Hi, I’m Devi Ward Erickson
I am proud and honored to be the Founder of the first and only government accredited school for Tantric Sexual Healing in the world.
(For those of you who don’t know, this is literally a history-making accomplishment!)
What makes this even more impactful is the simple fact that I am here to accomplish it at all! I come from a legacy of trauma and in many ways, I’m lucky to even be alive…
I was born in the U.S. in 1974, the byproduct of an interracial relationship that became “legal” only 5 years before. At the time my parents (my Eastern European mother and African American father) were truly trailblazers, risking their careers and family connections to honor and celebrate the love they felt for one another. In fact, I found out recently that my maternal Grandmother did not want to attend my birth because my mother had married and was having a child (me) with a Black man.
I grew up in a home of domestic violence. I grew up in a world of racial violence. And from a very young age, I experienced sexual violence. Needless to say, all of these experiences were deeply traumatizing and I suffered from undiagnosed CPTSD for most of my life.
As is typical of many trauma survivors, I fluctuated between passive and active suicidal ideation from my early teens until my early 20’s, at which time I did engage in significant physical self-harm. But this experience that I believed would be the “end” was actually the beginning of my journey of self-healing and reclamation. The moment I engaged in active self-harm was the moment I realized how much I wanted to LIVE! A pattern of trauma-induced self-defeat had been broken!
I was determined to live and to find a way to LIVE IN JOY. I wanted to do more than just survive, I wanted to THRIVE, and thus the journey that brought me to the here and NOW began!