What does it mean to live one’s life like a prayer? Heather Omand, of Huntington, Vt., is pioneering a different human way of being in the world as a Queer person, mother, partner, and caretaker of agricultural lands. Read about their insightful journey. Listen to their prose, ‘What Queerness Means to Me.’
Please note - Heather uses we/us/ours pronouns:
“I am most at home using we/us/ours pronouns. It can be a tricky thing for folks to understand: our ‘we’ is this body, the foods we eat to sustain our life, our ancestors, our community, etc. We don't mean to suggest that our experience is anyone else's but our own.”
WH: Can you describe your involvement with WholeHeart?
It started with attending a Courage Cohort back in 2018. We stayed in contact with Holly. Then, when we started working at Northeast SARE (Sustainable Agriculture, Research and Education), she agreed to work with us as a leadership coach. We have been working together in that capacity since 2020.
WH: What drew you to the community?
We were navigating postpartum depression after the birth of our son in January 2017. We heard a Parker Palmer talk on NPR and started digging into his work, listening to podcasts, and reading his books. We wanted to experience the Courage model and found WholeHeart as the closest practitioner (we were living in Maine at the time). We joined the year-round Courage Cohort and believe it was one of the most influential things we tried in integrating and healing from depression. Specifically, the Clearness Committee process brought abundant and deep healing.
“It’s amazing how deeply listening to someone can create an invitation for them to uncover so much about themselves, their relationships, and their heart knowing...or the number of times we have seen an open and honest question awaken something powerful in someone that they may not have known was waiting for them. ”
Heather Omand serves as Associate Director of the USDA-funded Northeast SARE grant program, which invests more than $6 million annually into sustainable agriculture research and education from Maine to West Virginia.
WH: How has your involvement with WholeHeart energized or evolved your leadership both personally and professionally?
It has taught us so much about listening and being heard, about the importance of asking open and honest questions not just in Courage spaces, but in everyday life. We find that genuine listening is one of the hardest practices to ‘keep fit’ in and is one of the most common skills lacking in personal and professional spaces.
WH: How does deep listening and collective care factor into your life and leadership style?
It’s amazing how deeply listening to someone can create an invitation for them to uncover so much about themselves, their relationships, and their heart knowing. So many times people have told us, ‘I had no idea I was going to talk about this with you right now.’ Or the number of times we have seen an open and honest question awaken something powerful in someone that they may not have known was waiting for them.
Our work in the world is deeply relational, and it is those portals between us and other living beings that are nourished and well-tended by listening and genuine, loving curiosity. That is where the juiciness lives. It evokes courageous vulnerability in others, and reminds us all of the intense joy of being alive when we stumble on something previously unseen together.
Heather Omand lives in Huntington, Vt. , where they are mother to 7-year-old Atom and married to Tyler.
“When we feel most hopeless and helpless, we remember that literally all we can do is live each moment like a prayer for a different human way of being in the world. ”
WH: What seeds of hope and possibility are you seeing in these turbulent times?
We don't mean to undermine this question, and we want to be truthful. More days than not we feel the grief, fear, and sense of a lack of future than we feel the hope and possibility. When we dare to look up, we see Palestinian families murdered, we see rampant anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, we see the patriarchy coming for femme bodies, we see hateful and dehumanizing speech and media everywhere. It feels bleak, especially as a mother.
We are moved by how many people around the world are deeply trying to stay present with and accountable to the genocide in Gaza. We are moved by the sheer number of poets working in activist spaces and practicing their craft. Recently Linda River Valente, of Montpelier, said something along the lines of this to me; we need as many people as possible with their hands on Source, so when some people in the world are having the absolute worst day of their lives, there is a network of us holding them, praying for them, working for a different world. Our rational brain can't quite trace A to B, but our heart and soul understands this, and it has become a bit of a guiding light for us.
And when we feel most hopeless and helpless, we remember that literally all we can do is live each moment like a prayer for a different human way of being in the world. What does it mean in that moment to live like a prayer? The simplest answer we can imagine right now is to lay down all our defenses, all the protections we would put up around ourselves (our resentments, our resistance, our unwillingness to accept what is or to be vulnerable or to crack open in public) and just put them down. And stand strong, from a foundation of love. If we can find enough other people to do this with us, we think that can change things.
WH: Is there a gem from your WholeHeart work or learnings that animates your life in an ongoing way?
Honestly, the leadership coaching with Holly is an absolute gift, something we have come to rely on so, so much. That time is a touchstone, a link in the network that helps us to reground. The number one thing we are longing for more of in our lives are mutually sustaining relationships based in radical love, courage, and care. Those relationships are harder to find than we might like, and Holly's way of holding space and nourishing the leadership and growth of others is beyond words.
WH: What else is important for us to know about your journey?
Motherhood changed the trajectory of our life forever and was the catalyst for bringing us to WholeHeart. Becoming a mother led to us realizing and actualizing our Queerness. Queerness is essential to growing our earth-based practices. Queerness is essential to stepping into everything we have to offer the world, which needs everything we can remember how to give.
Listen to Heather’s recording of What Does Queerness Mean to Me?