About Me
I'm Martha Hartney. I am a mother, spiritual counselor, lawyer, death doula, mediator, writer, and adventurer, in roughly that order. I’ve been coaching and counseling people most of my life, starting out as a teen peer mentor, then later as a mother-to-mother counselor and leader with La Leche League and into my later years as an attorney and counselor. Even though I always wanted to be a healer (as a doctor), I decided to become a lawyer instead so that I could stay close to my children as I ventured into the unknown territory of who I would be when my sons grew up. I have always been interested in the roots of illness, suffering, and pain and wanting to help people live healthy, rewarding lives. Little did I know that becoming a lawyer would actually take me closer to the roots of illness than I ever imagined.
In my decade-long career as a lawyer, I’ve counseled thousands of clients, bearing witness to the inherited patterns, dynamics, traumas, and dysfunctions that cause illness and pain. Abuse, neglect, sexual trauma, shame, religious wounding, money shadows, domination, and control. These inheritances revolve around the three main loci of suffering–sex, money, and power. I’ve sat with the stories of many people and worked with the deeply ingrained wounds we carry in these areas that shut down the heart and drive us into our heads, where we can become literally mad. The circumstances of my clients’ lives have taught me that tending these wounds with loving attention is my calling. In a very real way, being a lawyer has made me a healer and an advocate of the soul in a way that being a doctor in America never could.
My experiences as a mother and as a lawyer also brought me to dive into the realms of shamanism and spiritual counsel, both wildly undervalued aspects of healing in our culture--and ones I found to be key to my own healing and a gateway to the creation of a beautiful and robust life. Over the course of my own healing journey, I have discovered my passion and gifts for supporting others as they prepare for shamanic healing ceremonies and integration support after ceremony, as well as ongoing coaching and care for people as they create new lives with the blessings they've received in ceremony.
As the youngest of 10 children, in a complex family soul group, I acquired a keen awareness of others’ interior terrain and climate. Later in life, I experienced a generous helping of pain, loss, and love Through these experiences, I have grown able to help others find their way through challenge and difficulty by connecting them with their own miraculous inner healer. When we are in tune with this inner healer, we are better able to guide ourselves through our own healing processes and into our healershp.
In developing my gifts, I’ve studied intuitive diagnostics, shamanic healing, and ceremonial arts of South American indigenous peoples, shadow work--all integral parts of healing our bodies’ living experience of the past in order to live the best life we can.
In 2016, I was called to deepen my work with the thresholds of life, and consciousness, by becoming a certified “Sacred Passage Doula” (commonly known as a death doula) through the Conscious Dying Institute. I'm also a trained mediator, child and family investigator, an estate planning attorney, and an advocate of the soul.