About me
Nourish the Soul. Cultivate the Soil. Heal the Earth.
All branches of my work return to the main roots of my calling to support the individual and collective healing of our relationships with ourselves, our work, and Nature. My philosophy, frameworks, and practices grow from liberation psychology, intersectional feminism, organizational sociology, trauma-informed somatics and mindfulness, intercultural leadership, and natural ecosystems.
Credential Summary
With over two decades of global experience, I’ve taught, coached, mentored, and advised across the lifespan: from early childhood to Ph.D. students, and from classrooms to career pivots in academia, student affairs, corporations, and the healthcare industry. And perhaps most importantly, I’m a mother to one incredible tween, who is my most honest and powerful teacher, and I am honored to be stepmom to a wonderful young man branching out on his own path.
My background and training weave together academic rigor, somatic wisdom, and deep respect for nature and systems change. I hold a PhD from the University of Arizona in higher education administration and organizational sociology. I’ve served as a department chair and tenured full professor before leaving academia after decades in policy and leadership. I’m trained in life coaching (Martha Beck Wayfinder), teaching yoga and mindfulness (Yoga Alliance and Naropa University), and nature-based interventions (Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute and Animas Valley Institute).
My climate resilience work is built upon a foundation of trainings in climate community health and leadership (Yale School of Public Health), climate aware therapy (Climate Psychology Alliance), and sustainability leadership. I also hold credentials in Montessori education, yoga teacher training, and Reiki, all of which ground me in wholeness paradigms. Currently, I live in Fort Collins, CO, where I serve my community as a Colorado Master Gardener and Urban Forestry Ambassador.
In 2025, to deepen my approach to grief, creativity, and transformation, I trained with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Réyes (Women Who Run with Wolves) in two immersive residential programs that center psych-soul integration, storytelling, and sacred ceremony as paths to healing and reconnection.
My Story
TLDR:
It’s a story of leaving and returning, of forgetting and remembering, of trusting the body's wisdom and ancestral roots to guide midlife into one of loving joy, embodied purpose, and boundaried service to others and Earth.
Short story:
I’m Tamara Yakaboski, a former tenured professor turned resilience coach and climate-aware facilitator. I help people in midlife remember who they are beneath the burnout, overachievement, and systems that have separated us from our own wisdom, creativity, and connection to Nature and our bodies.
My path has taken me through academia, motherhood, grief, and spiritual unraveling. I’ve rebuilt my life with deeper integrity, rooted in ancestral resilience and Earth-based practices. Now, I walk alongside others navigating their own metamorphosis, ready to trust themselves again, reclaim their intuition, and live in right relationship with their inner and outer Nature.
Long story:
Born in north Louisiana among the tall lodgepole pine forests, I call northern Colorado home, keeping the Rocky Mountains westward. Nature continues as my guide through this life and (re)directs me to living a life worth loving. At various points along my path, I forgot my quest in this life as a healer of the soul and soil - a preacher at the altar of Mother Nature or a climate minister.
I spent my early 20s exploring - from Marin County, California, to tracing my ancestors’ ghosts in Kraków, Poland, and western Europe, and teaching in Seoul, South Korea. I landed in graduate school in Tucson, Arizona, to study higher education organizations and women’s career decisions. During my PhD studies, I worked full-time as a student affairs administrator. My attempts at ‘balancing’ work, graduate studies, dissertation research, a partner, and what I actually wanted out of life wasn’t going to lead me to be happy, healthy, or whole.
Yet, I saw the shiny allure of academia and its sparkly ivory tower. At the time, I couldn’t see the shadows, cracks, and dark corners waiting to grab hold. By the end of my 20s, I filed for divorce and entered a most significant metamorphosis of change. I pursued a tenure-track faculty career of teaching, research, and service. I craved the outer world's desire to be known as an intellectual who finally defied her working-class farm roots and ‘belonged’ with the fancy folks.
I was full of the constant craving of external rewards and achievements, and academia was ready to prey on those insecurities. For a while, I poured my gifts and purpose in that work that felt like freeing autonomy until I understood it as overworking and overachieving. Yet I gained clarity, skills, and experiences. Through teaching graduate students, I channeled my passion for group experiential learning and mentoring. In my research, I put my desire for social change and impact to work on inclusivity, interculturalism, and exploring women's and minoritized experiences. In my service work, I found a way to support meaningful ventures and connect with others across the campus and world.
