health Department. While on leave, trying to figure out what to do about my medical challenges, the Occupy Wall Street Movement broke out and I have found myself supporting our local Occupy Fort Myers group in the little ways I can, while still getting some much needed medical/healing and grieving time for myself. I lost three dear women friends in the last few months and our circles of women and friends are reeling from the loss. We were recently blessed to have Starhawk lead a weekend retreat at our local Unitarian Universalist Church. She also met with our local Occupy encampment and while here we had lively discussion about the movement, permaculture, spirit and politics. Please see my blog page to read the Open Letter Starhawk wrote while here about WHY WE NEED AGREEMENTS in our movements.

My job at the Health Department has been a challenging very fulfilling opportunity to work within the systems of our local agencies, churches and coalitions. I work to link people with diminishing health care services. I teach health literacy and chronic disease prevention and of course, women’s health and childbirth preparation, always my passion. I have been teaching women's health and childbirth classes in Spanish and it is great to keep up my language skills and also work with the diverse cultures here.

Before going into Public Health, I took a two year break from working, and in 2008, my life partner, Liz and I had the blessed fortune to travel to many amazing places on the planet. We visited South America, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and many parts of the US, including our beloved sanctuary in the Santa Cruz Mountains, WindTree.

Spring 2009 brought a near disaster to WindTree, but by what seemed to be a miracle, most of our cabins and the council lodge there were spared from the raging Loma Prieta fires. In the fall equinox of 2007 we planted a 10 foot high redwood Peacepole at our highest lookout on the land. It has "May Peace Prevail On Earth" engraved on it n eight languages on each side. All the trees around it burned down in the fire, but the Peacepole survived! I posted more about that on my blog page and you can read about it there. (Holleyblogs)

This website is dedicated to my father Patrick Thomas Rauen, who passed away Feb 7, 2005. I miss him dearly and am erecting a memorial site in his honor. I am so grateful that in the last years of his life we had the opportunity to grow close and begin to understand each other. The links to his page and my mother's art pages are posted below.

My first version of this website still exists, but I cannot edit it. There are links to it here, but bit by bit, I will be bringing it to this site and shutting it down.

Thanks for stopping in and visiting.

Bright Blessings,

Holley

Personal Website of Holley Rauen