Lily Karp — Artist, Ceremonialist, Educator, Gardener, Wilderness Guide

Origins

I was born outside Washington, D.C., in Vienna, Virginia, and for as long as I can remember, I have been searching for deeper connection and meaning. I often felt on the outskirts of friend groups, sensing and moving through the world differently, always looking for the magical moment — the place where something real could be felt. I grew up playing team sports and loved the play, the movement, and the feeling of community, yet I was deeply disturbed by the intensity of competition and the ways we were taught to measure worth.

My parents divorced when I was six, and I grew up between two very different worlds. Within my family, I witnessed addiction, conflict, and emotional instability — experiences that shaped my early understanding of pain, resilience, and survival. For many years, I struggled with my own loss of purpose, trying to understand who I was outside of the expectations and cultural narratives I had inherited. Much of my life has been a process of forging my own path — learning how to live in a way that feels honest and aligned rather than prescribed.

Art as Survival

At sixteen, my life shifted dramatically. I discovered ceramics more deeply while also sustaining a serious lower back injury that ended my relationship with sports and left me in years of physical and emotional pain. During a time when I felt unsafe both inside myself and in the world around me, a high school ceramics teacher gave me support and a place to land. Making art, journaling, and writing became daily practices that helped me stay afloat as I moved through depression, existential questioning, and periods of suicidal ideation. Creativity was not a hobby — it was how I survived.

Leaving the Map

At eighteen, I moved to Colorado to attend the University of Colorado Boulder during the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting college online intensified my feelings of isolation at a time when I longed most for belonging and connection. I soon realized that large lecture halls and conventional education were not where I was meant to learn. Trusting that instinct, I left and traveled to Hawai'i to volunteer on an organic farm. Living in a tent, growing food, painting, and cleansing myself in the ocean marked a personal initiation into a new way of living. During this time, I chose sobriety and began rebuilding my relationship with myself and the earth.

Art entered my life both by chance and through lineage. My grandfather was a pottery sculptor who died many years before I was born, yet when I work with clay, I feel an undeniable connection to him — as if something moves through my hands that began long before me. Clay became more than a material; it became a relationship with ancestry, memory, and belonging.

Wilderness, Practice, and Lineage

My search continued through wilderness and spiritual practice. A two-month Outward Bound course in southern Oregon brought me to my knees emotionally and physically, revealing both my limits and my deep need for home and family after years of running. Returning to Colorado, I lived at an ashram, practicing seva and meditation and completing yoga teacher training — experiences that grounded me in daily devotion and inner listening.

Working at Colorado Mountain Ranch introduced me to nature-based education rooted in relationship rather than conquest. I realized I wasn't interested in outdoor education that taught how to master nature, but in learning how to listen to and belong with the land. This led me to Naropa University, where I studied Art Therapy and Environmental Education. There I explored contemplative psychology, art as healing, meditation, ecological awareness, and Indigenous-informed ways of thinking. I taught yoga, interned at the Milk and Honey Farm through the Boulder JCC, and began experiencing what true community felt like.

I often describe my path as following a golden thread whose destination I cannot yet see. In recent years, I have studied with mentors including Vanessa Tavernetti, Julie Hatch, Elizabeta Gonzalez, Mikalaya Wilder, and Lena Eastes — exploring animistic and shamanic wisdom, psychic skills, shadow work, ancestral healing, women's health, rites of passage, and deep nature connection with Earth Path Education. I continue to study mythology, herbalism, and the heroine's journey as living frameworks for transformation.

Through Grief

Having experienced a partner leave by suicide, along with other stages of intense loss, my understanding of grief, love, and presence has evolved. Through this loss, I have come to know how essential it is to express what lives deep in our hearts, to find safety again in our bodies, and to acknowledge the role the unseen and ancestral worlds play in our lives. Grief has taught me humility and deepened my commitment to holding spaces where nothing needs to be fixed, only witnessed and felt.

The Work I Bring Now

After years of healing from physical injury and moving through personal transformation, I now bring together my lived experience as an artist, ceremonialist, educator, and wilderness guide. My work is rooted in creativity as a pathway to belonging, reconnection with the natural world, and supporting others as they move through thresholds of change, grief, and initiation. I create spaces where people can remember their relationship to creativity, community, and the living earth — and where the parts of ourselves once left on the outskirts are welcomed home.