Born of the mud
hey there, i'm morgan (they/them)
i'm born from the swampy areas of East Texas and i am bringing my lived experiences, professional experiences, and dreams of what could be, together to create spaces that I need for myself, and which I want to share in with others,
I have learned certain skills and practices from alligator, which has shaped the offerings and services I like to share with others.
learning various modalities of storytelling has saved my life many times. it has helped me integrate parts of myself that were hard to be with, find my place in community, express my gifts, heal from traumatic experiences including sexual assault and cancer.
i love to practice storytelling through my body, art, writing, and relationships.
i don’t believe healing happens in isolation. i don’t believe insight alone changes things. and i definitely don’t believe we’re meant to do the mess of life by ourselves.
i'm in love with the in-between spaces, where things are unclear, unfinished, murky, a little or a lot uncomfortable. the places most people try to rush through, clean up, or avoid all together. or these places that folks yearn for but are afraid will disturb others if they inhabit.
i’ve spent years working in mental health spaces, and what i kept noticing was this: people learn so much in therapy… and then have nowhere to practice/express these learnings in real life. this has also been true in my personal journey. so I decided to carve out the 3rd space "gator hole" i wanted for myself, and share it in community.
these practices are about exploring and practicing what
alligator can teach:
- digestion and integration
- patience and timing
- intuition and psyche/body sensing
it is also a practice of inviting other people back in, making space for the awkward, the relational, the messy, the funky, the weird, the real.
as a cancer survivor, i’ve had to learn how to live in uncertainty in a very real way. in a body that didn’t always feel predictable, in systems and spaces that were overwhelming, in moments that felt terrifying, messy, and completely out of my control.
there wasn’t a clear path through that. no clean narrative. just a lot of murky water.
alligator stories in particular have offering me specific skills and practices that i would like to continue to share with others.
like an alligator, not relying on perfect clarity, but on sensing. on noticing small shifts. on staying close to the body, even when things felt intense or unknown.
i learned how to collect all of my experiences in life:
- training in dance
- community organzing
- survivorship
- mental health experience
- creative practices
to make meaning in pieces. how to tell the story sideways when it was too much to tell directly. how to sit in the discomfort without rushing to resolve it.
and how to create small pockets of steadiness. my own version of “gator holes”. places, practices, and relationships that could hold me and that I could inhabit when things felt unstable.
that experience shapes everything i do here.
not as a story of “overcoming,” but as a practice of staying with. with the body, with the unknown, with other people.
the swamp is terrifyingly beautiful and magical, come on in. hang a while. let's tell stories, let's tend stories, let's listen to stories together.
MISSION & VALUES
Embodied Storytelling
Revolutionary Optimism
Collective Murk
Relentless Wonder
we utilize creative mediums to forge our relationship to stories. creativity is essential for humanity. we must practice it consistently.
the active, disciplined belief that radical social transformation is possible and necessary, even in desperate times. it rejects cynical despair, advocating that collective action, struggle, and, love-centered organizing can repair injustices and build a new, socialist future. working-class and the mass people's movement is at the center of this collective care practice.
we embrace the mess, knowing the best stories grow in the deep mud. we embrace uncertainty and murkines, we pracrtice adaptive skills of thriving while inhabiting the murky spaces of life.
staying curious about the strange beauty found in the shadows of the hole.
The Ripple Effect
we hope you engage with The Alligator Hole and feel a little more at home in your own mess. whether it’s a sentence that finally rings true or a movement that releases a long-held knot, we want you to carry that clarity, and that swampy grit, back into your everyday world. this is a space where we learn to inhabit our narratives fully, finding power in the murky depths and carrying the warmth of mutual care into the wild.
Portfolio
some pieces and projects
