Describe Users/LaurieLoving here.
Laurie Loving (formerly Laurie Mason) moved from LA to Davis with her 7 year old daughter Jennifer in 1982, looking for a better place to raise a family. Unable to find work the first six months (due to that recession), she taught an American Sign Language class through the UCD Experimental College, started a vegetarian-sandwich business called "Jenny's Kitchen, and trucked "Dancing Bear Juice" to the Sacramento Food Co-op on her way to CSUS where she majored in social work (eventually earning a master's degree, specializing in Community Organizing, Planning and Administration). She was also the Orientation Coordinator for the Davis Food Co-op (as a Superworker), which led to a full-time job as the Dairy-Deli Manager when the Co-op moved to it's present location in 1983. For the next five years Laurie lugged milk crates and tofu buckets, not to mention supervising scores of member worker cheese cutters. She was responsible for opening the first "natural" meat and deli department, bringing hormone and nitrate-free meat to the Co-op. Alas, this led to the demise of her vegetarianism.
Loving the cooperative philosophy, Laurie and Jen moved into a large home in east Davis, where they lived with many housemates over the next eight years. During this time a son, Travis, was born under the maple tree in the backyard, surrounded by the wonderful local midwives and several friends. Jen and an adult friend baked him a birthday cake to celebrate! OK, so he didn't get any, but it was delicious.
Laurie married Sequoia Harless (owner of Sequoia Gardening in Davis) in 1991, and for the next ten years the family led the usual Davis life: work, school, Farmer's Markets, Whole Earth Festival, Picnic Day, etc. Jen graduated high school in 1994 and moved back to the LA area to reconnect with family. They also became involved in the formation of N Street Cohousing, a retro-fit housing cooperative in east Davis, eventually moving into one of the houses in 1996. There they shared meals, chickens, gardening, hot-tubbing, work-parties, party-parties and more with the now 18 houses and 50 or so adults and children.
During this time Laurie worked in Sacramento, first as a counselor working with hard-of-hearing people at NorCal Center on Deafness and then as the Executive Director of the Sacramento Hearing Services Center. The Center provided refurbished hearing aids to low-income people, provided hearing testing to over 100,000 school children in Northern California and operated a day camp for deaf and hard-of-hearing kids. During this time Laurie taught "Living with Hearing Loss" classes to thousands of hard-of-hearing adults and their family members, offering information on communication strategies, assistive listening devices and consumer rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Around the turn of the century, haha, Laurie and Sequoia embarked on a series of transformational workshops offered by the Aspire Foundation in Sacramento (now the Center For Consciousness). There, through a variety of techniques including discussion, art, music, dance, blood, sweat and tears, they healed childhood and relationship issues. The final workshop involves a six-week, detox cleanse, culminating in a week-long silent retreat, juice and water fasting, and camping alone on the sides and ridge of Mount Shasta. (Other participants are nearby, but no contact is made.) This process allows you to "empty out", leaving room to fill with Spirit. For both Laurie and Sequoia, this was a transforming experience. Although they separated at this time, they are now best friends and neighbors.
Following her amazing week on Mount Shasta, Laurie needed to get out of the city (Davis). She fled to Harbin Hot Springs in Middletown, CA (between Calistoga and Clearlake) where she had been a frequent visitor for 15 years. Harbin is known as the "birthplace of Watsu (water-shiatsu)".