Yet, I started to wonder about my impact and influence and if any of it mattered. Who was I anymore? The highlight of my 30s, though, was in 2013 when my kiddo was born. This child continues to be my deepest spiritual teacher in this lifetime with continuous messages of Love.
The peace of becoming this kiddo’s parent didn't last long. Tenure-tracking, over-researching, pushing to publish always more, over-caring, teaching, momming, partnering, and trying to keep my soul alive with hobbies of running, gardening, and beekeeping, all would come crashing in collision. I attempted each at 100% to prove worthiness to myself and others. The trauma pattern where overachieving was coping would work no more.
At the age of 39, my body forced me to abandon this lifestyle of over-commitment, stress, anxiety, and continuous pressure. My body was suffering. My soul was empty. My relationships were in shambles. Injuries and illnesses took me out and forced a reboot of some serious and major lifestyle changes. I needed a significant (re)writing of my story.
In my 40s, I returned to cultivating inner peace within myself and through my infinite connection to Nature. As part of my own healing, I found life coaching in part to relearn my own internal truth with how I want to live and love in this lifetime. I worked to shift my limiting beliefs and old patterns with compassion and to replace them with kinder, more loving ones separate from patriarchal assumptions and expectations. That led me to become a solo parent during what would be my final chapter as an academic and department chair.
As I combine my ancestral knowledge of Mother Earth and healing with my experiences in higher education, I saw clearly the stuck patterns of behaviors that lead to suffering and being out of sync with ourselves and Nature. I pursued trainings and mentorships with Elders. I launched my LLC. I trained in climate community health and climate-aware therapeutic and nature-based interventions. I followed joy and heart that opened me back to love and a blended family.
As I move towards the threshold of 50, I understand my journey as one continuous metamorphosing in and out of many short and long dark nights of the soul. In the middle of an 11-day nature quest in 2022, after three days of solo fasting, the Forget-Me-Not moth (Gnophaela latipennis) championed my return with the message that while born of the night, this moth pollinates in the light of the day. Thus pulling the dark back into the light. Mining for the wisdom and intuition to be the change and create powerful transformation.
That is what this next chapter of metamorphosis invites. Fully embracing the fires of menopaused and beyond midlife-ing to welcome what wisdom and creative sparks need nurturing. I can reorient to my calling. I can carry my ancestors’ resilience. I can sit beside grief as a teacher and friend. I can even hold the patterns of collapse and reckon with what must be sacrificed. But I’ll be honest, all of this clarity trembles in the face of climate collapse. We are approaching planetary thresholds that ancestors never had to imagine. And yet, I believe their wisdom still holds. Not as a roadmap, but as a compass to remind us who we are when the path disappears.
As I face down the turning point towards 50, I want to share with you three key pieces.
I am lovingly married with a life partner who shares in my growth-orientation and love of living more slowly and intentionally. It took much healing on my part of tolerating toxic behaviors and having no boundaries to be ready to receive and give this type of love.
The full transition into menopause was a fucker. It threw me into such a dark hole to unravel new body issues, creative blocks, and old stuck thoughts and patterns. And yet I still firmly believe that it is such a radical invitation to shaking off all the last fucks you have been carrying around about what other people think and want with your one beautifully messy life.
There are other ways of working and connecting in this world, and the systems in power are kicking and screaming to make sure we don’t figure that out. Solopreneurialism isn’t for everyone, and there are lots of ups and downs. And it has taught me to unlearn my own patterns; overing, worrying about things outside my control, seeking validation for myself by external metrics, and all the painful stories I held about money and value. This journey has taught me the importance of new patterns: diversifying what I do and when, following my own neurodiverse schedule and pathways of getting shit done, staying connected to my why, and living what I preach as a daily practice.
This is my journey thus far to get back to the important purpose of our existence as a spiritual being and to assist others in getting back to their unique quest. It’s a daily journey. And I wake up each day to take another step in this grand adventure!
