Tracy Gilmore

Person envisioning and hoping to join, contribute to or create a thriving permaculture community on every level. By every level I mean developing in harmonious loving living from the inside of our bodies, hearts and minds, to our personal and community relationships, to the ways we get our physical needs met and relate to nature, to the way we relate to changing our world politics, advancing loving living and social and economic justice in our world. Grew up in Northwest and after college in Houston lived in Chicago 1995-2017. Did multiple graduate degrees trying to figure out life...was passionate about my studies which culminated in graduate degrees in art, philosophy and social work. Most recently worked with urban families experiencing hardship in Chicago as a psychotherapist and then clinical director of my agency.  So went from studying where pain and confusion and disconnection comes from to living it in a lot of deep relationships.  I have in my past been less connected to sustainability...actually first heard the word permaculture about a year ago!- because I’ve been more focused on the places I see human disharmony and disease (including exploiting nature) as coming from—so much pain, for one thing, so badly dealt with in our society, so much disconnection...no appreciation that creating deep and mutually fulfilling relationships is an art, science, craft and most of all practice that can be learned, just as when we become aware of nature’s processes we can begin to be very conscious to how we get our needs met in relation to nature...I believe the same is true in relationship to each other. That is what I mean by “intentional community”- a community, or set of humans relating to each other, that is aware of dynamics happening in its relationships and makes choices “intentional” about how to make those relationships most thriving for all. As industrialized USA would have us believe that farming/harvest/natural resources are a zero sum game (meaning if one gets more, eg humans, the other gets less)...permaculture teaches us that it’s not that way—our relationship with nature, when conscious, loving, very thoughtful, can be win-win. Same for human relationships/communities. That’s what I’ve been working on so far in my life and my goal is to team with people whose work has been more mature/literal permaculture to create an all over thriving community. Truly thriving relationships cannot happen without enlightened relationship with nature but I believe much attention needs to be paid to the “human system design” too...it is not only how we relate to nature that needs healing and modification. So this is my long term goal and something I have to offer but I also really want to start immersing myself in permaculture community, whether or not others there want to pursue these same interests with me...so that I can see and manage the big picture and one way or another land at my dream community.